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Mimi Nov 2011
Something snapped in my heart
I don’t know when
but it’s been like this for a while now.
Like never trust anyone but yourself
nothing left to be loyal to
like I didn’t even expect to live this long.
Is it strength that keeps me here?
something has snapped.
Instead of taking a knife to my veins
I just don’t sleep.
Mimi Aug 2011
Driving to your apartment
and waiting
for the call
“your daddy’s leaving”

and then you have to go across town
to your old house

might ***** your roommate while
we’re waiting
for you to come home

something like 2am
sopping in tears
when the call came
“your daddy’s leaving"

silence

I don’t think we believed,
but now we have to.
Mimi Feb 2013
This morning I woke up to a circus runaway
He was sitting in the kitchen
of the house I share with three boys
he eyed me in my pajamas

He was sitting in the kitchen
basking in the light of the morning
he eyed me in my pajamas
He works for the circus that stopped in town

He is Evan’s second cousin once removed
I fried us eggs while everyone else slept
He missed the circus train to Atlanta
and needed a place to stay.

I fried us eggs while everyone else slept
We watched the dogs playing in the yard
he needed a place to stay
and put his feet up on the table

He told me stories about working at the circus
I’ve always had a lingering curiosity
he put his feet up on the table
and had a girlfriend waiting for him in Charlotte

This morning I woke up to a circus runaway
I made him breakfast and then he had to leave
for a few minutes he talked with Evan
about traveling (running again) to India

I’ve always had a lingering curiosity
he eyed me in my pajamas
he had a girlfriend waiting for him in Charlotte
I made him breakfast and then he had to leave
Written in the style of Stuart Dischell's "She Put on her Lipstick in the Dark" for my creative writing class. I need feedback before I turn it in! Let me know what you think!
Mimi Sep 2011
This place is so quickly home
in my cinder block palace
the leaky sink, the naked boy in the bed
across from mine.
I am triumphantly queen of these gravel-roofed blocks
dragged back, bladder bursting
to my little kingdom.
my people wait up in the hallways
they are dazed and blurry eyed
the 4 am incarnations
of what we promised ourselves we’d never be.
curled up in corners
shivering away from reality.
I have conquered nothing
but my parent’s expectations.
Mimi May 2012
My brand was my voice
self discovery party
I've made friends, and love
Mimi Apr 2012
What was it?
I was nothing, sitting on an ant farm couch.
We were all coming home drunk
In intervals
And taking off our clothes sliding into bed
With our respectives.
I was an ant on a farm,
Digging in lines of people
What will I do when my parents are gone?
You morbid little ****.
Lucky little me, born. Significant as
An ant on a farm
Or all alone where I'm just as real
As the people who talk to me
At parties or in my mind.
Mimi Jul 2011
Supple skin, insides of elbows
we scratched til they bled
split lips and scraped knees
I would follow you anywhere
Burrowed in your old clothes
you didn’t wear dresses
so neither did I.
Curled up on your too-green carpet
watching the fish in your tank
commit suicide one by one.
Can we stay the same?
Before Momma’s on the phone
shouting about faulty vaccines.
Before the world descends upon us.
In the night
you would slowly voice the thoughts:
what is the value of a human life
if it is miserable. If people laugh and mock,
if that life is silently and hopelessly
alone, and suddenly aware of it’s own strangeness.
It takes hours, to string this together
creeping towards 3am in the pitch dark.
we are sitting on the floor,
I promise with all of my eight year old honor
all of my fighting might,
I will not abandon you to this cruel world trapping
you. All this unknown grief
for the emotions you cannot understand.
My big brother called last night at 11:41 pm on a school night
We made plans to see a movie next year. So this is his.

(I think this needs an edit and an new title, thoughts?)
Mimi Feb 2012
I’m old enough to know but
too young to know better
the state says I’m an adult as of May
but I still don’t know what I want to be
when I grow up,
except for still carrying around my Blankie.

Teddy Bear holds up the pipe to my lips
I can’t do it on my own, I’m not so good at this,
he says breathe deep Baby, I’ve got you.
The fuzz on his face is rough when he kisses the top of my head.

Taj and Tibby walk in holding hands
“Baby!” he smiles and leans down to kiss me
“Hey little one” she says and hugs me tight.
Lauren and Luke come out of their room and
give me big smiles.
Everyone is glad I am home and I exhale
grey smoke because I am glad too.

I am the baby, but I am also the best cook.
While I clang pots in the kitchen my man pours
champagne and turns on the new speakers.
Chicken Piccatta for dinner, because when
you feed people, it’s the best way to tell them
you love them.

The flimsy laminate floors are sticky,
the practically cardboard walls are dusty,
the room like a cave is dark even with the blinds cracked open
but Taj makes us laugh and we dance to the music.
Kitchen table cleared of drug paraphernalia
becomes the flimsy garage-sale/side-of-the-road version
of the dinner table I grew up with.
The people crowded onto its edges
a kind of family.
Mimi Sep 2012
I am not a perfect human
when I was born there was gunk in my lungs
and for a while now my heart's been talking to me in rhythms
like let me out like forget to beat like no blood to my brain
or fingertips

They tried to make me a perfect human
in the summertime under the knife
under flourescents instead of the sun
crinkle sheets crinkle paper gown
crinkle pop heartbeat

When they burned me from the inside I could feel it
I woke up when I wasn't supposed to like a volcano of survival
the light was white, I screamed, I remember it all
till anestesiologist put me back to sleep
all three seconds

Days and weeks after bruise hobble
the monitor is even now every third beat
like a perfect human being's
I watch everyone around me breathe strong
I breathe strong too and only check my pulse
out of nerves.
Mimi Aug 2011
The yellow ones
buttery soft
floating on tiny wings
hanging on new tendrils
Out of the corner of my eye
one rests and keeps me company

I’m sitting in the dirt
planting the garden up new

another sits to drink

I wash my naked feet

There are rainbows in the sunlight
and in the dirt under my nails

the brightness blinks through
my eyelashes damp

four summers ago
I suppose it was that long
that I didn’t watch the
butterflies
alone.
Mimi May 2012
It was quick and sharp
like a needle under skin.
Instead: in my heart.
Mimi Jul 2011
Your washy grey eyes only meet mine sometimes
when you’re being really serious.
On days when you laugh we talk about how
when we’re old and rich, I’ll buy you a green
Lambo and you’ll buy me a red one.
Or, how one day you’ll be president.

I try my hardest to make you smile on days like these
they don’t come very often anymore
your cheeks are hollowed deeper
whispered to me late at night about that needle
because you trust me for some reason
you have decided I’m the one you will trust
and I think that’s why I try so hard to make you smile
on days when you laugh.
Mimi Oct 2011
Life is not always what you planned.
We were in the back yard of the abandoned house next door to his watching his two mutts chase each other around the perimeter. House after tiny peeling white painted house line the street “Summerbelle” with roofs covered in crinkled brown leaves. He runs his hand through his too long ***** brown hair. Tall and blue eyed, he could have been handsome maybe.
I had stopped by to pick up my glasses from on top of his coffee table. I don’t remember how they had gotten there exactly but at some point last night roasting-marshmallows-and-a-bonfire had turned into mango-juice-*****- forgetting-your-glasses-party with all the neighbors.
We were talking about fall, how the colors and the smells are beautiful, but foreboding, warning that winter and depression are coming. It’s a problem we have. On my walk over I had stopped to pick up a particularly beautiful leaf to give to him. It was just the sort of thing he would understand.
I reminded him we have to dress up for class on the 6th, and asked if he even had a suit. He then launched into a ten minute story about how he used to work on a senator’s campaign, 18 hour days and everything.
Not something I would have expected.
We gradually shuffle into the house, and I pick up my glasses from right where I had left them. The door is never locked in his house, but no one usually steals anything.  The walls are covered in crayoned drawings and quotes, over the top of it all “Fleetwood” graffitied in orange and red. I remember that is what we had decided to name the house last night. I had been sitting on the couch with a beer admiring the artist, bringing him a new Blue Ribbon can periodically for a kiss.
“Are you and A together now?”
I shake off the hazy memories. “Hm?”
“You and A.”
“Oh. We’re…yeah.” His signature grin never faded but his eyes had dipped to the floor. “How could you tell?”
“The way you spoke to him.” It was all the explanation he offered. “He’s a good guy.”
“He is.”
My mind wandered back to the morning, waking up next to the artist brushing my hair off my face, kissing my forehead. Surreal.
There wasn’t much left to say, so it was time for me to go. Turning to the door I saw what I had written on the wall last night, hidden under the windowsill, part way behind the couch. Under the song lyrics, clichéd quotes like “Be good or be good at it” and messages of peace, love and adventure it was nestled.
*All the same, we are nothing.
Mimi Jun 2011
Late at night I am creative
in the form of a fizzing soda bottle
pomegranate deep purple liquid
poured into a glass tumbler three fourths full
standing on a chair moving cereal boxes

that tall glass bottle in the back of the cupboard
splashing it in the tumbler clear and sour

half a teaspoon of sugar and a squeeze of lime
mixing until I see the pink froth on top
drinking it down before I realize what I’m doing

Flash back to a few hours before
“you smell good” is what he said to me
leaning in, whispering it in my ear

Well how do you like me now?
breath full of fruit and something sharper
I can’t say you’d approve of the way my brain buzzes
but I know, secretly, you would understand
Mimi Oct 2011
It’s three am.
Or actually 2:58, right exactly now.
Sitting in bed with my cup of mac and cheese
I made in the microwave
and woke up my roommate,
because if I’m getting sexiled until 2 anyhow,
I’ll make some ******* mac and cheese.
Blowing on my plastic fork
listening to Bon Iver sing about his skinny love.

That’s something that’s been concerning me lately,
Skinny love.
But I’m eating anyway.
Because rolling on the black top of the playground
(dark and secret, with just enough irony)
with a newly blue-eyed boy
made me hungry.
Mimi Feb 2012
Everyone is sick of raves except for you.
When you painted your face like a tigers
you forgot that your soul has to match.
My soul matches my face.
I left you behind too, I’ve left so many behind,
I don’t know where I’m going.
You were dead weight but
I miss you
anyhow.
Mimi Jan 2012
Lying on top of you breathlessly panting
(2am, nonexistent sleep schedule)
I almost said “I love you” which turned into
“I love...how you make me feel” you knew it
and I knew it. I almost ******* up.

When we wake up
(11:27, barely made it to morning)
you get in the shower and I stay in bed.
The morning feeling never lasts long, soon
you’re on the phone making plans you can’t tell me about;

illegal. Many thousands of dollars.
“Don’t tell anyone baby. Shouldn’ta asked questions”
But who would I tell?
You’re my favorite person here.

Long day, back in bed. I made you a fake pie
(12am, pudding and peanut butter in the fridge)
after you took me to see the puppies
(I didn't even have to ask twice to go).
Curled up around you I kiss your tattoos,
the picture you drew, inked into your skin,
of the woman you’ll marry
(you’ll have her colored when you meet the girl)
and you whisper you might get a few more curls added
a little more brown in her hair
but her eyes and her nose,
already match mine.

You started snoring
I turned on my side and had a panic attack.
Mimi Jan 2012
Asbestos infected living;
I am the saddest ******* earth.
Mimi Dec 2013
A lot of people will write about her, I know
she was not only mine.
We are sad we are grieving
a community bands together.

My anger is macabre inappropriate:
when her light turned out, she turned out several others.
My dearest friend:
empty gas lamp.

Trying to relight is against a tempest
and sequestered in despair,
with internal lighter fluid drained
our marrow dry as dust.

(the real truth of it all is much harder to swallow
than the news story you heard)
Mimi Jun 2011
December 30, 2010 1:00 am

Am sitting, as always
at the left edge of the couch
clutching my tall glass of water
forcing myself to drink
the weather is so dry out there
forcing myself to exist
the weather is so dry in winter.

December 30, 2010 1:13 am

Barely illuminated, I search
my dead grandmother’s eyes
for wisdom, familiarity
but they tell me I look like
the French side of the family
which in reality,
Never existed.

December 30, 2010 1:27 am

I smell too much like you
but it is late, I cannot stand
long enough to shower
without my knees buckling
my heart beats in sets of three
the doctors cannot fix it today
so, I am like another inch gone
at the rim of my water glass
******* to the jugular
of my feeble, thorough
existence.
Mimi Jul 2011
I
Sleeping in your bed till noon
a silent prayer
redeem me
naked angel pulls you up
bathes you
and says make one wish

with her uncommon beauty
the combination of the
sharpness of her teeth with the
sharpness of her words
you cannot help but
wish for
her

II
His head is heavy when he wakes
Redemption is curled like a child in his arms,
put to bed with a bottle of *****
but lemons killed the taste.
She didn’t mean to wake up.

III
The thin blues of your eyes wash over
The blessings are small and smooth
Redemption waits for you at the bottom of the stairs
the delicate curves of her feet
buried into the grass,
she bristles out to become all encompassing
running towards the sea.
Mimi Feb 2013
Licking the foam off the inside of my coffee mug
I am sitting at the table working
and you can’t fathom what’s wrong with me
it feels like something other than blood is inside me
it makes me itchy all the time
and my heart concaves inside my plump chest
I am gasping at the air around me
and you ask me why I sigh so.
I feel alone wherever I go
Mimi Oct 2012
When I ripped off my fingerprint
it was an accident
at first
the new skin grows
from the center outward
and I grow into a new identity.

I sleep like there’s no tomorrow
and no yesterday
Mimi Nov 2011
Sometimes it’s easy to think that he might love me.
Curled up on the couch like it’s Sunday afternoon
he kisses my forehead softly.
Our faces touch, his cheekbone up against my nose.
Eyes closed we sigh and enjoy the feeling.

He asks if he’s a good blanket.
I say I’ve had softer but never sweeter.

We are not paying attention to the television.
I am stuck in feeling his hands playing with my hair,
and tracing my bones
up to my neck, asks if my necklace is real pearls.
I tell him yes they are real,
you can tell because they are imperfect,
and that is what gives them away
as genuine.
night at the artist's apartment after a meeting.
Mimi Oct 2011
Tonight I married a graffiti artist.
This is the third time I’ve been proposed to
at some ***** house party.
This time there was an ordained all-faith minister
on the porch smoking a cigarette. That was enough.
I said yes.
We’re all strictly first-name-basis here, nicknames are even better.
So to him I’m just Mimi. Focused intently on my hand,
he draws my wedding ring with a permanent marker
and kisses each finger as he finishes.
There is a tiny replica of his tattoo on the underside of my finger
in addition to my gigantic drawn-on diamond.
It is my favorite part.
We talk politics and eventually art.
Turns out he’s sort of an amazing artist.
He said he’d put my name up on a wall but I don’t believe him.
Intricate, passionate, and thoughtful.
His smile is adventure.
That’s why I married him.
He asked to read my poetry and in my fuzzy judgment I let him.
Maybe he even liked a few phrases.
And he was polite as a hopped up boy can be.
Getting me home before three,
lending me his jacket without me asking.
I know he’ll forget to call, or that he even has my number.
and that we won’t watch Pulp Fiction
tomorrow.
That I was really just a glorified
snort of some white powder,
I am like all the glitter that fades in the morning
like smiles do, or permanent marker
after a few washes.
(he called the next day)
Mimi Jun 2011
The world sifts through my window screens
warm, soft air pressing up against my bare legs
a neighbor girl laughs through the black night
it’s to late to be neighborly
but still they talk
and the dogs bark
my brother’s piano music floats up to me from the first floor
and I wonder if the people walking
stop to hear Chopin’s light tones
turn to jazz and then to something distinctly more baroque
as the thunder clouds roll in.
Mimi Feb 2012
I think I outgrew you a while ago.
We spent seven years close but
everything changes
and I don’t want to fight but
everything changes.

I do feel bad that we don’t talk as much.
Our worlds are too different now
to have anything to talk about.
I know you look down on my
not-an-ivy-league college
but you’re with your peers now
and I’m happy with mine. Yes you’re
brilliant with books. Not so brilliant
with human beings.
You will go on to be more successful than your mother
like she pushed you to be,
but you're still looking for your
happiness.
I’m a little different, a little opposite.
Not so brilliant with books, I’d rather be with my
human beings.
I know in my heart where I’ll find my happiness
one day, and I assure you it will not be
in some grey forty story office building
still wondering why
your ex boyfriend at age seventeen
decided to kiss me under the slide
at the neighborhood park
while he was trying to forget about you.

That doesn’t feel so great for me either
being a rebound.

But at least I’ll have lived my life
and I’ll have no questions or regrets
my garden will be full of flowers.
Let’s keep disagreeing, because
I won’t let myself become so
angry.
Mimi Feb 2013
just so you know
i’m keeping a mistress
on the side
in the style of My Father

something inside me is constantly dissatisfied
Mimi Jan 2012
I wonder how I got here, secluded in a grimy apartment filled with smoke. We drink gin and tonics with mint like it’s the ‘20s; we sit and talk pop culture because we know. Taj has somehow become the effective authority on all of these things, paid to social network and connected to Hollywood; he’s very skilled at playing to people’s wants. My Cadillac sits intent next to me markering in a recent drawing for his newest class. He’s already famous for his graffiti, one day I’ll bet you this extra credit project will be worth money. He drew me a fox for Christmas. Valentines day is coming up. He never tells me he loves me. Jack is watching me watch him out of the corner of his eye while putting on a new remix of an old song. He leans over and asks if I like it and I nod. I feel bubbled up with *** smoke, frozen in time and vaguely uncomfortable. I’d guess this is what it’s like to be “too high.” I want Caddy to notice, but it’s Jack that’s pushing my hair back and telling me to drink more water. It’s sweet. Despite his need to be seen as a womanizer, Jack respects Caddy too much to even try with me, he looks but he doesn’t put on any faces for me. Everyone thinks so hard about how they’re seen.
Jack says his New Year’s resolution is to do less *******, even though no one asked. Everyone hears but no one reacts. I try to keep moving my toes and stop shivering. Across from me Ky and Nate are reading the encyclopedia in open-mouthed awe. In a room full of intellectual up and comers I feel like Hemmingway did when he was my age, how all the minds gravitate to each other and sit in a ***** room by the beach and let the creativity go. Like Mary Shelly and the whole gang writing Frankenstein and Dracula in the same trip.  After a while I think Taj is going to make it, Jack will be a politician and Caddy will be lost and with another woman. Ky and Nate will still be smoking and reading the encyclopedia, all the way down to ‘z’. I am like my mother: attracting the company of smart successful men who pay her selective attention.
The door burst open and the cold air stayed in my pores after it was closed. Rodger invited himself over. It would have been all right but when Rodger is wasted he forgets his manners. In his animated state he managed to kick over Caddy’s favorite smoking piece, insult Jack and look at me a little too hard. His girlfriend had immediately passed out on the couch, but she never smiled or spoke to me anyway. Her head was cradled in the lap of a girl I hadn’t noticed. Her hair was perfect and her eyes shadowed, the liner and mascara smudging its way slowly onto her high cheekbones. She stared at me but didn’t speak. I tried to smile, but didn’t want to give away the champagne sensation covering my skin, still too up to speak. She had already formed her opinion of me, some young ******* the arm of an older boy. She was once in my position, I’m sure of it, we are the same kind of beautiful and empty eyed. That doesn’t stop her from judging, in the total of 15 seconds she looked at me. Her self is tamed and mine is wild still. Unintroduced and unnoticed by the men in the room, we have an understanding and a mutual dislike of each other, only to defend ourselves.
The room takes time to settle, a bowl has been packed for an entitled Rodger, and now that everyone is calm, Cad sits back down and puts his arm around me again. I lean into him, protected and anchored, whereas I had been floating or about to puke a minute ago. I don’t know what I said but Caddy seemed annoyed when he said “Just let it happen, embrace the feeling,” and so I kept quiet for ten minutes or so. The high was infected with guilt. Next time he looked at me-- it could have been an hour—I whispered, “I can’t” and finally he heard me, and stood up.
Cad came back into my vision with a glass of water and turned on Drive, prompting Rodger, Mrs. Rodger and my pretty enemy to leave. Ky and Nate had gone long before I could focus on noticing. Taj left for trivia night down at the bar and no doubt some girl; wrapped up in a cashmere scarf and cardigan he kissed my cheek before he went. Jack also took his graceful leave with the Rodger group to woo some girl who knew exactly what she was doing to herself. He did have a straight nosed charm, Jack. I could not blame this girl, one of many (I am embarrassed for her; I have been like this ******* many occasions).  
Taj had been sent the advanced copy of Drive in blu-ray, so we snuck it from his room and watched it that way (the only way Taj would see movies now, it is the future (for now)). Kavinsky came through Cad’s new speakers the boys had spent half an hour trying to wire earlier in the night. “They’re taking about you boy/but you’re still the same” crooned Lovefoxxx as Ryan Gosling cruised down a street, ****** intense in driving gloves. Gears shifting and motors growling are very ****, I tell Cadillac so into his ear, as he pulls me into his arms and covers me up with a blanket.
The movie was perfect, maybe because it made me feel less dizzy and sickguilty (Cad knew it would) and maybe because Ryan Gosling can wear a white satin jacket. I loved it, hardly noticing when the absent roommate Travis strolled in with Taj and tacos somewhere around 2am.  Colder as Caddy got up for a burrito, left me alone on the couch for the kitchen table. Registering Taj taking his place, playing with my curls and talking Hollywood to me. I’m staring over at Cad in his chair, he makes eye contact once or twice and I blow him a kiss before Taj repositions my head toward the television and my ear back where he can speak into it.
Eventually Cadillac taps Taj on the shoulder and motions for him to get up. With Cad back I can relax and I fall into sleep just as the movie ends. Taj and Trav have gone to their own beds and Cad leans over me, picks me up and takes me to bed knocking my elbow on the doorframe along the way. He apologizes and kisses my head but I am too tired to care. He lays me down on the bed with crimson sheets and takes off my boots but then sternly says, “Mimi, you are not a child.” and so I must get up and undress myself. He wraps me in a duvet missing its cover and his arms. I trust him long enough to fall asleep.

-

Standing in front of the stove it was hot, but I am easily overheated. He came up behind me and said in my ear, “you’re lovely” watching me put the last piece of French toast on the large stack, getting ready to scramble eggs. He kissed my cheek. Then my neck and then my lips, taking me away from my cooking to be pulled against him, for a sweet short minute and went back to the living room with his friends. Jack had mysteriously reappeared in the night; he said he locked himself out of his apartment after leaving to see one of his girls. Taj just sat and blasted Radiohead over the new speakers, shouting something relevant at me. I scramble the eggs and make up plates, two pieces of toast each and a nice healthy pile of eggs. It is gone very quickly and no one says thank you, except for a smile from Caddy and a kiss on the forehead. It’s usually enough for me, knowing he likes to show me off to his friends. I sit down with my cup of coffee and plate, within a few minutes Cad suggests he takes me home. I resentfully take time to finish my coffee. But we are both busy and he is right, so I say goodbye to the boys and gather my things. We drive with the “best MC on the game these days” (so I am told) over the weak speakers of the car. Cad drives with his arm around me always. Cruising into my building’s parking lot I lean over for a kiss on my forehead, nose, lips. He says go, but his hand still sits on my shoulder so I stay for a little longer. “You’ll probably have to let go of me if it’s time for me to go Cad,” I say quietly, with a tentative smile on my face. He grins back and lifts his arm. I slide out of the suicide seat and smile at him, but he’s looking at the radio dials. Then my face. His eyes give him away, softened around the edges with affection. Maybe love, but he’d never say it and I refuse to say it until he does. I try not to think about it much as he drives away to smoke up again with his friends. I wonder if this is how it will always be, but then I realize our kind of “always” is only the next few months. I turned unsteadily and walked up the stairs to my empty room—dark and overheated smelling heavily of sugar and spice candles-- with the geese outside my window for company. I haven’t slept here for days.
Mimi Jan 2012
We went out to dinner and you ordered my favorite
when it came, we switched plates
because you knew I’d change my mind.

We walked into your friends house looking for some beer
instead they pulled out a sweet little baggie
filled with don’t-say-it-out-loud-named drugs.
Everyone gets big stupid smiles watching Rodger
cut it in lines on the table.

I’m trying to tell you with my eyes that my heart is beating faster
than it’s supposed to
that I am in no way comfortable here
please please take me home *******
and you told my eyes out loud,
“Yeah but I’m gonna do it anyway.”

(Full blown panic attack. It’s what you do to me
baby.)

Leaning over the table like you’re about to get ******
(that was mean, but I am mad),
inhale deeply through that roll of paper.
I’m watching you sourly from the couch
whispered into your ear
“when you come down, you’re taking me the **** home”
(this entire poem goes in The Swear Jar)
instead we had makeup *** upstairs and
I flirted with all your friends.

I guess it got later. The party started going,
some Taylor kid’s speaking in my ear
“That boyfriend of yours, does he love you?”
“Not at all” (I’m a flirt but at least I am honest)
Told me to call him when I shake off the loser.

How can I shake off this loser?
How could I give away the boy (man?) who orders
my broccoli cheddar soup
so we can switch bowls
after my disillusioned moment
of chicken noodle wanting.
He carried me to bed again, and held me when I woke up
crying.
We listen to Neil Young in the car on our way out to the woods
he said
“What a sad man…his Mimi went away.”
running his hands through my hair.

This is my excuse:
you don’t know a person, until
you have gone through their medicine cabinet.
They say.
Mine have prescriptions
You’ve had to find yours yourself
to find yourself.  But now I think
it’s time to grow up, or die real young.
It’s not my problem.
I think I maybe should stop it with this
problem.
Mimi Dec 2013
This time of year impermeable black takes over luxurious afternoon.
I take stolen moments with my garden book;
fat glossy nostalgic roses can only depress me further.
Lonely for the company of my friends
thrumming in chlorophyll,
the warm green network is contained in a small *** that I move
I move around the room with me,
following a shallow puddle of sunlight so precious it might be gold.
Mimi Feb 2012
Every body's ******* about one-day-outta-the-year,
but I like to be your little princess for a night
when you open up all my doors,
pair the steak with the exact right bottle of wine
and we finish off the entire thing.
Chocolate mousse, made with love,
an entire pile of romantic movies to pick from
while you stare at me adoringly across the
immaculate
candle lit
apartment that's finally clean! (just for me)
Then Brazilian jazz in a bubble bath,
(you thought of every little thing)
I lean back into you, feeling your lips rest on my hairline.
You said we should do this more often.
Then I gave you a Santa bubble beard
we took pictures
and we laughed hysterically in the light of a candle.
It's how I know, before and after it all that
**** it
(I love you.)
The trick is slipping it into conversation.
Mimi Nov 2011
I’m knitting something new,
it feels good.
The new ball of yarn unraveling like time
but I’ve still got plenty left.
There’s potential in this dark teal wool
and satisfaction when I decide
the way I want to weave it.
I make mistakes, I change them
to become part of the pattern.
The stitches are like a song in my head,
I sing them, I tap them out with my foot
and whistle along to the tune I’ve made up.
I thought it might be a hat when I saw the skein
but now I know it will be an
infinity scarf.
My six inches of beaded rib is a metaphor for my worries.
Working my hands intricately help me forget them.
I have time.
Yes, I am a nerd.
Mimi Nov 2011
4am made me cry
to see behind glasses
into eyes
Mimi Jul 2011
You and I are best at night,
or in the lazy elbow of sunsoaked afternoons
curled up somewhere
talking books not television
religion not politics
in person not technology
honesty not reservation
life not death.
Sometimes you’ll hold my hand
mostly you’re looking the other way.
When we’re together it’s deepest sentiments
forbidden thoughts whispered
cinematic meeting of the eyes
carefully constructed
because sometimes you’re more theatrical than me.
More grammatically correct than I
maintain at three am.
Mimi Nov 2012
You being gone is an excuse for my bad behavior.
My insides are all messed up.
I don’t sleep or eat the right things.
Taking pills to fix the little black holes in my system,
momentarily replace missing you with something else
deeply rooted beneath my sternum,
straining at the tendons of my neck.
You are my love and you are not here.
Mimi Nov 2011
Let’s just kiss and make something up.
It’s plain that I’m not sleeping enough
as a practiced insomniac you know,
and make coffee for us in the morning.

Last night we fell over laughing,
exhaling smoke I drawled,
“Everything in this kitchen it sticky”
everything.
For five minutes I think we laughed.

I made brownies.
You held me around the waist,
and spoke with your eyes.
Mimi Jul 2011
And we lay there under fast moving clouds
sometimes-revealed stars
in the reclined seats of my mother’s car
outside of the other boy’s house
hands behind our heads
let the wind from the open windows
blow the humidity from our foreheads

I find you so handsome in the weak moonlight
the strong bridge of your nose standing out
from underneath your shaggy hair
the bright whiteness of your teeth
as you grin, amusing yourself with words

Our conversation is give and take
Neither speaks more or less than the other
give each other time for thought
in a delicately held balance I find comforting
just like when we were so young

The days when your mother drunk dialed
and your father tried as hard as he could
when you clung to me and my words
walked from North Platte to Lincoln
to escape her long red fingernails
and fall into my open arms

All I ever wanted was to see you smile
the same as now
while we wait in the car
but you left me when your mother stopped
when you found yourself stable, happy even
I became irrelevant, despite professed love

I know you further than
the other girls.
far enough to sit in the back of my mother’s car
seats reclined, watching shadows pass over the moon
looking at me like you used to
you see right through to the center of me
of course I still love you.
Mimi Nov 2011
I don't have walls
rather fences
your brain could hop
I am having waaaaaay too much fun with these 10 word poems.
Mimi May 2012
This place used to be like my skin
I knew every corner, every street, every wrinkle.
the sweeping expanses of prairie grass and flower fields
thick and always moving, like you could comb your
fingers through the lush green. Still a ten minute drive
in any direction.
The streets are so dusty and faded
that half the time the markings don't show up
but after all that time, I just know where to drive.
The place is the same, the players are different
and I think I want to move to India.
Mimi Jul 2011
We like our steaks ******
my daddy and I
wear plaid and glasses and slippers
and hibernate in the winter.
I steal the pens out of his desk
and lose them.

I steal the wedding rings out of his dresser
and stare at them on the bedspread.
Sometimes I wear the gold one
and remember that time I found it
in the glove compartment
with the rest of the loose
change.

It is ritualistic.
and it makes me aware
I’m scared to become him.
But I know he did what he had to;
I will do what I have to
when my time comes.

My time and the easy way out,
I am already so much like him.
But at the end of the month
there will be a new package of roller *****
in the desk drawers
and he won’t say
a word.
Mimi Sep 2011
I lock my door at night because I’m scared
you’ll sneak in quietly and kiss me on the forehead
or traipse in with the morning and bring me coffee.

I wouldn’t put it past you,

the way you smile when you look at me.
Put your arm around me in public,
and offer me your milk when I run out.
You tell me I’m such a sweetie pie, you can’t get over it.
but you don’t know me, and you don’t ask questions.
I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to hear another cutsey nickname
and if you tickle me one more time I swear I’ll
break your ******* nose.

I’m trying to tell you, to warn you
“No, I’m not a sweetie pie, you’ll find out soon enough”
you’re just not enough, and you’ll find out soon
It’s like you’re afraid to break me when I let you kiss me.

Break me, please.

I’m just dying for some danger, for that boy from Ohio.
You hold me good at night but a bad girl can’t live on snuggles alone.
Seriously.
I would sass you until you put your hands on me,
but you're not worth the effort.
Nothing is intense or brave. You are not an adventure.
Mimi Oct 2011
Not to confuse anyone,
but as more and more people read my work,
I think it's best
to use a pen name.
Mimi Jul 2011
Over the bridges to the north side of town
fluorescent flickers, the beer billboards are bigger
Where you live.
We don’t really have billboards on the east side of the rail yard
Where I live.
But I don’t find you in the elementary school
shut down, infested by the deadly spiders.
or patriarchs inebriated, stumbling back to
cinderblock houses where no one really waits up anymore.
Every soul a flickered star. Maybe dying,
finding last comforts in the black velvet of night.
No, I don’t find you hiding in the hateful corners
of your brother’s triangle folded flag that rested
on a coffin.
Or the alcoholic bottle your mother hands me with a friendly smile.
Tiny threads of crumbling concrete barely connect my world with yours
I might be dreaming, at night lying in the grass of the tallest hill
Where you live
Holding me selfishly, the night is black in my eyes
and the view is not so clear back to
Where I live.
Mimi Jul 2011
You drove away and I thought my nose would bleed
The lump on my head makes me wobbly
Or whatever they stuck in my drink
The roar of that old red engine ringing in my ears
Go die
The boy who doesn’t know how to be in love
Leave me alone to get drunk
On the tears you leave me to
It always ends in tears
Don’t leave me like this
You always leave me like this
Go die
And leave me to mine
The lump on my cerebral cortex is getting bigger
Swelling by the minute
And I’m drinking water
And trying not to let whatever you stuck in my drink
Get the best of me
But I think I’m leaking
Leaking salt water and your own ****** fluids
Leaking my dwindling supply of iron
I’m bleeding
The lump on my head swelling to golf ball proportions
My heart turned to a solid lump
I wait for you to come back and apologize
But you never do and you never will
So maybe if you woke up the next morning
And I didn’t.
Maybe if you heard the words
“her brain hemorrhaged in her sleep”
Maybe if you had to go on without me
You wouldn’t complain about the way I fall in love
And the way you can’t feel ****
You don’t know ****.
I have no idea why this is my most read poem.
Seriously I've written better stuff.
Mimi Jan 2013
Truthfully this is how it’s been
how it will be for a while
beer gut receding hairline
my grumpy artist man
buys me gin and Mexican food
and tucks me into bed at 3 when I can’t take it anymore
I don’t care how many times you forget
I’m your baby and I’ll be waiting
hating your guts
to kiss you at the door
Mimi Jun 2011
If you can hear this
I don’t know
Been waiting in a cookie cutter hotel
the sheets turned down starched white
scratchy
So you’re not coming today?
that was both rhetorical and sarcastic.
Today or tomorrow
the next day, no
I crossed off your name but
I don’t know
If you can hear this.
Mimi Jan 2012
I.

Drinking on a Tuesday is just a Tuesday here.
When you wouldn’t walk me home for my contact case
I cried like the rummed-up little girl I was (am)
walking back to your place on the train tracks.
It was the first time since I moved here I’ve been able to cry;
so it all came down in snot and salt.
Every last thing. The pressure and my father and depressive
tendencies, my mother won’t see me. blurted on the grimy floor of your bathroom
I couldn’t get up for sobbing.
How I don’t love you. And I’m not going to love you.
But I don’t think you’re going to love me either
(I didn’t say that out loud).
You held me anyway;
shame. because no one sees me like this.
This is the way that I am
When my contacts fell out
I stuck them in saline filled shot glasses and you told me to blow
my nose on a paper towel. Then undressed me like I was two again
and held me while I cried myself to sleep.

II.

Sometimes you’re at your lowest
curled up naked in a helpless bed
inadequate with nerves and pressure
so we just talk about our lives
and I hold you, and you cling to me
It’s more intimate than *** anyway.
About my weak ankle and your broken wrist,
our families, all the times we’ve been
kicked out of our homes.
One day you might come home
and listen to the jazz music in June with me
we’ll take a picnic and meet my families
One day I might go to your home
and climb the tree on a cliff
eat beef and broccoli with your uptight step mother
and see all the walls you’ve painted in the city
all the secret underground sewers painted with your name.

III.

Sat on a still plane in the gentrified south
panicked about what exact day it was that month.
One day too late. Which is when you start to worry.

We love so young and free,
but I know you don’t really love me.

We’ve got big, big plans that don’t include each other.
No mistakes can hold me down to you, nothing.

I am meticulous with foil packets and times.

My sweet artist, I don’t know how to ask
why you stick around, if you’re following my rule,
if you’re in it a little bit for my brain too.

I’ll charm your friends and make sure you get your hair cut.
You’ll teach me to brew your coffee and smoke a pipe

As long as you don’t love me,
I don’t love you.
Mimi Dec 2011
The laundry is done
I am safe and warm in a pile of it on the floor
from the sheets and towels
I stare up at him adoringly.
“You are a gorgeous creature”
said the man on the television to the woman he loved.
“You are a gorgeous creature” he said to me.
I climbed to his lap to rest my cheek against his.
Mimi Jan 2012
All I can say:
I'm glad you're not gone
yet.
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