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Nicole Hammond Jan 2016
mom
i keep waking up with blood in my mouth and i never know how it got there. i say your name 3 times like i'm coming home and it's gone. i don't know how. i had this dream the other night where i saw all my memories with you in them except now it's raining in all of them. i don't know what that's supposed to mean but if it's gotta rain somewhere, it might as well be in me. i want all of the sunshine to be left for you. the last memory that i saw in the dream was of us sitting in your car outside of barnes & noble, when you told me about the spot they found in the scan. the honesty in your voice sold out any of the courage you tried to feign for me. i asked you if you were afraid. you said it was all in God's hands. i asked you if you were afraid. you said yes. we sat in the car, under that dark, peculiar rain and i cursed the hands of whoever is up there holding your life so carelessly. maybe i'm a hypocrite or maybe i'm hopeless but i went back to church the next day. i counted all the times they promised you eternal life wishing just one of them would be true. if he really washed you white with his blood i wanna know what that white blood was tending. i counted all the times i wasn't patient with you and wished you hadn't wasted so much precious breath on someone so ungrateful. i counted all the tears, all the goodnight hugs and i love you kisses that your chest has ever known and prayed that there is enough hope in them to fight off whatever it is inside you that's trying to **** you. i'm sorry for whatever i left inside of you 18 years ago that didn't sit well with your bones. i'm sorry for all the bad blood i've caused.
Nicole Hammond Dec 2015
you went up in smoke
somewhere in valhalla
i'm here
exactly 916 miles away
wishing i had said anything to you
when i still had the chance
before i dug my nails
into the hard december soil
trying to find any trace
of the dust they said
you were returning to
if you're really going back
to that from which you came
i'll wait for you
in that house
on woodburn avenue
until your seventeen year old self
comes slipping drunk through
the front door
because at least you still have life to waste
in 1977
if there's a God
i wanna ask him
why your soul must've gotten confused
and fled your body 5 days
before they stopped the life support
i'd ask him why you had to leave
2 generations of women behind
2 parents who were forced
to survive their oldest daughter
a husband reeling
a brother, my father
i'd ask him why
the whole family's speaking without
consonants now
why suddenly we're all children
mourning your loss
in assortments of vowels
why nothing is as honest
or as lonely
as childhood
or death
in a grieving heart is an abundance of poetry.
Nicole Hammond Dec 2015
i'm taking comfort in jet lag
i'm thinking of the catharsis in a glance
i'm measuring stages of grief
in atmospheres traversed
i'm changing my name to stale blood
i'm hurdling 27,006 feet above where you are
i'm wondering if emotions can become
airborne
i'm wondering if anyone knows
i'm wondering how everyone here can
just not know
how they can not break down entirely
when they hear someone running to
catch a flight
i'm choking on pressurized air
and promises
death decided i shouldn't keep
i'm breaking sound barriers
trying to find
the last octave you could speak
i'm crying at the sight of sewing needles
i'm sleeping in your bed
i'm dreaming of breaking the teeth
that took your mouth for granted
i'm pressing flowers from your funeral
in a book that promised eternal life
i'm cursing your death certificate
i'm still waiting for a curtain call
i never wanted to write this poem, especially for you.
Nicole Hammond Dec 2015
when i heard that you were going to die, my mother told me "baby, these bodies are only as strong as the next car crash". invincible until two metal birds try to occupy the same airspace and then hollow bones suddenly are no good for flying anymore. i watched the same thing happen to you, without the screeching brakes. when your blood tried to occupy the same space as your lungs, your heart suddenly didn't know what to do so it didn't do anything. i'm writing this poem without any line breaks because i'm scared that if i give you any empty space, you'll take it and run and i can't let you die like birds flying south for winter. this isn't that natural. i can't justify you dying with a stupid euphemism like "if you love something, let it go". this isn't how it's supposed to be. god created the word "goodbye" to try to make up for the fact that we ever needed to use it in the first place. i'm supposed to be able to use it but you couldn't hear me even if i could. i'd tell you goodbye but it's clear neither of us are good at letting go.
Nicole Hammond Nov 2015
saplings
turned kindling
turned ash
all under the winter and fire
of my hands and my mouth
so fearful
of ghosts that
still draw blood
of wounds that
never healed the same
of things broken and left
broken
a self-preserving instinct

i was too in love
to be manipulated
i gave him more
than his years
knew how to hold
and the remainders
came spilling out
like floodwater
brown and thick
as eyes and november breath
it swam through his lungs
his shining, hopeful breath
a new conquest
to the absence
presence inevitably brings
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
Nicole Hammond Nov 2015
for the first time,
i am not afraid of love
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