Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
Racquel Tio Jul 2016
they say however long the relationship was is how long it'll take you to get over it
so even if I break up with my self hatred today
I'll be 35
before I'm okay
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
today I went for a run
in the town I've been running from.
I have gotten high and drifted away
from it like it's river.
now I miss the days
when I only attacked my liver.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
my hair is the texture of the grass in the field I didn't wanna grow up by
it feels like I've been swimming in the ocean but really I'm drowning on land
I learn time and time again that some things are more beautiful when you just leave them alone and maybe I could've been one of them
I am as unnatural as my upbringing
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
my right eye can not see
and has been this way for
as long as I can remember.
I secluded this fact until I was 9.
nobody knew until I told them.
this was not something that was
visible from the outside.
and now,
I feel that the uselessness from my right eye has spread to every cell of my body
and again,
nobody notices
from the outside.
Racquel Tio Jul 2016
she loved nothing more than words
despite how many had hurt her.
her favorite language
brought infinite anguish.
but without her pain's cause
she would be lost.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
the guns in our hands both shot me unabashedly
and the continents have long since drifted apart.
what's mine is yours
but what's yours is only mine
when I include it in my art.
I dont always just want what I can't have
because I wanted you when I had you too.
words were my first love but now
I write because you're you.
this isn't fun
I don't understand
I liked it much more with a gun in my hand.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
I want to write
as many words as I read
so I can give to the world
as much as I've received
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
I haven't felt alive since I met you
because you turned me into a series of sleepless nights
spent smoking cigarettes trying to taste you
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
I say I'm scared of commitment,
you ask me why I have tattoos.
I tell you
tattoos can't leave me,
or be taken away,
or ripped off of me as soon as I feel like they are apart of my skin and who I am.
tattoos were there for me when everyone left.
tattoos stayed with my body when even my mind turned against it.
tattoos are all I have that is permanent.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
and today I stand with my feet planted firmly
on my porch
with a cigarette resting in my hand,
remembering the days
when "just say no"
was a facile concept.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
the jungle book didn't have two seats that were together
and that simply would not do
because my new bear necessity
is being with you
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
I want to be a doll.
a doll doesn't need.
a doll is simply just
whatever it was made to be.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
my dad says you're a scatterbrain
my friends say that you're to blame
my grandma wants to take you to harrison
and I want to be in your arms again.
you told me you don't like food
because you picture it chewed up
and the presentation is all a facade hiding what it will become.
maybe that's why you didn't even chew before you spat me out.
I told you I don't eat because it's something humans need
and I don't like to be dependent.
but you're a new kind of craving
that a cigarette
won't help me to forget.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
it's nice to see
from your point of view
because I possess
less eyes than two
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
I've always known I see things differently
for everything looks like it's on a screen to me.
with one eye I have to choose carefully what I view
and there's nowhere id rather focus my limited vision
than on you.
if I can't see much
you have to let me feel your touch
I'll read you like braille
if you give me the chance
and I'm not just talking about
what's in your pants.
everything's more beautiful
when there's only so much you can see
and laying in your bed
I witnessed a profound beauty
that was ever so special to me.
words were my first love
I could read before I could breathe on my own
and in your room decorated with words
a passionate left eye
couldn't leave you alone.
my right eye wasn't lazy when it met yours
maybe it was looking for you the whole time
I wish it told me what it saw behind closed doors
because now the most endearing images I see
are seen only in memory.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
the hard part about loving musicians
is that they get stuck in your head
sometimes in a melody
and sometimes in a memory.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
it felt like you cared
when we were laying in bed
and you made it your mission to make my hands warm.
then you left to find your sunshine
and forgot you were mine
but I guess that I was warned.
so now I lay alone
with hands that wish they never met yours
because as soon as I had let go,
I realized how cold they always were.
you took away what you had just shown me I needed.
you're a song I can't skip, a craving I can't kick, and a flame I can't put out.
maybe we'll meet again one day, somewhere and sometime,
where we both are radiating warmth.
i am so glad this didnt work out. i found who i was because i didnt have him and then i was able to meet what i truly wanted.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
I wear extensions on my head and get them glued to every last eyelash.
I wear makeup as a mask that i apply with perfectionism and wasted time.
and I wear what you'll like on my body
because there is a lot of me missing that I need to compensate for.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
at night I miss my sickness
because at least then
my life had a purpose
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
you tell me
you don't want to commit
but on our very first date
I tattooed your wrist.

my hand without yours
feels like my nose
without rings.
but they weren't meant to be there in the first place.

you say you need to go.
you need to find yourself you say.
but those nights you made me feel like
you were gonna be the one that
finds me as we lay.

you are a poem.
but I am a poet.
I can rewrite you or
crumple you up or
place the rhythm at which I write of you
into whoever I choose.
but you cannot rewrite yourself without me.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
have you read every poem I've wrote for you?
do they still have the power to torture you?
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
I've learned to become attached to stories,
not people.
if you fall in love with stories,
they'll lay in bed with you every night.
people are the ones with a tendency to take flight.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
what would you do
if you knew
my next poems
wouldn't be about you?
I doubt that you've written
another word about me
because you disposed of the lust
that was our poetry.
if you want to be reminded of me
only on your wrist
not by my words
and not by my kiss
I don't think there's anything left for me to say.
why should I waste my gift
on an unappreciative boy
who doesn't value
my today?
you were late each and every time
but this is unforgivable
I would try for you for an eternity
but you want to be inhabitable.
(I can't imagine being as comfortable with anyone else but I have to give it a try if you're never coming to my house)
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
childhood scraped my knee.
my father responded
by telling me
he'd break my finger
so I would forget about the sting.
the idea of creating a new pain
in order to mask an old one
was no more than laughable.
but when I look back on his offer
it sounds quite similar to something I do now.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
liquids take the shape of their container and I am 70% water,
I can only spread into the fishbowl my mind pours me into,
a free bird cannot exist without being let out of its cage and I was told to do everything except fly,
I am a home without walls and without any structure I begin to measure what is not there,
i measure the diameter of the space in my earlobes,
they speak for me when I am silenced by all that is louder than me,
they try to shout over the voices of teachers and coworkers and parents and all those that have as much faith in me as I do,
they tell the world that I can't fathom a future for myself where I would be valued enough to be expected to look respectable

I used to measure the space between my thighs,
that space spoke louder than I did on a stage,
a stomach growl felt more like an applause to me than what an audience would do after I pretended some words on a raised floor,
it was louder than my mothers voice,
when my thighs didn't touch nobody told me I was too much for them,
it was how the world heard me when the words that I needed to express started drifting away like the inches of flesh,
the inches that had taken my entire youth to collect on my bones and protect my skeleton from the cold

I am the spaces where my body used to be.
I am the negative space in the silhouette of who I once was.
and in losing myself I learned that when your own body feels like a foreign object,
it becomes pretty easy to destroy it.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
I've learned to sort my pain
into stanzas
containing all of the beauty I don't feel.

so I write the poetry I can't live
and live the poetry I can't write.

with each word i attempt
to romanticize
skinny thighs
a mothers lies
or a daughters cries
in hopes that one day I'll watch my memories
the way you read them.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
my phone broke
the day I saw you with her.
it still lasted longer than we did.
when you walked away
I met someone with the same name as you.
him and I laid together last night
it was the closest I've gotten since you to a feeling that's right.
my thoughts told me that I was once again a continent
I just had forgotten i fit together with other continents
and the difference was that his arms weren't itching to drift apart from our drunken pangea.
but then when his name left my tongue
I didn't mean him.
I missed your name in my mouth
I miss you in my world
and I hope you were happy
walking by me with another girl.
Racquel Tio Jul 2016
I'm always wrong
you're always right.
why are my emotions
a topic you want to fight?
perhaps is it because
you're why I reached for the knife?
or is it because
you're the only one who can hate your life?
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
for a moment I thought I was over you
I thought there could be more than you
until I found myself sharing the tales of you
then standing behind a cash desk holding back tears over you.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
you were like the first balloon I let go of as a child,
I had held you and cared for you during a time I will never forget,
and when it was time to let go I watched you fade away from me,
but while it was devastating and I needed someone to help calm me down, it was nice to sit back and wonder where you would go
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
every path,
person,
and decision
I've faced
has been an arrow
pointing me in your direction.
it all seemed devoid of meaning,
pointless,
then with you I was resurrected.
the previously empty side of my bed
is now warm.
my hopefully suggestive attire has been torn.
we met at the end of a chapter,
on the page our basorexia was born.
and ever since
you've used your kiss
like an eraser to apparel and forlorn.
time keeps passing
while we remain
you're all I want
to stay the same.
the lines I crave now
are the ones from your brain
the ones that make me ethereal
in ways unfathomable to feel
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
I always thought guide dogs were selfish.
then your hand guided me through
the city
and now I want it to guide me everywhere.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
you know when you go to someone's house and the only conditioner they have is two in one?
running into you felt like the polar opposite of that.
above us and within us was poetry in bloom
and hours later we found ourselves in my best friend's room
with our hair intertwined
because those who know both of us
thought you should be **mine.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
you and I,
like communism,
have only been an idea
never a practice
because the ideas of both communism and us
are too perfect to exist.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
I'm not gonna beg you to come to my grad
and pretend to have something I've never had.
there are certain things you can't forgive
it's basically a list of everything you did.
you won't see me pleading you to come to my prom
you should be the one asking me
because you're my mom.
I grew up in a lie that you couldn't walk
and now you don't even pretend we can talk.
you still don't know about my tattoos
and dad's just as oblivious
to the abuse.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
"You're so thin, what's your secret?"
It isn't cutting out carbs,
My secret isn't a diet in a magazine,
My secret is hidden under baggy sweaters,
My secret is the scale hidden under clothes in my closet,
My secret is exercising until I pass out,
My secret comes from feeling fat every second even when I'm being begged to gain weight by doctors,
My secret is placing my entire self worth on a number and the belief that others judge me by the same numbers,
My secret is a voice that is always yelling at me, telling me I take up too much space and need to be sick to be acceptable,
My secret is looking in the mirror at all the weight I think I've gained since the last time I looked, an hour before,
My secret is the desire to slice my fat right off,
My secret is the hidden food in my dresser that I told my mom I was taking for lunch,
My secret is hidden at the bottom of toilet bowls,
It's an empty laxative package,
It's fainting every time I stand up too fast,
It's numbers. It's all numbers. Calories. Pounds. Kilograms. Clothing sizes. Calories. Inches. BMI. Calories. It's counting, recounting, then deciding I don't desire it anyway.
It's striving for the lowest number, to have the lowest number, to be the lowest number,
My secret is comparing myself to everyone I see and always thinking I'm worse,
My secret is turned down coffee dates, parties, and sleepovers because there will be food there,
My secret is the word "fat" carved into my inner thigh with a blade from a pencil sharpener,
My secret hides behind every "no thanks I'm allergic" "I'm vegan" "I can't have gluten" and "I already ate",
It's being told curves are beautiful and nobody wants to date a skeleton but still not being able to believe it,
My secret is paranoia that everyone is trying to make me fat,
My secret is having nightmares of eating an almond then waking up with a racing heart and panicking,
You want to know my secret?
My secret is in the tenth grade my bmi was lower than my age,
My secret was tears shed in hospital beds,
My secret is being begged by everyone I love to just have a bite,
My secret is being afraid of eating fruits or drinking water because I think it'll make me fat,
My secret is getting on scales then off of them then on them then back off and still not trusting it,
My secret is a constant demand to be thinner with no point that will ever be enough,
My secret is that the only curves I want are the curves my ribs would make poking through my skin,
My secret is squeezing my fat until my nails pierce my skin,
My secret is feeling like I'm being suffocated by my own body,
My secret is dizzy days and cold skin,
My secret is that even through years of therapy I can't get the same amount of satisfaction from any person or accomplishment as I can from losing weight,
My secret comes from every hit from my mom, from every nasty word spoken by the girls who thought I wasn't good enough, from every guy's touch I didn't ask for,
I didn't get thin due to having willpower,
I got thin from becoming powerless
to a mirror that will never tell me I'm good enough until I'm dead.
Racquel Tio Jul 2016
bags around my eyes
and hate towards my thighs
trying to bleed out everything I'm feeling
it's too late now for healing
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
the chocolate in trail mix
doesn't know it's the best
because it's always picked last
just keep waiting darling
Racquel Tio Jul 2016
I am at the age
I've always craved
and like a dog
chasing a deer
I don't know what to do
now that I'm here.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
you didn't kiss me.
tonight I didn't taste your lips
but I felt the longing
as speedball ink dripped.
I planted smiley faces forever on your wrist
the same day I assumed
I'd never be more than
five minutes on your ****.
though a speck or two
of your tattoo
was out of place,
we accepted it with open arms
because we are two that can relate.
we were sewn closer with each dot
and thought
and your ungrinded ***.
shout it out loud that we aren't moving too fast
because stagnancy too has been
proven to crash.
both of us
were trying not to stray
from our own yard
but laying there together
we looked like the continents did
before they drifted apart.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
my initials
are rearranged art
and so are my words.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
I'll write another poem about you
on the back of one more receipt
because similar to what they describe
they're art I must keep.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
with theatre I tried to become many different people.
the killer was just my rage and the orphan was my abandonment personified.
and time and time again I learned that, they too, were me.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
in my past I let myself become battered and bruised
I thought being nothing at all
was far worse than being used.
Ive been hospitalized twice
for doing all that I can
just to look nice.
there isn't much I wouldn't do
in order to please
a boy like you.
I'd give you my all
but I'm stuck behind this wall
wishing a door was near.
I gazed into your soul
it was like looking into a mirror
and maybe that's why I think
we're closer than we appear.
I'd follow you anywhere
I'd even shave off all my hair
because you were the only one that cared
about the parts of me that are still alive.
you're all that I want.
don't be afraid of wanting me too.
id wait forever and a day for you
and with the way our story is unfolding
I think I might just have to.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
you are to poetry as water is to ice.
the only difference is
you aren't cold when you get hard.
you're rather quite nice.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
this weekend with you went by so fast,
each moment suddenly in the past.
perhaps it speeds up
to make up for time you've stopped.
or maybe it's letting us pass
because it knows we'll last.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
I aim to produce an element of surprise in others. I like the look of a boy's face when I take my baggy t-shirt off, I like when I tell a joke and surprise a crowd with the punch line, I like when my vocabulary and experience surpasses my age, I like when people are shocked when I speak with the vulgarity and heartlessness with which I do. everything is so predictable and I want to think that things aren't what they seem. conspiracies and religion are intriguing because when we grow out of childhood we feel like there's nothing we will find out that is as shocking as the fact there is no Santa Claus. we are no longer on the level below adults and it feels like game over because we lose our wonder and the feeling of having it all figured out means we can't go back to a time when we didn't. so we look to something greater to alter our meager existences and we pray to the beings in books in hopes that our words will bring something more than decay to our souls.
this one is moreso a collection of thoughts, but isn't that the essence of poetry?
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
I find myself telling everyone that
trash is cash
just like you used to.
and darling, your words run true
because I should be throwing you out
but there's too much value to you.
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
I look at you beside art and I can't spot a difference.
the sight of you redirected my path in an unforeseen instant.
your train can leave but our thoughts have never been known to be distant.
when we speak
it isn't your turn and then my turn.
we continue each other's sentences,
writing a continuous love story
as if we are both suns
producing poetic photosynthesis.
the word "dim"
is now just an antonym
of my colors,
as your shine brings out smiles like they are made of chlorophyll.
and our time together is incapable of standing still.
it can't keep up, we move too fast.
but how can I be blamed
if you brighten everything, no matter how vast?
Racquel Tio Jun 2016
your hand held my throat like a flower
and my thorns disappeared.
intimacy cradled us in a way i never knew
a gentle touch teaching me
you belong to the earth,
I owe my efflorescence to you.
Next page