Lydia: Poems

Fate

Lydia May 2014

Fate

I wouldn't have seen your poems
If I hadn't used this website
As a booklight!

Please comment :)

Fear

Lydia Feb 2018

Fear

She decided that fear was not productive, so she was angry instead

Please comment :)

Fear

Lydia May 2014

Fear

I can't sleep
Without shutting the blinds
And locking the door
And leaving the computer on
Or really at all
But I don't know
What I'm afraid of.

Feeling

Lydia May 2014

Feeling

Slip into the shoes you have
Waiting by the door
Braid your hair
Down your back
Let wisps slip out
Whisper in the doorway
No one else is awake
Slip out the door
Forget your phone
And climb the tree
To where you can feel the silence
You can feel the wind
And watch the moon linger
Let your hair fall out of your braid
And your shoes off your feet
And let yourself fall into the feeling

Please comment :)

Fight for Yourself

Lydia Nov 2014

Fight for Yourself

You want me to tell you how I slit my wrists
Or how I became addicted to drugs
You want me to tell you how much I hate my life
How sad I am
You want to find beauty in my pain
You want the blood to paint pictures for you
But I never hurt myself
I sat and watched my friends break
I tried to help, at first
But it became easier to sit
And watch
And sing pretty songs so I can't hear them crying
There are exceptions
People worth saving
People worth fighting for
But everyone else;
I wish they'd just fight for themselves.

This is not at all what I wanted this to be about but I don't usually prewrite so close enough. Please comment :)

Fire

Lydia Jun 2017

Fire

I kissed fire but still froze

For anyone who has ever tried something dangerous just to feel alive again.

I am looking for someone to write a collaborative poem or even a short story to publish on another platform! If you are interested, take a look at some of my recent work and see if your style would be a good match or contrast to mine. I have no expectations for topic or theme, I really want to learn about other peoples' style and integrate some new voices into my writing. Send me a message if you're interested!

Please comment :)

#fire #frozen #excitement #sad

Flowers for the Man Who Stepped in Front of the Metro

Lydia Jun 2019

Flowers for the Man Who Stepped in Front of the Metro

Sometimes I think of how hard the floor must be to stand so many footsteps
I met tourists who forgot that we made homes here
They kept stomping, to claim space for themselves on our floor

We slid on your blood to a place where your body isn’t remembered
Bright red, like you held your breath
In dance, we are taught to avoid anticipation
Make each motion independent
A surprise to the audience
Nobody stared at your chest till your shirt was cut open

I never get reception in the tunnel
How long till someone picked you up?
I can picture the damage to your eardrums
The deafening screech of metal pulled along by electricity
The burns with fade but parts of you are still laid out on the tracks

The tourists tried to tell me that it was “probably just drugs”
I tried to tell them that we are a community
That we cannot reduce your life to a probably, or even a maybe,
Cannot pretend to know your body on a stretcher
It sounded a lot like crying to me

I told a counselor I wanted to send you flowers
Know which hospital they took you to
She said something silly about a kind heart, but they weren’t for you
Just wanted to know that you lived,
Didn’t think they’d let me send flowers to a morgue

I’ve been to a morgue: they let me see a body
Can’t remember his face
Can’t remember your’s, either
But I see your blood and ripped shirt and the head restraint
I see your hand reaching up and hear my own prayers that you’ll fall asleep soon

My friend will not remember the story, did not observe your body as a phantom
Cannot see your body on the tracks and forgot I told him it was there

I understand
Sometimes I forget the order of operations, too
I step over the line and somebody reminds me that the train arrives first
The doors open and a voice I don’t recognize gives me permission
I apologize for taking up space
And then suddenly, I’m someone else

I’m hoping that you woke up in the hospital bed and were someone else

Unlike most of my writing about love stories, this was a true event, with real people. My heart goes out to that man. I’ve had so many nightmares about him. I hope that he fell asleep and woke up in less pain. When they let me up the escalator, I ran back to campus, pretended I hadn’t been crying, and picked up my friend. I don’t think I can forget what happened there. If I cannot send flowers to the man, I will be sending them to ER doctors and nurses at the emergency department of my local hospital. Much respect To all of them.

#suicide #suicideprevention #youarebeautiful #youareloved

Fly

Lydia May 2014

Fly

When my older sister and I were little
We used to jump off the top of my dad's truck
With umbrellas
And hoped we would fly.
We knew we couldn't do it,
But we couldn't **** the dream
Everytime we climbed back up,
There was a chance
And a glimmer of hope.
We used to flip on the tranpoline
She learned quickly to land on her feet,
But I still can't.
I didn't want to.
In all those years
In everytime I tried
I still hope that the netting would
never catch me
The air was always soft,
Even when the days were hot
This was a mindless dream
Even though I would never admit to having it.
We took down the trampoline a few years ago
But I still remember how to flip.
When I learned to twirl baton,
My sister didn't learn with me.
The leaps and jumps we do
Are as close to flying as I can get
She does trapeze in the tree out back,
But I'm not strong enough
And I was too afraid to learn.
I have been too afraid to do a lot o things
And that's ok
I don't want to fly
With out her.

Please comment :)

For Everyone Reading This At Midnight

Lydia Aug 2015

For Everyone Reading This At Midnight

This poem is for everyone who is reading it at midnight.
It's hard to be encouraging to you.
I'm writing this at midnight.
I can't sleep, either
The never ending rush of existence that lives inside of you,
I feel it
I feel it, too
At night I become a display case,
Showing everyone every shred of me
Every brutal scar that my clothing couldn't hide
Covered up by waking up
Or the clock striking seven,
Forcing another sleepless night
Slowly begining to fade the nightmares from before
Nightmares aren't dreams, they're memories
I show them on my skin like tatoos
All night,
I try and hand my consciousness to you
All night,
I try to convince myself there is a reason to wait for tomorrow
All night I face self loathing and terror
Every night I wish I weren't alone
Some nights,
I remember that I'm not

For everyone with insomnia... You are not alone. I know how it feels. I understand.
Please comment :)

Thank you for all of the support on this poem. I'm glad to see that people were able to relate :) Thank you to everyone who shared their experiences, too. I would like to encourage everyone who is reading this to talk about it, because every experience is different. Thank you everyone who has read and liked this poem as well. :) :) :)

Forgive Me

Lydia May 2014

Forgive Me

Forgive me for my absence
I love you
And I shall write you soon

Please comment :)

For Him

Lydia Jan 2018

For Him

It was either eat, or be eaten
Jump, or be pushed
And it was both
It was a memory you didn't want to keep
A person you didn't want to kiss
But your lips are stained, now

I tip-toed around it
Around you, sometimes
When I had to

I was digging in the yard the other day
I know you've always hated when I do that
I ended up finding things you wanted to keep buried
I would never ask you,
But sometimes you find it falling off your tongue like pebbles down a waterfall
We sat there for hours, ashamed of ourselves

I was home when you got there
You walked in with your coat off,
Turned around, put it back on and left
I found a friend to stay with, and she took me to church
I sat there, vacantly

We were home over the weekend
Cooked noodles, took the dog for a hike
Everything was fine,
The weather was unseasonably warm, I noticed
Over and over again

I think I hated you that night
And I think that it hurt me more than it hurt you
As if you got scratches while I was impaled-
But I am definitely wrong. We were both broken. Usually people come out of tragedy closer together
But we came out with our loaded guns still pointed at each other
I've never seen someone shake so much

Balcony doors,
Fourth floor motel room
Too far from home, too close to each other
I wish you would have struck me
As I was standing, the heels of my hands dug into the windowsill, whole heartedly ready to lose consciousness,
I needed absolutely any reason to leave that dead-end bedroom

"When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on."

I think I've tried to write for/about Ryan before. I don't think I've ever been, nor will I ever be able to express the odd way in which he hurt me. He never laid a hand on me. We weren't even in a relationship, but in this case he stands for the relationship I was in two years ago as well as himself.

Please comment :)

#abuse #emotional #emotion #sad #desperate #desperation

For My Friend in Basic Training

Lydia Nov 2017

For My Friend in Basic Training

I woke up on the couch with a blanket I didn't get for myself
He sat on the chair opposite of me, still in his army uniform
Like a brother I never had
"I got your letters. After all that, I wasn't going to wake you up."
Twelve weeks later and he still worried about me
I laughed before I even picked my head up
He sat on the coffee table in front of me and kissed my forehead
I almost fell asleep again, I felt safe
I wrapped my arms around his neck and he pulled me up so we could hug
He stayed till midnight
He could have stayed forever, I wouldn't mind
We could have gone out for Italian ice.
But he had pt in the morning and I had lab and
I can't wait to see how he turns out

I am so much more than proud of you.
Please comment :)

#army #military #home #love #kiss #sweet #comfort #proud #basictrainging #basic

For the Love of All That Is.

Lydia Apr 2014

For the Love of All That Is.

For the love of all that is
Do not shut the door to-night
Do not push me out
And lock yourself away
With words
And thoughts
That drown you
Your thoughts **** you,
Don't they?
You have to remember
Your thoughts are just words
And words can be shattered
Dreams can be broken,
But so can nightmares.

Please comment :)

For You, When You Carry Me

Lydia May 2016

For You, When You Carry Me

And I didn't know that I was kissing you,
But for some reason, I'm still kissing you
I've fallen into you and into dust
Floating into the sunrise at five am on Sunday
It's like I've been shot but it's okay
I'm slipping through your fingers
I'm dissolving; You're loosing me
I'm kissing you
Years just happened when I blinked
You just happen to be standing there when I find myself a whole person again
Please tell me why you are still holding handfuls of shattered glass
You have lost me so many times
You have lost me to terror and hysteria
You have lost me nightmares and flashbacks
You have lost me to myself
I wake up, and you are still holding my body
Limp and useless...
Some days I see you tremor when you catch me
I know that the thousandth time is much heavier than the first
When the glue washes off in the rain
Your life is halted while you wait for me to put myself back together
I'm always left with spare parts that were meant to go somewhere
You carry them for me
The glass is making your fingers bleed
You won't let me stitch them back together
But I will hold them the way that you hold me
When you peel off the scars and reveal yourself to be human, I will not walk away
And I will pretend not to notice that you were crying on my shoulder when I've gone under
I know that every single time feels like the last one
I know that you don't expect me to wake up tomorrow but you are hoping
You are hoping and that hope is like razor blades to the skin of your soul
You've been cut like you weren't one piece to begin with
But I think you love me...

Please Comment :)

#love #depression #insanity

Fragment

Lydia Jun 2016

Fragment

We'll talk for a minute, but then you'll be gone
I'll be up for a minute, but then I'll be gone-
It's hard to exist in anything longer than a
Fragment,
Stiched together with all of the other ones

Please comment :)

Fragmented

Lydia Feb 2018

Fragmented

Terrified
Written in cursive
Behind your eyes

The messy braided hair
Is all that's left of you
Standing in a white dress

It was seventy degrees outside
You shut the window

"I'm sorry,"
Your handwriting just vexed me
Your pen had too much ink

Your toenails were broken

The white page turned to gaping black
As you crossed out the words
I closed the door and walked away

You said you felt some sort of chill, and I believed you
Must have been a gap between the stark walls and the blanched window frame
I found you a blanket

I thought about adding the quote, "Hospital gowns never fit like they should. We yelled at the nurse, didn't do any good," from "Long Way From Home," by the Lumineers, but I thought I would let the poem go by itself. Not enough people have hear that song. Feel free to imaginarily add it after the line "Your toenails were broken"

Please comment :)

#hospital #love #lover #sad #depressed #sick #lonely #chronicallyill

Freedom

Lydia Jun 2017

Freedom

Give me ink, I will give you freedom
I will give you all the escape you could possibly want
You don't have to run away anymore
I've hidden oceans within tiny cursive scrawl
I loved watching it dry quickly on the page,
All the messiness of hand lettering
And the beauty in story-telling
I will help you be free

I stole that first line from somewhere but I don't remember where so if anyone knows please tell me! Please comment :)

Frequently Asked Questions

Lydia Jan 2015

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes,
This is a dream
I know that may be hard for you to except, seeing as you can't actually change anything
But it's true. So wake up.

Congratulations. You managed to sleep until three AM. No, you cannot go back to sleep.

No,
No one else is awake yet.

No,
Playing that song you hear in your head,
(Over and over)
Will not make it go away. It is not recommended.

Yes,
You should write down every terrifying second of that dream because right now,
It's a memory, not a dream.

Yes,
You actually do feel that angry and hurt
You can actually see that bruise on your arm
You are actually crying.

No,
You are not the one screaming in your ears, but maybe in your head.
No one else can hear you.

Yes,
The fear is actually there.

No, I can't tell you how to fix this
I'm so sorry.

Yes, you absolutely must be terrified
Forget how to breathe
Hear your own heart beating too fast

Resent your heart for beating,
Your brain for thinking
Your body for being cold and stiff
The air for being silent
Your friends for being asleep
Yes, It has to be like this and you don't get a choice.

Yes,
This is a dream.
I know that may be hard for you to except, seeing as you can't actually change anything
But it's true.
So, please,
**Wake up.

I've been wanting to write about this for awhile. It's very difficult to be sure of yourself when you start to call your life a nightmare. It's very difficult to jump out of one nightmare and into another.
Please comment :)

From a Friend

Lydia Apr 2016

From a Friend

I never noticed her,
But she was always there in the background
I remember the way that her father braided her hair
I remember seeing the flash of her bright green notebook for just a second
I never saw her right away
I saw her in the scenery of pictures
In her red skirt, the only one she owns
She always clapped the loudest for me

I never noticed her, but she was always there
She always left me something
A note on the wall,
Her face in a picture
Her notebook that she would never let me read
A text message the next morning;
Two words, and I never wrote back
One day, she drew me
She said she had nothing else to draw

I'm fascinated by her shadow
She is more like a gust of wind than a human being
It's like chasing after a balloon that I've let go of outside
I can't put a butterfly in a jar
But I can leave out an orange slice and let her hesitate
I can leave clues behind,
Something, just in case,
She doesn't see me.

Please comment :)

Full

Lydia Aug 2017

Full

It would take them about an hour to realize I wasn't coming home from work
My father left me a truck and a full tank of gas
My house is two miles in a near straight line
But there are three highways 350 feet away and I could go 25 to 90 in seconds
Home must be hundreds of miles away
Because it's late but the street lamps look seductive
How easily I could leave it all behind
How hard it would be for anyone to tell which way I went
I turned left at the stoplight
House is a mile away in a straight line
Home is drowning in road signs and streetlights behind me
But it promises ressurect when I lose faith again tomorrow.

I paint, too! My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/LydiasPaint

Please comment :)

Gets To You

Lydia Jun 2014

Gets To You

I'm
Sending
All
My
Love,
I
Hope
This
Gets
To
You.

Please comment :)

Getting Lost in Time (On Pink Paper)

Lydia Jun 2014

Getting Lost in Time (On Pink Paper)

Pink pens on pink paper
Love notes lost in time and loopy letters
Twirls that thread their hearts together
When the sounds become distant
And the colours fade,
You can't blot them out.
They're tied together
With loopy letters
Lost in time,
Written in pink pens
On pink paper

Please comment :)

Get Used to It

Lydia Feb 2018

Get Used to It

I needed some sort of lullaby so I fell asleep with headphones in
But no music playing
The sound of my dog breathing,
Close enough

He told us to get used to it, so we did
Some odd combination of benadryl and lack of sleep
On that one occasion
Your skin felt like leather and your eyes didn't make any sense

You wanted to ask about my bruises
I saw it flash across your face for a second
You couldn't decide and I put my sweater back on and it didn't matter anymore
Out of sight, out of mind

We were smiling, and peaceful
We were happy, for ******* once, and then we woke up
Draped across your notebook
I was sideways in the chair like I always am
My calculator was out of battery

Thursday hit like very large, very loud truck

I glanced over at my long un-used bed,
Still un-made
My hair undone
I checked my phone for texts from you,
Threw my brush in my backpack already on my shoulder
Left my door open and my lights on

"Get used to it."

Please comment :)

#tired #sad #sleep

God

Lydia May 2014

God

God look!
A sky
I know that you did not
Create it
Or anything
And that you do not exist
I am an atheist
And you have not proven to me your existence
Well,
I guess you do exist
In the minds of the people
I just can't believe
That an almighty creator
Would ever be so cruel
As you
And that is my proof to the contrary
Of your existence

Please comment!

#god

God and the Highway

Lydia Apr 2016

God and the Highway

God was dead, and we killed him
We hit Him with our flashy cars,
We always imagined crashing
We breathed the devil in like rolled down windows on the highway,
Driving fast
Driving too fast
All of the times we imagined crashing those cars
Those cars we didn't own
The highways that our blood has traveled
Heart rates like revolutions of the tires
Kissing like the first high on *******
We stopped so suddenly...
Sin and heart break and youth were our excuses
You were my excuse

I felt drunk just for knowing you,
I felt drunk just with the windows down
I felt everything and nothing all together like a symphony
I felt God underneath my tires
I felt closure, I felt ending
Rebirth felt like a free fall
The devil felt like fantasy and solid ground
You felt like LSD and speeding
And I felt like crashing with the waves at the light house
And then just crashing
I felt myself being knocked out so
I whispered your name like one last puff of cigarette smoke
I tried to understand why the last cloud wasn't as powerful as the first
I wondered if God would be forgiving because I made a mistake
You were a mistake
And God was a mistake under our tires
We went too fast down that road

God was laced through the love letters we ripped up and burned
Life itself looked like fire
We showered in kerosene and played with matches
Then the friction of our tires,
We spun them fast enough to smooth the road underneath us
No one was looking at the road ahead

God made more sense as part of the highway
All of our midnight prayers had gone unanswered
He ignored every painful beg for salvation
He ignored broken bones and shattered souls
We had to sweep up the pieces by ourselves
The road fed us like stray dogs in the alleyway,
Took our spirits and poured them out for us like moonlight
We hit God at 100 miles an hour on that stretch of freedom
He felt like a wall-
Like our bodies were being crushed and our lives were over
He felt like losing everything in less than a second-
But we kept right on going down that highway
We went too fast down that road.

Much more metaphorical than my usual style, but I love it. Please comment :)

#love #freedom #passion #god #highway

God's Vision

Lydia Dec 2017

God's Vision

I thought for a moment that I actually believed in God
I saw the eyes from Great Gatsby in the back of head
I felt coddled
I broke down
Like my father's pickup truck as we drove through farmland
It barely works but I'd buy it from him in an instant
I'd take the soul with me
But there I was, splayed across the highway divider, praying
My eyelids hurt, that's all I felt
A hand holding them shut
Humming some sort of church music
I made it home that night, somehow
But I didn't go back to holy ground
I didn't mention Him in my dreams

Please comment :)

#god #religion #sad #scared #scary #death #depression #prayer

God Wasn't There

Lydia Mar 2018

God Wasn't There

God was dead
Or maybe God took a sick day

I'm going to take this love
This love, which I have poured out into paintings of bouquets,
As if my head was fragile,
Maybe if I let too much sun in, it would melt
So I'm going to take this love
All fluid and slippery
I'm going to save it for later

We skipped invocation
Or maybe we forgot or maybe we just knew
He wasn't coming

On the incredibly biased assumption that He is alive and real in the first place,
Steadfast stubbornness and ignorance,
Failure and grief combined
Have led me to believe that he doesn't give a rat's tail
His rat's tail
His creature

Your necklace...
Reflected stage lights in a way I don't think I can picture
Created wavelengths that flow in all the right directions
Your necklace meets my eyes unlike anything I may have considered
Your voice rides its brilliance and softly balances just inside my ears

He's not with us

She didn't cry in the theater
The sound would have echoed, her mascara would have run
Most undignified
So she went to the bathroom,
Hulled up, all lonely
Undignified doesn't begin to describe it
She lost herself, among the seats and the people she couldn't see against the lights
Among the eyeliner and the uncomfortable dress and the fake nails

He wasn't fair,
Or he was looking the other way
Or he was just wrong
I wanted to believe that he makes no mistakes,
But all the anecdotes, all the crying little girls who grow up to be crying young mothers over their crying children
God wasn't there.

Please comment :)

#god #religion #sad

Good Dreams, Hope, and Broken Glass

Lydia Jul 2014

Good Dreams, Hope, and Broken Glass

When good dreams are like flares on an open ocean
And then out like a light
When hoping is like dropping the glass
On the cold, clean floor
When the tremor in my hand is enough to shut me up
And when I leave the light on till late at night
That's when I give up because
It's easier to accept the long night
Than to fight it away

Please comment :)

Gossip

Lydia Apr 2017

Gossip

People were talking about you
Someone said you were strong
So I said you were beautiful
And I would've kissed you right there if I had the chance

Please comment :)

#npmchat

Handwriting

Lydia Aug 2014

Handwriting

I forgot to tell you that I love your handwriting
I still have the piece of paper with your E-mail on it
Before you left.
For a long while,
I kept it in my jacket pocket
Just so that I knew it was there.

Please comment :)

Happy

Lydia Oct 2014

Happy

Mathew always tells me to do what makes me happy
On days where I'm afraid to step under the rain
Or speak my mind out loud
And coming from everyone else, I would ignore them
But when Mathew says it,
I know that he knows how to be happy.
A lot of us forget to do that sometimes.
To do what we love,
And love what we do.

Please comment :)

Haunted

Lydia Jan 2019

Haunted

I have nightmares about girls in busted-up porcelain ball gowns
Their teacups overturned but the party isn’t over
Their clockwork fingertips uncurl
Clicking like gears into the hands of the flesh-and-bone boys who will lead them onto the dance floor
The question is met with the sound of high heels hitting the ground all at once
The violin belts out of some boy's phone left on speaker
He steps on their toes.

Hazy

Lydia Nov 2017

Hazy

I would have given anything for an ambien last night

"As many loops at possible," she whispered.
We were sitting in the waiting room at the hospital, hoping to see her sister's newborn child. She was sewing.
My hands were shaking, and the stitches came out crooked, but she said I did perfect

I was sweating.
It was late and I thought I had been dreaming, but I couldn't sleep
It was a hazy, drug induced dream
Muddled by clouds and glare from an unpresent sun

I was under water, all of a sudden, I guess
But my clothes felt as though they had been soaked forever, like I had grown up there in the lake
Or the sea, I couldn't tell
I held my breath, calm and steady, and found the surface
But I remained, until my heart beat solidified to stone,
And I breached oxygen

That bed was a prison
I couldn't imagine morning through my open blinds
All I can remember is my muscles curling in on themselves and my mind imploding
My body was a black hole I couldn't escape
2 am was eternity that I was slouching towards

She was looming over me, I must have passed out on the couch
She kissed my cheek and dragged me up
Breakfast was ready, she said
There was something across me
The blanket, she had finally finished sewing
Right in the center was the square I had sewn at the hospital
I thought she had thrown it out
As I stared hazily, trying to shake the cobwebs out,
She smiled from the kitchen
"Come on, up you get," she gestured, and disappeared into the light

Please comment :)

Headlines

Lydia Nov 2015

Headlines

The day I forget to say it...
It's the day you get hit by a car
You decide life isn't worth living anymore,
And walk out into the street
The busy highway
I think of the headlines;
"Teenager Accidentally Wanders into Busy Street"
Or
"High School Student Dead after Collision with Speeding Driver"
Or the one they would never print;
"Teenager Gave Up, Threw Themself onto Highway"
The day I forget to hold you is the day you forget what it feels like to be held

And I won't give up,
Even if you become a puddle in my hands
I'll find a way to save you.
I won't give up on thinking that we can save everyone
I remember kicking and screaming when he told me over and over that I couldn't save everyone

It will always be my job to pull them out of the street before the car comes
Hush them and whisper in their ears like children,
Like children who have seen their whole world dying
Like children who were faced with life and death and chose death
And no matter how hard it hurts me, I will never choose death
No one ever has to choose death!
But someone else has to choose love,
And quiet, understated understanding
Someone has to choose to stay

Every time I chose to stay, I imagined one less person on the highway that night
Every time I chose to tell someone that it really will be alright,
I imagined one less headline they had to censor
Everyday, I try to imagine saving someone
Imagine one less driver who feels the impact before they could see the kid,
One less kid in an emergency room
One less family that has to choose life or death for their child, now
We like to pretend that we're so grown up
But when I imagine being too late,
I imagine myself next to the hospital bed, clutching a teddy bear

Sometimes, that family is mine.
Sometimes, that child is me and I will not give up on her.
I wouldn't let her family pull the plug and I wouldn't let you pull yours, either, because
I don't want to wake up tomorrow to another headline trying to cover up another second too late.

Please comment :)

#suicide

Hear From You

Lydia May 2014

Hear From You

I need to hear from you by Monday
Because I'm leaving on Monday
For my competition
And I am scared
I am scared of a lot of things
But right now
I'm mostly scared of failing
I need you to tell me it's ok
Because when I talk to you,
It really is
And I know
You're busy
And you have a life
And all
But I really
Need to hear from you by Monday.

Please comment :)

Helping You

Lydia May 2014

Helping You

Please don't do this to me.
Do not walk up to the cliff
And off the edge
Do not take all your pills at once
Or drink bleach.

I hate you
Because I am crying right now.
You abuse me
But then you want
to **** yourself
No metaphores or fanciness
And I want to save you
But who is there to save me?
I want you to be ok
But I swear that you will break me
Everything is falling apart
Don't tell me that you will

I can't believe I am begging you
To stay alive
I can't live with the guilt
If you were to die tonight
I am begging you
*to live

Please comment.

#suicide #sad #death

Help Wanted

Lydia Feb 2018

Help Wanted

Qualifications
I'm afraid of falling
Out of airplanes or off cliffs or into the ocean
High heels make me feel as though I'm tiptoeing on the rings around planets
I cannot promise not to step on your toes

Description
When I say "strong," I don't mean that I need you to sweep me off my feet
At some point, we grew out of the Victorian Era,
Girls aren't ornamental glass paperweights
I will not live in my flower garden
I will work late nights, too

To Apply
The exam starts the instant you walk in the room
No way to cheat, but this time, there may be second chances
Your kisses have to mean something
You have to take decisive steps as we dance

Please comment :)

#love #couple #sad #breakup #kiss #fallinginlove

Her

Lydia May 2014

Her

She's the silhouette leaning on the tree
She's the whisper in the dark
She's the hand you can't quite reach
She's right there
But you aren't.

Please comment :)

Her Hand

Lydia Apr 2017

Her Hand

I didn't mean to brush against her hand
So delicately traced by accident
So briefly were our molecules bonded
So quickly was it meant to be over
Except,
She laced her atoms into mine
And decided to walk the same direction

Please Comment :)

#npmhands #love #cute

Her Name (No Sleep Tonight)

Lydia Dec 2014

Her Name (No Sleep Tonight)

Physically,
I'm exhausted.
All I want to do is fall over
Just be done

Mentally,
Her name is etched into my skin
I don't even know her, but you do

My mind is rushing
But my eyes are falling shut with painful resistance
Your face-
With her name written all over it,
My scars have been torn open and are starting to bleed
I don't want to go to sleep,
Because I'll see her words in my dreams:
Her quick, scratched out, misspelled words
I'm tired as I write this, but
Why didn't you tell me her name?

Please comment :)

Heroes

Lydia Jul 2017

Heroes

Heroes aren't real,
And you were always too good to be true

These are the only words I could come up with to describe the absolute hell inside my head right now. This is such a small photograph of such a massive storm. Please comment

Hiding

Lydia Sep 2014

Hiding

I've never been very articulate
I talk a lot,
But I say very little
But it doesn't mean I'm hiding

Please comment :)

Hit the Road

Lydia Jun 2017

Hit the Road

I am so sick of the crashing cars
The intersections don't make any sense anymore
Everyone's going at the wrong time and it never stopped
I was smiling until I saw smoke
I thought the glass was rain, or fire hydrant had popped, I
Didn't here the sound until I saw him
When they hit, his tire exploded
In a straight-on collision, he pulled over to put his head in his hands
Exasperated relief, he almost made it home
The man on the motorcycle flew over the stoplight
And in that split second we all prayed he sprouted wings and would never come back down
But his vehicle was in pieces hitting my windshield
I was nearly sick at the sound
Dead weight on the road still breathing
I am so sick of never slowing down
It's so impossible
He may never walk again but I couldn't tell you what colour that stoplight was
And the other man won't make it home for dinner
He was so close, did everything right
I hope he kissed his kids before he left that morning
Because he almost didn't make it home
He will. He'll be late but he's coming home.
She isn't.

A humanitarian from my community was killed in a hit-and-run over the weekend. A month ago, I saw my first car crash; a 90 year old in a jeep and a man on a motorcycle. It was the most sickening sound I've ever heard, and I almost passed out according to my father. Today, on the way home from dinner, a man tried to turn left where there was clearly no space and slammed into the driver's side of the car in front of me. The man is alright, he pulled into the shoulder and put his head in his hands on the steering wheel. He was almost home, but somebody was just too impatient. I cannot over stress the importance of safe driving. In the past month, I have seen more recklessness and carnage than I had in my entire life before. This is the third time my writing has tried and failed to capture the damage done by reckless driving. It doesn't have to be this way. Please drive carefully.

#crash #hurt #cars #reckless #unsafe #death #damage

Holes

Lydia May 2017

Holes

I know you're there
I see the hole you keep leaving
Tearing yourself away seconds before I see you
But you are always there

I don't think I can ever shake you

Home

Lydia Apr 2018

Home

We could barely see the road
In between the pouring rain and three in the morning
I didn't feel tired until I woke up a half an hour later and realized I was exhausted
And almost no closer

He drove, the whole way there and the whole way back
The rain (mostly) stopped and every once in awhile we would comment on the state of things
Everything that had happened

Home is now suspended somewhere in between

As you guys probably know by now, I like to comment on the concept of home and where home really is. Since I'm going to college next year, I've spent much of the last two trying to figure out where home is to me personally and what I want to make of it. I live on the east coast and over the summer I wrote something else about what I thought it would be like for my father to drop me off on my first day. Today I rewrote the idea with the drive to my accepted students day at the actual school I want to go to. Hopefully it will get a third try in the fall.

Homing Pigeons

Lydia Feb 2018

Homing Pigeons

My father used to tell my older sister and I that if we wanted to fly
All we had to do was jump and miss the ground on the way back
And we tried
We spent days at a time on that trampoline, jumping and twisting our bodies
And always having something to catch us when we realized we weren't birds

I don't remember when we gave up on flying because we didn't
She bought a car and drove so fast her mind grew wings and she disapeared into smoke stacks of cities I've never heard of
I paid $250 or two weeks of working my part time job and got to really feel it for a couple of hours
My father is waiting for us, like the mesh of that trampoline
To realize that if any kind of bird,
We are homing pigeons

Sorry, Dad. I was given wings to fly away...
Please comment :)

Hope

Lydia Jul 2014

Hope

Woah
You're actually gone
It's like
I spun around and expected you to be there
Again
Again with the bad dreams
And again I wish you were here to calm the raging storm inside my head
But you are somewhere else,
Fighting your own battles
And I wish I could give you something to fight for
I hope you get the letters I send on Facebook
And I hope that you are alright
And I hope that you are happy
And I hope
This gets to
You

Please comment :)

How Can I Regret You?

Lydia Aug 2014

How Can I Regret You?

You told me that you regret being together
And I feel like I should regret it, too
But I don't know how to regret loving you.
I don't know how to regret loving the look of your name in pen
Or the mornings when I woke up to you
Or the days you would stay up till midnight to talk to me when I got home from school
Everyday that I stared at my cellphone waiting for you to reply
Because I just couldn't wait for you to reply
How do I regret loving you?
Even on your bad nights
And I can't believe you're gone
How can I regret you?
I loved you.

Please comment :)

How Much I Love You

Lydia May 2014

How Much I Love You

How wonderful you are for waiting
How strong your grip
Upon the ground
Must be
The terrors that I've seen you face
Upon your lonesome
How hard you try to understand
My efforts
An my failures
My terrors you attempt to remedy
While fighting your own demons
How hard you try to understand
And even when you can't
How hard you try to help
How wonderful you are for waiting
How strong you must be
How much I love you

Please comment :)

How to Fall in Love Without Falling in Love

Lydia May 2018

How to Fall in Love Without Falling in Love

1.
Let's install some fail-safes
You have to convince yourself that this is really what you want
If you aren't gay, pretend you are
If you are gay, pretend you're not
I guarantee you will not fall in love

2.
Pick the sweetest person
Someone your parents will approve of
Someone who is so perfect for you that you just don't understand why you're sitting alone right now
If you're not voted cutest couple for the yearbook, you can't possibly be in love, right?
Too many people are watching

3.
Try to love them
Try to give yourself a textbook relationship
Go on dinner dates
And watch scary movies so you can cuddle up together
Argue about why you should definitely pay "because it's romantic"
Blow out the candle when she's not looking

4.
Stop taking off work on Friday nights
It was never going to work, anyway, so why bother getting attached?
When you realize that they love you,
And you are still sitting there alone, that's when your heart breaks
When you realize you can walk away and be unchanged
Because how could you possibly walk away from two entire years with another human being and not feel something
Your heart's going to break anyway, just because it didn't.

Please comment :)

#sad #breakup #couple