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Aug 2013 · 426
with age
Sarina Aug 2013
Our arguments have begun to sound like musical notes
on a guitar that needs fresh strings,
there is nothing new about them. I cry about the same **** thing.
You look better now that childhood's run past you,
the round cheeks remain
but heartbreak means more than pouring sand in a girl's eye.

For every twenty things you would like to say,
there are a million that you already have. I listen to your
song crescendo and wane and the
rhythm of your heart seem to fixate, on itself, no longer on her,
I think it must be the most beautiful kind of hurt.

The worries did you well,
took their form in lyrics like a group of deep-settled wrinkles
aging the process, aging wine, can only get better
when you read the ugly things I write.
And although you look good
wearing the "about thirty-two months ago at five o'clock" shadow

I will not miss
the year you turned twenty-six.
Aug 2013 · 619
headfirst
Sarina Aug 2013
I am lying on the beach
sand is in my skirt
the waves break in my eyes
& I am loving you

headfirst.

The reason the sun burns
my skin is the same
reason why

I cannot hold your hand
without sobbing
anymore, you are beautiful
& could ruin everything.
Sarina Aug 2013
oh god, touching you
kissing you, ******* with you
please **** me oh god.
Aug 2013 · 367
drusy
Sarina Aug 2013
I was not the first woman to grow fluorescent upon heartbreak
nor was he the first man to grab my hair
expecting me to go along with it, but all I really wanted
was someone to ask me if I remembered to take my meds that day
when there was probably
a meadow of them sprouting all up the length of my esophagus.
Everything had to be inside me
from the day I found out he wanted to be inside her. It was better
when it hurt, I shone like a bruise in remembrance of him.
Aug 2013 · 561
fruit slice
Sarina Aug 2013
When were we first able to look at our organs, point out the
brown spots on a liver or cuts under your skin?
I want to know when man first
came to think of me as a piece of fruit. A watermelon
only good for her seeds,

an apple needing a good cleaning. I imagine
they first practiced stitching on those big banana leaves,
made a hole in the center
as if anyone cared whether the plant could breathe.
But really, what does earth science have to do with my body?
Aug 2013 · 542
circumference
Sarina Aug 2013
I have watched mothers lose
their children, and children lose their mothers. I am tied
by my toes to a loop
which can be seen in cafes and morgues -
the breast-feeding, the burying, the everything is all
on a string. I have heard about
women and children thinking they are unlimited,
I am unlimited, too, if
the two ends of a circle never meet.
My lover once closed his heart off from everyone, and I
never understood until now
that you do not
have to open up in order to be full inside. I still can
water his flowers, even the weeds
and he never has to open his eyes to see and
he never has to open his heart
to feel. I understand that sometimes it is better to just be.
Sarina Aug 2013
somewhere there is a girl
who is saying, prove that you love me
to someone who watches her sleep
and makes sure
she feels wonderful when he
slides his **** into her *** that morning.

and I know that may not mean much
to other people
but having that would
make me stop visiting my palm-reader who
says I will birth triplet boys
when I can hardly handle
loving a single man, who is saying

I adore you
why don’t you kiss me harder when you are
angry.

but he doesn’t just **** me hard
when he is sad
he just waits until I ask.

prove that you love me, the girl will say
just don’t be surprised if
I forget that
you need me anyway
because caring this much is the same as
drowning in holy water when
god keeps pulling your head up.
Aug 2013 · 815
to carve a window
Sarina Aug 2013
I want to cut heart-shaped holes in his wall
so he can see the clouds
billow and pucker up for him, so he can know exactly
how much I love his soft, pale patches of skin
in the expanse of a happy sky
and its clear skin. Ripples as wind
across grass
picking up the skirt of some meadow down south
the powerlines fell but there is still
electricity all over him, I am the kind of lover who
has a heartbeat only in someone
else's hand. I want to have a window into his.
Aug 2013 · 720
lasso
Sarina Aug 2013
When the sky is moonless,
many of us fret.

But I want you to know that it is for
something beautiful, even a
fairy of sorts - she
ties her hair
up around our solar system like a
lasso.

She tickles the stars
until each gives way, and creates a
burst so big
I finally get you on your knees.

Whispering,
hold me hold me.

When your future daughter cries, I'll
have you promise
that you
will tell her that the sun

knows where she sleeps, and when she
says, tell me,
daddy,
about the big bang,
please read this poem to her.

One day
she may understand that
she can attach herself to every
other person
in the world, too.

This power that cottage-sized
girls hold
holds all of us together.

When the sky is moonless,
remember that it is not at all lonely
but how we stay
in love with the whole universe.
Aug 2013 · 603
the poem that never ends
Sarina Aug 2013
your sobbing on the telephone basically became,
did he ever love me enough
to wish that I was his first & not
just his last

because it comes every daybreak
because moonlight's
so much more quiet than sun

I fall asleep counting lies instead of sheep
then the cold bodies

coo
coo coo coo
& replace any warm-blooded creature myths gave

your songs about trust are now
just broken promises

(they matter too)

coo
coo coo

there is pressure in your stomach
where you want to make me shut up & stop now
so we pause

for you to replace yourself
with someone less calm

but the moonlight is so much more quiet than a
sunrise
I have dawn inside me &
intend to ***** it out onto your shoes

fertilize the flowers
so a whole meadow grows facing you

birds coo
(they matter too)
coo, coo coo, coo coo coo

we talk about this 'til my lids can close safe,
did he love me enough to wish that I was
his first
or just a really good last

because I tried to be really *******
great to you

& mornings
have always been hard to bury
behind my eyes
coming second after some really great nights.
Aug 2013 · 583
chimera
Sarina Aug 2013
It is the place of dreaming,
you love me here without needing words.

Either one of us, you or I or you and I both
have lips on the other one’s toes
because the walk has
been far for this touch and I am weak.

You promise me here
that I am inside my body even when you
are, too -

I am not to live as some would suggest I do
breathing for the next person
to grab hold of me
and say that I gave them possession.

But welcome home,
it is you who visited two states to kiss me.

I cannot promise anything but
the kind of connection
that means I may dream about you forever

or write as if I will.
All the other nights where even my mind
had its lights off, they were just
practice for having to walk away from you.

It does not matter where it hurts
now that you are here
just that I can have you touch me there.

Sweet baby,
I dream of your love that flows like waves.
Aug 2013 · 653
heterogeneous
Sarina Aug 2013
Love is a series of lanterns being lit
where there was no need for lights to be hung, unraveling at the
ceiling's spine
I set a flame by means of our hybrid blood.

Already *******, just how infections are supposed to breed,
how love is supposed to be
I fear someone else has touched the vials.

She started a forest fire
that's traveled from grass to stars to hearts
and the meteors give false hope, seem all but perfectly like rain.
Calm, there
is a small peace in
having all your worst nightmares come true.

I understand these problems because
they first existed in my head, everything always begins as
cells in a body
now relief in seeing hurricanes split windows

                    because he would
                                     understand, too.

Hanging from these rooftops is what is left of just the two of us
it looks pathetic like dead cigarette butts. Our
nerves tied into rope.

She has contaminated us
I cannot hold his hand without touching hers too, I cannot
love him without watching our foundation
burn to the ground
but the whole world is bright when there are three lovers inside.
Aug 2013 · 814
symphony number four
Sarina Aug 2013
Tuesday's picked it out, the three year old envelope
I had dried out for a scrapbook
quite close to rose petals in pattern and fabric.

Symphony number four sings,
he thought I was a little girl when we met but I have
felt like a *****
since birth; the difference is that my privates
came upon a sunset at age eleven
now it is unacceptable to wiggle my *** at every man I see.

God, to have my body change
with the sky. I was supposed to run to my earth-mother
tell her of how I altered the cycle of the moon
but I've waited until now,
month thirty-six of burying his fertilization in myself.

Compared to him, I am so young that
I am dead.

Any year after 1990 has been negated
letters have been written, rewrittten, unwritten in black
marsh pen and the tide of it
is filling high in his eyes. For some time now,
my hands have been on every universe
redrafting what is already supposed in my bright, red ink.  

I have been a woman for seven years
and a ***** for seventeen, but
my daybook just reaches December 2010; I took a man's
thorn so all this blood would begin to matter.
I am not at all happy with the last couple of stanzas of this poem, but thought I would post it anyway before I frustrate myself too much trying to help it. :-)
Aug 2013 · 481
sugarcubes
Sarina Aug 2013
Your bedroom, built of sugarcubes
glued together with honey
and lightbulbs powered by milk. I can electrocute
myself again and again
without consequence,
only feel full and slightly liquid
inside. The
child-like asylum, a promenade
he says, you shall be safe here even when
you would rather not be.
We made a test of who is big-***** and which is
small - ******* around my wrist
checking for a pulse.
Five times a day, most past eleven pm
you complete the rounds. You
make sure my bubblegum lungs don’t stick too well
but paste the foundation
to the house.
I know that you know about how much I
hate glue, feeling soft,
comfortable but never enough to hold me to anyone
for long. The flakes vaporize like
snow.
He says, you are safe where everything is warm
I say, but can I be happy if love
is not something that cements two people together.
Aug 2013 · 1.6k
a mermaid with legs
Sarina Aug 2013
It is August
but I have your shirt pulled up to my nose
like your scent will
protect me from another bad night.

I wear it as a turtleneck
and tuck my arms inward, making a blanket.
I am so sick of
              not feeling safe.

I remember asking you to use the tip
of your fingers on my
shoulderblade
caress the flesh into small waves
(You live too close to the sea to not taste
of salt)
then fabric wrinkled in a bundle.

Make me guess what the skinstrokes mean.
I am learning braille
or just how not to be alone.

I am so tired of
              waiting to know what you drew

when the sun is so high
shadows can only be cast on the oceanfloor
and everything above my clothes
breathes (I love you
too much to not taste of salt).

When summer ends
maybe I will get a good night's sleep, held
by seaweed and
reading your messages out of a bottle.
Sarina Aug 2013
there is a gemstone
in my stomach, it makes my
cheeks nearly purple.
Sarina Aug 2013
sometimes, oxygen
kills me more than it allows
my lungs to expand.
Sarina Aug 2013
girls draw butterflies
across my breast, but men put
them in my belly.
Sarina Aug 2013
after my heart broke,
my veins looked like the poems
he wrote on my back.
Sarina Aug 2013
inside is sugar
and spice, but nothing else nice
until the *** comes.
Aug 2013 · 2.5k
perfume
Sarina Aug 2013
Roses are hidden in buckets
a child could put one in her hair, a child could
create sandcastles up to their knees with
such. Yet these

creatures do not use his or her thorns
to intercept the road from garden to factory lines.
Funny to think one's skin shall

became tainted by something
that sleeps in peace right outside. Then, I think
about packing man into a bottle of mist
and would like to harvest my love's breath.
Aug 2013 · 876
hybristophilia
Sarina Aug 2013
I believe that I can change you, or revive
what marrow was carved from my bones
the night that train swept you away. It will grow
like plaque on teeth,
widen my hips so I look more or less how I
did the first time - our first.
In my year of oceans and sunburns and purging,
polygraphs were not yet invented and
bodies still responded
only to those who kept eye contact during ***.
You curl my hair with your fingers
but I say you cannot break my heart again. I have
written enough letters to power
an airport, you have killed enough cells for
us to have made a child - only lonely
because none of this can be
said aloud. If your hands secreted invisible ink,
you'd just quietly piece me back together
without realizing
it could help us feel better. If
mistakes were like sunburns, I hope you'd hand
me aloe vera and make the wounds go numb.
Listen, I have seen you love
more than I have heard your ghost haunt my bedroom:
whispering that lie, the one that got away.
Aug 2013 · 298
body composition (haiku)
Sarina Aug 2013
Everyone I love
is mostly water, but I
am made of fire.
Aug 2013 · 1.3k
cotton
Sarina Aug 2013
we talked about it at my place and yours
but mostly I mourned
seeing the socks pulled over your
ankles

while walking across streets during rain.
how warm
like a second skin, they rubbed

against my thighs and it chafed and you
kept cotton to shove down
our throats
when being broken felt like too much

for two people so in love
and so far apart.
Aug 2013 · 315
no, i am happy for you
Sarina Aug 2013
The plants began to wilt the day you met her,
got sick and shriveled up
without wounds. Much like how people
age, how people die
every leaf of ours browned. The veins split.
Aug 2013 · 965
decompose
Sarina Aug 2013
The first thing you
and I had in common was not having chicken pox scars.

If you are searching for where perpetual love is not
look at the last bed I will sleep in
where your father died
and moss built his corpse a second beard, wide as
a noose. Nature gave me two hands -

one for holding my head underwater, another for pulling
myself back up.
I can only replace those who are not dead.

The skin between my thighs
smells the way that yours used to, the scent I worshiped
like expensive perfume. I now realize it is
just sweat.

That is the second thing we had in common
after the 500 times I acted as someone you once loved.
Aug 2013 · 829
picture frames
Sarina Aug 2013
I wear minnows on my wrist –
they came from my eyes
but at least they swim
and I am not alone when I cry.

I am guilty of emptying
my loved ones
into picture frames

so they will last forever, and
I have thought about
tattooing makeup to my face.

Everything
I try to hang onto releases me
like rainfall salt from
cypresses, leaving a bad taste
or nothing to trace at all.

I want to leave rose petals
in everyone’s pocket
to attract hungry bumblebees

because I feel
my least lonesome when
something’s being slid
into me, even if it stings a little.
Aug 2013 · 583
haiku about anxiety
Sarina Aug 2013
is that my heartbeat
or thunder eating its way
through my bedroom walls?
Aug 2013 · 487
orange grove
Sarina Aug 2013
I had a summer love once, but my fingernails were too long
by autumn. I slit its throat with them and
have done the same to mine more than once over,
more than twice over, more than fifty or even sixty I assume.
My summer love sang songs to me in winter
that sounded like a harpsichord
although they were made by a computer or something. It
is not ruined as long as I feel like strawberries are
in season – I taste maple syrup on him,
coming from places too cold to stick on your fingers, I have
myself knee deep in the twelve months of a year.
The walk to orange groves will take
too long. I know I’ll be sick of calling him my summer love.
Aug 2013 · 1.8k
chastity belt
Sarina Aug 2013
I could not imagine
not knowing who you are until I realized
I never did
anyway,
it felt so much like being a lonely child
in a small house. I swear
I can touch the walls of your heart
but there is no foundation, blood anywhere.
Who did I break my skin for
if not
a man who has eyes like new stars. Who
walked into me
then made the fireplace curdle.
Jul 2013 · 318
advice (haiku)
Sarina Jul 2013
if you cheat on your
girlfriend of three ******* years,
buy her twelve roses.
Jul 2013 · 2.9k
passive aggressive haiku
Sarina Jul 2013
I will ******* scream
until you acknowledge me,
I swear on my life.
Jul 2013 · 718
scraped knees
Sarina Jul 2013
When I was in school,
we would plant hundreds of seeds and
put them under lamps
until they grew
to be as long as our limbs.

I wish I
could move that fast now
and get the **** away from you.
Sarina Jul 2013
I will read Stag’s Leap again and again until
it stops making sense to my heart, is not my problem anymore.
My mother never told me the story of how she lost
her first husband, much less the second
but I have all these ideas in my head of how she could leave
dad from poetry books like yours,
Sharon Olds. It is what I picked up when my
sunrise split into two blades of grass the wind would carry across
the states, thinking a man I loved could disappear
any time – forget how I picked barbed wire from his chest and
not in the way an ocean forgets it has waves.
Not comfortably. I read your
poems when the world looked like it was made of granola,
eroding from the inside out, I read
Stag’s Leap again and again when he said, no, we do not talk
about her, but it was too quiet not to. I wanted to
talk about things that there are not terms for.
Only so many words one
can say of their memories and feelings because to no one else
are they real – he does not know that the last time I felt
okay with him it was when I fled
his boarding station, smoothing my skirt down
so the train’s breeze wouldn’t touch me. On that day, I wanted
nothing but him to touch me ever again
and there he went, south, leaving with mockingbirds. I
would have waved had I known we were on
a countdown, in the final silent moment of our relationship.
I always knew the hour we last had ***, since Stag’s Leap I now
ask why it is that way. No, we don’t talk about her
but I wonder if ******* a married person still counts as
premarital *** and if I can mourn a man even when he’s right here.
Haven't been writing much recently, but here is one directed towards my favorite poet - Sharon Olds, author of incredible collections such as Stag's Leap.
Jul 2013 · 4.9k
boobs part seven (haiku)
Sarina Jul 2013
I am beginning
to believe that breast milk is
made of shooting stars.
Okay last one. It is 3am, and I am bored as heck.
Jul 2013 · 5.4k
boobs part six (haiku)
Sarina Jul 2013
what I want is a
bowl of yogurt on my skin
that moves when I walk.
Jul 2013 · 10.0k
boobs part five (haiku)
Sarina Jul 2013
men like ***** and so
do infants. then again, I
think everyone does.
Jul 2013 · 10.4k
boobs part four (haiku)
Sarina Jul 2013
I cannot stand my
mind, but I sure love playing
with my ***** sometimes.
Jul 2013 · 12.1k
boobs part 3 (haiku)
Sarina Jul 2013
keeper of my heart,
burglar of every man’s, *****
can fall in love too.
Jul 2013 · 5.0k
boobs part two (haiku)
Sarina Jul 2013
I cannot sleep – too
busy thinking about these
pillows on my chest.
Jul 2013 · 16.8k
boobs (haiku)
Sarina Jul 2013
round as the top of
tea cups, white as creamer in
coffee – ***** are sweet.
Jul 2013 · 329
bpm
Sarina Jul 2013
bpm
When I am sad,
the only thing I can think is that
I never gave you permission
to pulse inside her and
you clock 90 beats per minute anyway.
Sarina Jul 2013
He fills my mouth with bumblebees, they fill my
heart with honey:

part of the criteria that I have met includes desperate attempts
not to be alone, to lose abandonment
before I lose someone to it.
Antennae are between my molars – I have found
he will kiss me more when my breath
tastes the worst. He fell in love with me because
I love so hard that he will become a poem and live forever.

I may not be the saddest girl in the world,
but I sure have come close, thinking about how easy it would
be for him to leave me
if I simply kept a smile on my face for too long.

He may not be the most fearful man, but I heard him
cry about dying and now I know about
the two types of leaving
and
that there is one he would never do on purpose.
Jul 2013 · 901
jealousy
Sarina Jul 2013
Your back looks like a brick wall
after climbing out from bed,
my fingernails give less scars than what
a blanket or two can do.

Do you
wrap them around your neck
while you sleep, do
you love them more than me?

I would give you my arms if you didn’t
already have them.
Jul 2013 · 237
it's simple (haiku)
Sarina Jul 2013
he asks how lovers
sit still when one’s hand is not
holding the other’s.
Jul 2013 · 1.1k
black and white thinking
Sarina Jul 2013
mania is everyone you have ever met hiding in your bones
and depression is feeling them break, this
is supposedly the beginning and
end of life but I heard that those you love are
not even as large as the sky (I just don’t know for sure).

the thing is
everyone is a body of water, but nobody is an ocean
we can drown inside ourselves and

most importantly, we can drown inside another person too
(I just don’t want to believe that the man
I love could hurt me anymore than he already has).
somewhere there must be an island.
Jul 2013 · 362
story about a lemon
Sarina Jul 2013
I put what I thought was a castle in my mouth but it stung.
He pulled the pulp from my teeth and I remembered
some use this to make their skin white, some sting every day.
For day five of the 30 Day Poetry Challenge:

Write a three-line poem about lemons without using the following words: lemon, yellow, round, fruit, citrus, ****, juicy, peel, and sour.
Jul 2013 · 296
natural (haiku)
Sarina Jul 2013
haikus are about
nature - here is one about
his haematite hair.
I am doing a 30 Day Poetry Challenge. This is day four:

Write a haiku (a three line poem where the first line has 5 syllables, the second line has 7 syllables, and the third line has 5 syllables). Haikus are often about nature, but yours can be about anything.
Jul 2013 · 795
cattleya
Sarina Jul 2013
I could never help him hide a dead body
in a forest, where creatures have whiskers as thick as vines
blood’s green from chlorophyll falling from trees
dried leaves shield wounds,
because it would be mine. One day
when he is stabbing my heart, it will have to **** me.

I use weeds as bandages. I have had three broken hearts
but never experienced heart failure.
Jul 2013 · 863
naivety
Sarina Jul 2013
Eight years my senior,
I wonder what I would have thought of him as a child
if I would really think of him at all. I could
have become quite obsessed, worry about his whereabouts past
my bedtime, when I should be asleep and he is anywhere
being almost a man. It could be frantic
or peaceful – like what is called the wise mind.
I had it as a child more than I do today, an inner confidence
that he might put his hand to my face
and give me the time of day,
have the deep attachment of two friends who cannot
break trust. Then again, it is much more difficult to hurt a kid’s
heart and not want to piece it back together again.
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