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I dislike my father
I say this after careful reflection and study of him throughout the years
interactions that are vapid and entirely forced that when he asks, “how are you doing?” feels more like an insult rather than a greeting because it’s me that always does the calling and it’s always been that way, getting short changed because the guy just doesn’t know how to reach out unless he wants something and till this day he still half assess it, so I don’t call or bother any more
Erwinism Oct 10
Must have seen you in a field,
the trampled grass your bed,
your eyes fixed on the sky,
and the sky hanging on blooming fire
and leaves of ashes eloping with autumn–tainted summer.
You didn’t stir,
if not for the fence time drove into the paper soil in between us the song of chaos will probably sing it’s ominous song in my ears.
Not an inch, did you move.

Your thoughts might have been that of your mama, on her porch steps for the hundreds of dinner that waited cold for you that year.
Your papa must have passed a ball to a glove without a hand to hold it up.
Your dear Anna must have been trembling as her heart skipped a beat reading letters written open-endedly.
The hills around you stood mortally wounded, weeping for their trees, still you slept in between those pages while your home collected dust on the shelves that so few of us care to visit.

Still your eyes were fixed on the sky. Unmoved by clouds. Unperturbed by dying sunshine. Shards and shrapnel of ideas burrowing deeper. I knew your lips wanted to part and utter wilting words,perhaps the heaviest word to bear—goodbye.

War has always been indifferent to life.
Mayah Seals Jun 13
Was it when you beheld all 7 pounds and 8 ounces of me that you decided you didn't want me?
(All I ever wanted was to be wanted by you.)
Or when your boyfriends favored my flesh over yours?
(To be protected by you.)
Was it when my health bottomed, and I became too much of a burden that you realized you didn't care for me?
(To be nurtured by you.)
I know I felt it at 16 with split wrists and no future in sight when you screamed I was your biggest mistake.
(It's alright, I am my own.)
The heartstrings snapped one by one at 18 as you threw me away like Tuesday's trash, inconvenient to your days' plans.
(All I ever asked was to be guided by you.)
I felt your hatred suffocating me as I covered your claw marks on my wedding day.
(All I needed was to be a daughter.)
The walls crumbled the day I gave you silence and you gave me back Flame.
So, to answer the question:
Yes, you cared. But only about the things you could hate me for.
I guess I'll always be the favourite mistake.
*(When all I ever wanted was my mother's love.)
Jeremy Betts May 26
I'm far from being a worthy investment
It's pretty evident
Someone would have every right to be hesitant
And feel the growth of resentment
When so many details are absent
My mood isn't constant
Had a mind but lost it
Thoughts run rampant
But are often incoherent
Called the cops on myself for self inflicted harassment
A living predicament
The opposite of a sycophant
My betterment is, at best, flippant
And I can already tell everybody's sick of it

©2024
Peter Balkus Feb 25
Cold is the morning
and I don't feel like going back to this awful place
today.

Will anyone notice my absence?
Or maybe I am overthinking again.
Life is a waiting.

Poor kids, they built Heaven and Hell.
Now they are running away
to the safety.
Anais Vionet Jan 16
I find myself in full fantasy mode lately. I have a BF (who I saw a couple of weeks ago) and I’m not interrogating my romantic choices - but he’s not here.

Do I have an impulse to throw myself at that boundary? No, but I can steal a look, now and then, like a hotel souvenir - can’t I?

Yesterday morning, Lisa and I stopped at Steep, a coffee shop on science hill, to pick up something breakfasty. At one point the small shop filled with the aroma of apple pie and in my mind, I had a flash memory of this guy, Jordie, last fall, coming into this shop in his little Yale blue and white soccer shorts.

He’d looked fit. In memory, he seemed to move slowly, like individual video frames. There was an interesting, uncomplicated strength, something polished and fresh about him, like a shiny new phone.

“Here,” Lisa said, passing a coffee to me. Then she gave me a sly smile and a tilty-headed look, asking,
“Where’d you go? You looked like you were lost in some bliss.”

A guilt washed through me, as thin and unpleasant as cigarette smoke. The thought of telling her struck me like a slapping hand. Submitting this fantasy to a roommate focus-group seemed wrong.

The whole fantasy was bunkum anyway, an unimportant memory, mapped to a fragrance, as if his taut, tanned, muscular legs had significance.
“I was daydreaming,” I said, with an ‘I don’t know’ shrug and grimace.

(BLT Marriam Webster word of the day challenge: Bunkum: a foolish or insincere idea)
Jawad Aug 2023
Where are you?
Let me find you

Leave me a sign

A handkerchief on thorny roses
A candle on your window
A note on my porch
A scarf with your scent
A clue with a friend
A carving on some wood

Open up

Say something that discloses
The tears on your pillow
The reason you torch
The letters of contempt
You chose not to send
Although you could

I don’t get it

What can be the causes
For burning me with sorrow
For making my heart scorch
For making it attempt
To willfully upend
This beautiful cruel love?

I need a signal..
Still waiting and wondering
Man Jun 2023
Ever change?

I need a connection,
That was true. But,
Something in your inflection
Hints at misdirection,
Reeks of lies.

You don't want me, psychically
It's no longer frustration,
But more so consternation, over
What I feel I must do

With no choice

Mute, but you hate my tongue
And cringe every time you hear my voice.
Displacement, over all
You can place it on me

And if I leave,
Like you are absent,
Will you be like me?
Left, wanting.

No
Zywa Jun 2023
My diligent half

does homework, my dreaming half --


still lingers with her.
Novel "Terug tot Ina Damman - De geschiedenis van een jeugdliefde" ("Back to Ina Damman - The history of an adolescent love", 1934, Simon Vestdijk), II-1, page 109

Collection "Inmost"
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