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girl diffused Oct 2017
You hold my hips as we listen to Kaskade
I'm never going to know the exact name of the song, darling
I rest my head on your shoulder
Exactly 72 hours or more after we met
Smiling serenely at each other, trance-like
Our bodies swaying to some invisible beat residing in our heads

We never do watch that Minions movie in Dunellen
We do eat cold leftovers of Chinese takeout
Retrieve them from the mini fridge in the hotel room
Congealed chicken and broccoli and your beef dish
We eat cold slices of Margarita pizza from the first night
Shared an Italian dessert with two spoons and one glass and thought nothing of it
Talked of your ex as if you'd driven out to see me for months instead of just that one time
Smell **** in the hotel hallway when we come back from our escapades
Joke that maybe we could ask the other patrons two rooms down for “a sample.”

The room becomes a home
We domesticate ourselves
Trap our secrets and nightly admissions in the thin walls
Share a toothbrush
I model for you in your old boxers
You grip my hips and kiss tortured minds out of our systems
On the first night, you fumble for me in the darkness
We had *** hours before
I'd only had one pair of clothing
I was high on hypomania
You were lonely and desperate and enamored with the idea of me
I heard your voice in the pitch black of the room
Disembodied, floating, pining

“Taylor...? Are you awake?”
“Yes,” I answer back, stifling a yawn
Demons crawled along the surface of your bronze skin
I could feel them too
They were always there, slinking into the corners of every room
Perching on the windowsill, furtively glancing at us
Unseen, invisible, unknown, silent stalkers

You ask me about loneliness
You speak about your worries for an “us” not even a week
After your Facebook friend request
“I don't know if we'll work out in a relationship,” you say
I watch you with my large brown eyes, inquisitive
Bite my lip, taste the salt of you on my bottom one
Taste your skin and spit on me

Hours before you'd clasped my leg, it, laying on your shoulder
You pounding, feral, all wild animal, sweat on your brow
Grunting quietly, watching me, looking at nothing and everything at once
You **** me until I'm completely dry and sore
Lament that you want to be inside me still, that it *****
I think, oh how it does
We took off our glasses to blindly ***** at each other in the darkness
You'd said you liked how it sharpened the senses
I was a repeating rainstorm, endless, Summer showers in the bedroom
Hot, sticky, palpable
You taste saltwater, briny, sea, inside of me

“I don't know if we'll work out together
When we do go back and if we do end up together
It'll be disastrous,” you fortune-tell
I bite my tongue, taste salt and pennies in my mouth
I swallow it down wordlessly
Hours later, you're back in PA
I message you on Facebook, my heart in my mouth
I want to ***** with the amount of anxiety,
Tremulous in my fingers, humming in my blood
Throbbing, alive, achingly


“I don't intend to fall for people usually...
But I've fallen for you
I don't think I can keep talking to you like this
I'm usually scared of falling for people,” I write
You reply without any trepidation
Some strange confidence and Siren call beckoning you
Some spellbound hook curling around your fingers
“I'm emotionally invested in you too
Look, I understand
But I enjoyed my time with you
Let's at least be friends
It's not easy for me to shake someone off.”

Two months later you tell me, after messaging me at 10am
To see how I was doing
That when your room mate was wildly ******* his girlfriend you thought of me
“Most days I think of you.
You're in my daydreams
I come home and I wish you were here
That I could come home from work and you'd be there waiting for me.”

I try to scratch you out of my head, now
It hurts too much
I told you I was in love, I tried to deny it but now it's more apparent
I message you and get silence in response
Talk to someone else
Have ******* with another man
Purge it out of my system
Stick my fingers in the back of my throat
Try to puke. Nothing. Dry heave.
Encourage him to see me and then I encourage him not to
I lose about five pounds

I think about you and your stupid dog and cat
I think about you and the daydreams
I think about you and other women
How you'd **** them
How you'd take them out to dinner and hold their hands
Rub their fingers with your thumb
How you might be

Your hands
Your soft breath
The bright gleaming eyes
That strong German jawline
That fleeting mood,
Upswing and downswing
Your insistent arrogance
The hot tongue on my hardened ******
You suckling
Dark heat emanating from your wet and warm mouth
******* me on the couch
Clasping to each other
Burying our heads in each others' necks
Slow rocking back and forth
Rhythmic
Our shirts still on, your jeans half-way pulled down
You entering in such haste and hunger
The board game forgotten on the table
Laughter muffled by your feverishly kissing me
Did you love...? Did you?

I think about the physicality
But then I think of the late night conversations I'll never get back
Your sleepy “hello” at 1 in the morning
Philosophical musings I never tell my friends that we had
Us, talking about literally nothing in the beginning
The lingerie site we subscribed to
Looking through catalogs of what you'd see me in
You saying you could buy me something to model for you
The *** chairs we looked at, furniture to purchase
Odd daydreams of a coupling that almost-was but never-was

I think about you holding me even though you're so unused to it
The smell of baking banana bread
That inner battle in your head when you saw me the second time
That sadness
That loneliness
Your... “don't forget to come back.”
Cologne on your medical scrubs
How I didn't want to let go
How I wanted to stay
God, how I wanted to stay and just do better
The kiss and then...I wonder if there was a lie in your mouth
No, I don't think so
Was it my fault to fall?
No, I don't think so
Was it yours?
No...I don't think--
hygge - n. a Danish word with no direct English translation. It is a feeling defined as being cosy with friends or family or a lover or in one's home. It is an "act of creating intimacy," such as it is utilized here, though, always as with my other works, with an undercurrent of sadness and melancholy. A deep grieving. It, then becomes a word that is associated with yearning and longing for that intimacy and sense of feeling secure. It can also be seen as enjoying one's company.

It's important to note that mental health is a huge theme throughout the works as both subjects in the poems do suffer from it. Later on, it'll be more apparent that their views about how they perceive themselves and others with it differ on a massive level. Their methods of treating it and their philosophies about those treatment methods also become a defining factor of the unique relationship. I think it's important to highlight it as there is still a stigma attached to it both through society and that both subjects can never, sadly, get over, and I think in vain, tried to.
girl diffused Sep 2017
The first thing I do when I come back
Is try to tell you that he defiled me in some way
I don't tell you how his teeth pull on sensitive flesh
Beads of blood dribbling down his chin
Lackadaisical smile, predatory and darkly humored gleam in his eyes
His eyes are unfurling storm clouds
Every time he becomes angry his mouth sets in a thin line of grimness

I reach beyond that and try to pull out the man from fifteen minutes earlier
The one who grasped my hand during 2am joy rides to Taco Bell or McDonald's
Donuts in the parking lot as I squeal, childlike, content, euphoric, my body humming and buzzing with adrenaline
The man who kissed my forehead, early in the morning,
Whispered I love you against my temple, thinking I wasn't half-awake

The first thing I do when I come back
Is retreat into a head-space, monochromatic
I listen to the same songs on repeat
I leave my phone, unattended, on the lime-green desk
I flop onto my stomach on my bed
I conjure up fifteen messages in the span of two days and send them to him
No one is present to tell me to stop

The first thing I do when I come back
Is tell myself that he will drive to my house
White 2010 Charger idling next to my black and red mailbox
I can see him through my sheer off-white curtains
He'll peer up at me
I'll slip on my flats and rush downstairs
He'll pepper my face with butterfly-light kisses
Exclaim how much he loves me and misses me

The first thing I do when I come back
Is, instead, remember his hands pressing against my throat
The coldness of his eyes
Furrowed brow, dry lips, teeth bared
An animal stalking and conquering its prey
I am a fawn in the jaws of a wolf
His maw is bloodied
I am dying

The first thing I do when I come back
Is try to tell you this but you say it's my fault
I left, you say
I packed my bags angrily and impulsively, you say
I was ill, I reply defensively
You still left, you say
You still walked into it, you say

I feel his hands around my neck, mom
I feel his hands pressing the pillow down on top of my head, mom
I feel him smothering and choking me, mom
He wants me to ******* die
I feel his words scratching along the surface of my skull
I hear his voice slithering along, serpentine, cunning, sluicing through my bloodstream
I feel him everywhere
I feel him inside
I feel him invading me
I feel him roughly entering me, mom
I feel him not stopping
I feel his insistence and entitlement
It hurts, mom
I'm sorry
I'm ******* sorry

The first thing I do when I come back
Weeks later after I phone the domestic abuse hot-line
The call, recorded at approximately 1 hour and 22 minutes (a guess—shot in the murky proverbial dark)
Is phone him 28 times, convince myself he's really having *** with a coworker like he said
Convince myself that somehow in my addled brain he'll come back
I sit in the laundry room downstairs, open a bottle of Chlorine bleach
Contemplate drinking it
Scream until my voice is hoarse
Plead with him
Ask him
Wonder
Aloud
Why would you do this to me?
After four years...
Why did you do all of this to me?

The first thing I do when I come back
Is sit in a therapist's office about two to three years later
Tears pooling in my eyes
Gnawing on my lip
Worrying my dry hands
And say softly:

“I need help.
Help me dig his grave.
Help me lower the ******* coffin.
Please, help me bury the voice.”

I tell her what I couldn't tell you, mom
I tell her that he's still there
exulansis
n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.
  Sep 2017 girl diffused
Nat Lipstadt
Good on You (a love poem),
this one, is, good, on you.  

phrase uttered, measured, apace,
each comma,
a paused breath of:

admiration, enveloped by
a secret pleasure coating,
saucier prepared,
the base, the pleasured secret in this
mans minds eye unseen.

each comma,
precisely the carbon copy of the
comma curve of dark hair that
falls from a forehead down to the chin,
in a museum quality photograph,
as if it was intended to hold, contain,
your sly blunt moody,
and full plated whimsy,
when that half-smile poesy is in place.

good on you,
slow please,
not
goodonyou.

did you think, I did not have, a special bottle,
a Grand Cru,
a pinot noir, in the reserve,
inside the locked cellar of me,
to be used to anoint mine own
English Duchess of Burgundy?

well and proper aged,
but unlabelled,
till you provided
the appelation, the domaine,
good, on, you.  

the bottle dusty, the feelings, not.
if we never meet, matters not,
the gentility, tous les bons mots,
good in you,
hid in in all of the
astounding incredible poems
I well-addicted need,
those archeological mounds of a life,
I excavate and well heed,
going from one to the next,
me, the bumbling bee,
pollenating, following the path of the
watermarked tracks of
the King's Cross,
alas, they do not offer a couchette,
from Terminal 4 to London Bridge

unlike a teenager
happy to confess,
I am even younger,
an old fool, a geezer,
in love with a museum quality smile,
as he totters down to the Tottenham Hale station,
to catch the blue colored line, to the station after Vauxhall)
(oh dear, what's it called again?)
walking 10 to 2, saying ta to all
who assist his
two hands on an old man's bent feet,
steering the wheelhouse heart through its tubes

this is an undedicated poem,
retuned and returned,
addressee unknown, yet I know
by the greening dew droplets decorating faces,
that come so easy,
not a one wrung out,
you know
the who's of the true ownership,
the clarification,
in the bread crumbs,
fully disclosed,
left by me,
but for me,
in order to retrace my steps,
to find the railing,
when the steady on need arises

some Tuesday next,
will disembark from a riverboat,
at the old Tate,
spending my afternoon,
staring at an imaginary museum quality photograph,
till the guard surly reminds the pesky Yank,
its past closing time,
the man who will not be moved,
for already he, past overcome,
so why be thinking on why leaving,
for he will only be back again tomorrow.

so different.

mine, simple declarative sentences,
typically matter of fact,
so **** presumptuous,
those ill mannered,
know it all Ameddicans.

yours, lace doilles,
in a pub, with Hilda and Bill,
drinking pale ale,
from a porcelain cup,
and I am laughing,
Why?

It is all,
Good on Us,
a, love, poem,
indeed,
no kidding kid.
the object of my affection shall remain anonymous, in proper British poetic fashion
girl diffused Sep 2017
₁Peering into my eyes in a darkened room
Your dog curled up, lilliputian,
Quietened behind the wall across from us
Your hands cradle my face as if I am crumbling marble
₅Venusian statue that you've finished carving
Delicacy and care reside in your fingers

I cannot see you, your everything is blurred
You are a frustratingly unfinished masterpiece
You are an out-of-focus black and white Kodak photo
Candid snapshot a girl has taken with her camera phone
Wordless and soundless,
Silent in an equally soundless room

I hear our syncopated breathing,
Softened, pulsing rhythm, cadence of your breath
Fanning across my bottom lip
You open your mouth
A sliver of light from your window
Curtains, diaphanous, like gossamer silk
Flutter in the stream of your quiet fan

You speak
My eyelids flit like moth's wings on a Spring evening
You speak
There's approximately four striations of shades
In your irises,
Flecks of opaque peridot and ochre
God drizzled in spools of honey
Swirled in the colors of crisp autumn leaves and sun-dappled orange
Called it done

I press my face against your cheek
Leave a lasting imprint of you there
Your touch will be ghost-like
I'll feel it on my skin seven months later

“You are so pretty you know that?”
Your eyes split me open
Like a cadaver whose bones were strung
With pearls and fitted with chains
Beauty in the macabre
Beauty in a breakdown
opia
n. the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable—their pupils glittering, bottomless and opaque—as if you were peering through a hole in the door of a house, able to tell that there’s someone standing there, but unable to tell if you’re looking in or looking out.

(definition taken from "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows")
girl diffused Sep 2017
I'm lying to myself.

I'm not in love with this one at all.
There's no passion in this house.
There's no standing ovation in this auditorium.
Groggily, I
Forcefully awaken myself
Spoon sugar into my mouth until I choke
I attempt to read to no avail
Words just dance right out of my head
Words just die like autumn leaves on my lips

And I'm lying to this one.
I don't find him beautiful.
He doesn't deserve this austerity.
Issuing out of my lungs—all blue and black smoke
There's no passion in this house
No, because even the wooden floorboards
Creak with something deeper than melancholy

Words are irrefutable
Words are nonrefundable
I do not love him but I love the one before him
Wandering, I go listless,
Traveling through each room in the house
Vestigial ghost that I am
Inundated with sadness
Choking on it like the dark pit of a spoiled fruit
I can't get the words out of my mouth

The scalpel or pair of scissors I would apply to my skin
They're the words on this page
Words I pull out of the plywood and drywall
Rotting like the deadened
Husk of a lone tree in a silenced forest
Love doesn't reside in this auditorium
It died somewhere when he hugged me goodbye
It died somewhere when he never came back
And I realized that I couldn't find him over a cup of tepid coffee
In the books that I struggled to read
In the man that I desperately tried to bury him inside.
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