Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Sarah Crisp Nov 2020
No longer
Will I shed my only skin for you
Tear out my only bones for you
The ones meant to hold me up,
The ones I needed
When I pulled myself apart for you
Offered up my only heart for you
Let myself suffocate
So you could take your breath for granted
No longer
Sarah Crisp Nov 2020
My face is a study in cheekbones and shadows
And still
I remember a time when I felt at peace
Before my eyes grew distant
I was softer, fuller of colour and life
My smile, my pout, my laugh
Are a remnant of lost days
Now I paste them over too-sharp eyes
And a stiff jaw
Feeling hideously unnatural
An imposter in my own skin
To save myself
I withdrew from myself
I think
I have been away for too long
Sarah Crisp May 2020
and when you leave
the mediocre aspirations of this world
spill through your fingers
like mist
over a black lake
the fumbling despair of your heart
cannot tether you here
alas, life slips by
as a passing shadow
you too,
of little consequence
will fade away
Sarah Crisp Apr 2020
The scent of adventure
on the wind
tugs me away from this life

What a tragedy
to be born
in the wrong universe
Sarah Crisp Apr 2020
Things will always be the way they are now
So I refuse to believe that
I can change the world
All by myself
I want to make a difference
But then I realise
"It's too hard"
"I won't even try"
Some people say
If we're together, we're stronger
I know in my heart that
This is wrong
And you must agree that
"Failure is worse than death"
I've heard it said again and again
Never trying at all
Is better than
Trying and failing to save the world


Now read from the bottom to the top.
Sarah Crisp May 2019
I wonder what it's like
To feel at home in one's own skin
At all times, and in all places
I feel conspicuous and maudlin
My own mind is against me
I fear my very thoughts
My heart is but a stranger to me
Capricious and withdrawn
From all of this I tremble
Somewhere deep within my soul
For others' sakes, I try a smile,
As I shatter and dissolve
What is life, if not a nightmare
Somewhere hidden in a dream?
I could not wake up if I wanted;
You cannot pinch a phantom's skin
Sarah Crisp Apr 2019
Nights like these should be written about
Summer, the slow count of the clock
A train, rattling, whistling past
Time itself seems to stop
Nights like these deserve poetry
With words far more elegant and sage
These nights make poets of unlikely people
But not of me, I’m afraid

A night like this deserves clarity
But frankly, my mind is a mess
There are words, tangled, on the tip of my tongue
And all others feel meaningless
The truth is too raw to be beautiful
But beauty is so often a lie
This night deserves better poetry; I
Can’t explain what I’m feeling inside
Next page