"detangling" poems
I fell out of the top bunk once
completely naked
right onto the linoleum floor
of your dorm room,
praying that your roommate
wouldn't roll over and see my ***
at 3a.m.
I quietly crawled back up to you.
You cradled my spine,
I'm never letting you go again, I promise.
I told you I was fine,
so we both started laughing.
I had to cover your mouth
or else you'd wake the whole floor up.
You blare Kanye West from your speakers
when you're signing checks
or finishing that last math problem,
and I'll just sit next to you and grab
a piece of scrap paper to doodle on
while asking you stupid questions
just because I want to get you talking again.
Sometimes you take it out on me, but
sometimes we have cereal after ***
You spoon feed me while I sit on your lap
in just our underwear
gasping when the cold milk
drops on our skin--
fruit loop kisses
and detangling my hair with your fingers.
I wear your Polo pull-over backwards
to the boys bathroom sometimes
just because it's closer to your room
and because my name is no secret anymore.
And on Sunday's I fold your laundry
on a gray blanket I lay overtop my ***** carpet,
because I love the smell of clean boxers
and you don't know how to iron dress shirts right.
But you kiss me with your mouth open,
and you hold me when I fall asleep,
and you're all I want to wake up to.
Mar 19, 2014
Mar 19, 2014 at 4:46 PM UTC
Face to face, we sit here, knowing full well what the future holds for us. We sit here, with both our minds racing, finding it hard to catch thoughts to place on our tounges and roll out as if this is easy. This is the hardest thing ive ever done. With sorrow drowning our eyes and thoughts projecting through mine, I know where we'll end up. I know that no matter what I say or do, I cant fix anything and that leaves me broken down, waving the white flag in defeat as the rain starts pooring down my face. Youre here infront of me, but youre gone. We take eachother into one anothers arms for one last time, detangling our hearts string from string. My arms are empty again. I look down at them, just to make sure my eyes arent deceiving me. But its the truth, youre gone and im see-through. These earthquakes turn to sunamis and these plains crash until the very last one has bursted into flames, causing nothing but a disaster inside of me. You've left your mark on not only my heart, but my skin as well and once these marks are gone, im left with nothing but these memories and an abandoned house for a heart.
(c)SeanaseaWallen 2010
Jun 9, 2011
Jun 9, 2011 at 7:18 AM UTC
full of knots
that have tied themselves.
ropes of lies and ideas
crossing over one another.
they tighten every breath
and they become tangled.
why must we try to untie
these cords
that fasten us down
so we don’t float away?
we obsess over detangling
and untying
while we refuse to see
the tapestry
our bodies have made.
Feb 16, 2018
Feb 16, 2018 at 11:03 AM UTC
for a while I've been confused---
lots of hours spent detangling
my hair in the shower, wondering
if I should sit down or stand up or
lean, wondering how *it is possible
to be sort of sad or kind of not really
sad*. I've always had problems with
letting go and I told my mom *I haven't
tried with anyone because I don't like
feeling that way* I don't like the strange
jealousies that come with falling for a face
but the truth is, it's all about chris and it
has been for months now. Because loving
him is loving an old-self, because loving him
is loving an old-self, because who I love isn't
there? And who he loved isn't here (maybe I'm
just saying that) but there have been lots of hours
spent detangling my hair in the shower wondering
if I should sit down or stand up. Lots of hours.
Apr 1, 2014
Apr 1, 2014 at 3:19 PM UTC
here's to you, my love:
here’s to your hair,
the soft, soft strands on your head, light brown and golden
in bright light,
in my hands, stroking and detangling until your heartbeat
steadies.
here’s to your eyes,
hazel, streaked with green in your right, speckled with green in
your left,
kind,
soulful, charming, comfortable, i cannot look away.
here’s to your nose,
red in the cold,
warm and soft when you rub it against mine,
and we laugh and i brush my thumb against your cheek.
here’s to your lips,
the first lips that have met mine, delicate yet titillating,
curving into a smile from your hairline to your chin,
i could draw it in my sleep.
here’s to your shoulders,
broad and muscular and made to fit my head perfectly,
carrying the weight of the world, the burdens of your heart,
the things i’ve left room on my shoulders to carry with you.
here’s to your chest,
resembling sculpted marble under the hands of Michelangelo,
caging a heart of honey and sweet water and sunshine and
sunshine and sunshine,
steady under the palm of my hand.
here’s to your hands,
the scars and calluses, the story of you,
the things they create, bright and beautiful and true,
the way they feel on the small of my back, holding the pieces of
me together.
here’s to us,
and the simple fact that out of a hundred billion galaxies,
two hundred thousand years of humanity,
and seven and a half billion beating hearts,
mine and yours intertwined in the way that they did.
Dec 19, 2019
Dec 19, 2019 at 10:47 PM UTC
I took your hand and led you into the dance floor,
(Both slightly intoxicated I'll admit)
Somebody had fallen,
I tripped on them.
Due to gravity,
With your hand in mine,
I fell,
Taking you with me.
Giddy, we laid there for a moment,
Watching clusters of bodies moving around us.
After the process of detangling and getting back up,
We began to dance.
There was a spark,
With each step we surprised each other.
Bodies moving in sync.
Never quite meeting.
Locked eyes,
Heavy breathing,
Suddenly,
I saw you in a different light.
The song ended like all good ones do,
And we stood there.
Unable to describe what had just happened.
"Usually I'm an awful dancer."
"Same here."
"But together we're great."
At least I wasn't the only one that fell that night.
Mar 12, 2014
Mar 12, 2014 at 1:45 AM UTC
You want to figure it out—how to touch him without feeling like that's where he's supposed to be, under your fingertips and deep underneath your skin, because it's so lonely there—in the crevices between your bones and in the path your blood runs time and time again—and you don't wish it on him, to be the one thing that forever stays still.
You have you and you have no one and somewhere along the line they became one and the same—If you never move on and grow earthwards instead of up, doesn't that count as settling down?—If you stand in a quiet room staring at a broken clock, can't you still work out the world?
You try to speak up, but your voice wavers and breaks, a faltering tendril of unexpressed sense. You think of not being able to give him this—your words detangling themselves and only having a bunch of letters you can't make sense of and a heavy heart there's no getting rid of—and you try again.
You say, "I want to, and yet—"
Jun 30, 2020
Jun 30, 2020 at 10:17 PM UTC