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Sophie Herzing Mar 2014
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.
brooke Apr 2014
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.
(c) Brooke Otto 2014
I haven't wanted to write this down.
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
The day you said goodbye to me.
Em Feb 2018
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.
a quick poem I wrote just now
jamie Sep 2021
what if detangling ourselves is the best way to love each other
detaching from the possibilities of broken promises and never-ending fears;
the great trepidation of losing you to the uncertainties of life
or surrendering everything over our most mindless strife

what if holding on to you is the worst way to show you i love you
leeching off to your very being, draining all of its brightest hues
but love, detangling ourselves leave us nothing but regret
and holding on to you may be the best thing i'll ever get

— J | 12:58
Shelby Azilda Mar 2014
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.
f hanna Dec 2019
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.
an old poem,

it was good while it lasted
magalí Jul 2020
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—"
sarah Feb 2019
fall in love in my jeep
while we’re driving with the windows down
the sun is setting in front of us
the music is a little too loud
my hair is flying and
i am smiling

fall in love at my parent's
when you’re talking with my dad about
something i can’t understand
my mom and i will be cooking
you’ll see me laugh and
you wonder what future we’ll have

fall in love in the morning
the rays of sunlight come through the window
skin pressing against skin
our legs are detangling and
the coffee is brewing

fall in love with my worst
see me for who i am and who i will be
fall in love with me every day
because i will fall in love with you in every moment

-s. wilder
detangling figurative philosophical,
     (i.e. ineffable) thread tightly bound
most likely requires a greater capacity
     (than mine) to expound,
considerably superior than
this feeble intellectual attempt,
     nonetheless I rifle thru my mental
vocabulary rolodex for

     minimally approximating
     words to be found
in an effort to describe
     this nagging mental quandary, albeit
     attempting basic construct
analogous to erecting complex edifice
     securely established
     upon terrestrial firmament,

     or a similar fac
     simile thereof ground
poetry, (foreign ***
     wry ming reason),
     the modus operandi
     chosen to elaborate
     abstract concept within
     temple mount doth hound

assaying into a unique rubric,
     that doth hammer impound
seemingly loud enough
     for persons (far and/or near)
     methinks would be minimally jocund,
     (an under statement), thus
      keeping an ironbound
     (not necessarily ironclad) intent

     to avoid creating a mound
of gobbledygook from molehill
     requiring assiduous
     cognition musclebound
now in essence thee
     general precept newfound
(cerebral land) to yours truly,
     who posits schema where

at any given instant, a near infinite
     number of options exist veer
really hypothetically, figuratively,
     et cetera, an arbitrary
     lyft ting headstrong uber
human being tubby endowed
     with moderate aptitude, there
by establishing a

     baseline (bench mark)
     presenting her/him square
lee with feasible choices predicated
     on some ordinary circumstance,
     NOT requiring unusual prepare
ration (a familiar situation for all
     practical intents and purposes),
     perhaps some near

lee familiar quotidian routine mere
lee entailing known exertion needed,
     now analogously press pause here
by grafting a sudden theoretical
     quagmire (manageable impasse)
     easily overcome by opting
     for reflexive actionable decision, gear
mindset really con

     fronted with a gamut
     of options breed
     ding sudden fear
full ness on behalf
     of our intrepid subject
whose one isolated moment
     occurs countless times 'ere
daily, weekly, monthly...hence

     horns of a dilemma if dear
ole missus and/or mister
     stops to reflect deliberating
     with attentiveness clear
unsure if this philosophical plight beware
re: of (in toto the butterfly effect)
causing wily reader to become
     (devoid of paranoia) more aware.
Aakriti Jul 2021
Wind is blowing
Tangling my hair
Detangling my thoughts
Embracing me, all
Celebrating my scars
Pushing me to grow
Holding my back
Filing me with courage
Making me strong.

Leaves are fluttering
Telling me its ok
Honouring my attempt
Cheering me up for another try

Nature is loving me
Brianna Heins Jun 2012
Loreal mango smoothie detangling spray
stick stick stuck to my medicine cabinet.
A shiny orange body and a snip snap nose cap,
the source of my purified tears.

Those knots were my friends,
eaten by the soft sweet smelling monster
one day gluing itself to a splintered bed of white shut doors,
because I grew into that knot.

No spray, more twists, my first decision
and untangling ones opinion leads to syrupy messes,
and twice as many belief coiled snags.

The older eyes have not wrinkled,
for Aussie’s knot forgotten shields them with a coat of chemicals and lies.
Positions placed in the frizzy weaved mess of religion, politics, and our differing
definition of rebellion.

Someday cringing at the pull of the brush shaped media,
I will let scalp tingling pain push me
to the corner of the medicine cabinet curdled,
with old escaped Suave spray spilling, as if its reaching for those tangles,
reaching for the problems.
Until light beams hit my lungs with the realization;
I always wanted the knots to grow into conflict filled conjectures.

— The End —