"hipbone" poems
My lover has a scar
Just above her hipbone;
It's not a small ****
a forgotten accident.
They're words -
Straight lines she etched
Deliberately,
Slowly,
Painfully.
I trace my fingers softly,
Not to wake my love,
But I can't soften their bite.
Words of cruel warning,
An order, imperative.
Commanding, even faded,
Echo a silent scream.
They mock me, mock us,
For they still have a hold:
She is only half mine.
They hurt me, cold,
Like unblinking eyes,
Knowing that she stares back
Every day.
I barely brush them,
Intruders on soft skin,
Indelible scripture
Of darkness within.
And they keep whispering:
don't eat.
Sep 30, 2020
Sep 30, 2020 at 11:43 AM UTC
She kissed your cheek and smiled widely,
the corners of her mouth almost touching her
impeccably tattooed eyebrows.
She was not what you had pictured
from the back and forth email conversations
on quotes and designs and sizes.
She asked you to take a seat as she went to
smoke a cigarette outside the shop with a coworker;
Anna was her name...with two jack russel terriers -
one of them is like a honey badger apparently.
It's funny how the mind remembers certain things...
the way the smoke on her tongue smelled as she leaned in
adding ink to her needle,
or the song she kept humming while you
bit your tongue and stared at the decorated ceiling.
But the pain of the needle depositing the
ink
into your skin was welcome...
It was nothing compared to the internal turmoil you were
experiencing the past seven days.
It almost felt good...
Not adrenaline good, but like good that you were capable of
feeling
something besides sadness and anger.
In the Barcelona airport two days earlier, you made your appointment.
One on your hip, one on your foot
100 pound deposit. No problem.
You needed something to occupy your
mind
from the pain it endured over your "holiday."
So much for a holiday...
Surprise! Your friend is a backstabbing *****
who "secretly" hates you and tried to
ditch you repeatedly.
The needle grazes your hipbone and you wince.
"You okay?" Tota coos in her Italian accent.
You nod, but you know you're not really okay...
You never were...probably never will be OKAY.
Your mind wanders...wishing you were home
and not in London, three thousand miles away from
the only people who seem to care.
"Done!" Tota exclaims.
You examine her work, smiling.
The first time you have smiled in days.
"Get ready...this one is gona hurt!" she says, half excited.
You don't care...nothing can hurt more than your heart...
Too bad that can't be tattooed...
Apr 27, 2016
Apr 27, 2016 at 5:20 PM UTC
"I've been doing so well," I type as I slide a thin silver blade down my hipbone. "I'm clean and I've been taking my medication and I've even been running." Blood gathers at the edges, draw swirls in the warmth.
Bright blue screen lights up my hopes and my heart does a flip.
"Can we talk later? I'm really tired."
"Of course! Sorry for keeping you up."
It's 3:49 in the ******* afternoon.
Remember when you were my best friend and you walked two miles to my house in the middle of the night because I told you I felt alone?
Remember when I was out of town for a day and you missed me so bad you bought me cupcakes?
Remember when you told me I was the only person you'd ever been in love with?
I'm so sorry.
I miss you.
Please.
Jul 11, 2015
Jul 11, 2015 at 5:53 PM UTC
Truly, we are wonderful creatures,
drawn to light's undulating swells,
Sailors enthralled by the pushing sea's great shuddering
We honor these bright particles by our presence
Yet we burrow away, mole men and women for
Our most primal act, instinctual to the muscle
But still insulted by vanities.
(The consequence of consciousness,
I suppose) you instructed, "Turn off the last light"
Do you not wish to admire me?
The tender swell of brain and breast sloping to meet
Crags of hipbone jutting promiscuously below
the natural waist, natural beauty
Wasted by electricity's end
I want to take delight in your body, your ****** tongue
Quell the minor indiscretions of the day and
Give willingly to honesty
My ******* two moon over campus, your hand the sky.
If the peering leaves won't judge,
The least you can do is look me in the eye.
Dec 1, 2012
Dec 1, 2012 at 2:53 PM UTC
Come, my love
let us speak now
the language
of skin
imprint
your lexicon
in my every hollow
stroke that soft spot
above my hipbone
you love so well
linger there
like we have
forever
mold my body
to fit yours
wrap me in sleep
precious few
hours remain
imagine to never
touch again.
Jan 8, 2016
Jan 8, 2016 at 9:37 AM UTC
At night I like to rest my fingertips on the protruding hipbone that is still covered by a fleshy layer of cushion. Of fat.
Why do we shy away from that description so often?
Fat.
Those three letters haunted me more than anything for the past 7 years, and I would hear it all too often.
And when I didn't hear it, I'd see it in their eyes.
I was not like the rest of them.
No Abercrombie for this pudgy middle schooler, and no eating candy unless I wanted to be ridiculed and stereotyped.
But not until my senior year of high school did it finally get to me.
I stopped eating. One almond at most and nothing else.
Fat.
Fat.
Disgusting.
Shameful.
Ugly.
All synonymous in my head.
Now it's completely different.
I embrace my beautiful body.
Every curve, every scar, every red engrained stretch mark.
I wear them with pride.
I take off my shirt for my lovers without fear or shame.
My body is bigger than societies idealistic and impossible standards of beauty...
And thank
God
For
That.
Oct 31, 2012
Oct 31, 2012 at 4:18 PM UTC
1. I realized I could love him again.
2. It was after the accident. After the windshield turned to dust on the pavement in a pool of oil and gasoline, glimmering in the oncoming headlights. After the hoarse screams and the crunch of metal folding over itself like a paper fan. After the seatbelt tore the skin off my chest leaving bloodstains on my shirt and a ringing in my ears. It was even after the cops came and arrested the drunk driver who hit us head-on at five o'clock on a Wednesday evening, after the tow truck came and flipped her car right side up again, watching empty bottles fall from the open windows as it turned. After all of this, in the silence of the aftermath, I sat on his couch with his head in my lap. I traced my finger across the skin that stretched over his hipbone and listened to his rhythmic breathing as his lips curled slightly upwards. I imagined he was dreaming of days that didn’t end in shattered glass and tears. The calm, steady rise and fall of his ribcage as his cheek left an impression in meat of my thigh, safe. In the silence of the aftermath, I realized.
3. The next morning, I woke up with my head in the crook of his arm, my left hand asleep from the weight of my body on top of it. The impression of my earring was stamped into the soft skin inside his elbow. I turned to face him and lazily draped an arm across his chest, remembering that last night I had decided to love him again. I smiled. I lifted my head to speak, but he turned away and without saying a word, walked half –naked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. In the silence, as I stared at the impression of his cheek in his pillow, I realized. His love lay there, in the glimmering pool of glass and gasoline, still spreading in the middle of the pavement.
Jan 23, 2013
Jan 23, 2013 at 12:21 AM UTC
you are a giant
for me to climb over
i would climb, but
my spirit's broken, see.
so i crawl instead
over your legs,
you don't even mind
that i claw at your skin
sneaking glances
at the giant within.
when i make it to your thigh
i'm parched, so dry,
scared i'll disintegrate
and float away.
i push on, to your pelvis.
i made a camp on your hipbone,
licking what moisture i could find there.
you didn't mind when i set up my tent
made of ash and birch bark
i fell asleep for hours, awoke
with new zest
i skipped up your spine
until i tripped and you split,
exposing the marrow that tasted like wine.
i patched you up as best i could
then embarrassed, hurried on.
i played hopscotch on your ribcage
and got stuck there for days
until i was scared you were bored
and would wish me away.
i spent time
rubbing your shoulders
with my footsteps
as if to soothe you, because
i couldn't hold you.
i took a brisk walk up your neck
then stopped to stare
at your ascending jawline.
i thought of taking a strip of your tongue
and hanging myself there
from your chin.
but that's when you moved-
picked me up
and stored me in your cheek
and i learnt to nestle between your teeth
and treat you not like a giant
but like my home.
though, you forced me
to stand in front of the mirror
and say 'i love you'
thirty times a day.
telling me what to do.
forcing me to tell me,
and not you.
May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015 at 4:41 AM UTC
A ritual, I shape an acacia from your flesh and blood –
the fluff rather concealed. So are we, though your insides decorate
a globe just shy of blonde cornfields.
Tomorrow, you can be the columbine’s milk,
split drops deserting her center: now a park of petals on the edge.
But I examine every exposed hipbone, your clavicles rosy by me –
there is something around a jonquil about this image
you spread so I can embrace you, answer coils like a telephone
and want as much far away as I would close up to flaxen.
Hand me a celandine capsule or periwinkle bow –
all of this tied in a knot, originated from a bend of your hair.
I have recollections and joy from imminent meadows, girl and boy.
Apr 14, 2013
Apr 14, 2013 at 4:29 PM UTC
I catch a glimpse of skin,
Smooth and untouched,
As her shirt rides up
Revealing an expanse of milky surface
And I get an itch to bite it, mark it,
Watch red blossom up and out
Spreading underneath the layer.
I avert my gaze when she speaks,
Tune out the noise,
As my mind wanders back , imagining
A kiss upon the reddened patch
On her hipbone, the contrast
Sharp and painful
Enough to draw out a hiss
Only to transform into a sigh,
At the caress of my tongue,
Shy strokes tracing
The imprint left by my teeth:
A possessive act, marking
My territory.
The shimmer beneath your gaze,
As I return from my fool's paradise
Makes me wonder if you know,
And I wait
For you call me on it,
To reach out, or
Turn away in disgust.
But you don't,
And I am left
Disappointed, suspended,
Still waiting
Jun 8, 2014
Jun 8, 2014 at 7:47 AM UTC
Pink behind the rising moon
Your hipbone beneath my right hand
knees clash to Latin percussion
Together we count
1 2 3…5 6 7 8
Trading vulnerabilities over pork and pasta,
I feel, for one awful moment,
The pain of my daughter’s contempt
You reassure a mother after being kicked by her child
1 2 3...5 6 7 8
Supine silence on yellow grass mats. Faint from heat
I feel sad when you recount
how I charged your phone first.
You deserve kindness. I am kind
1 2 3…5 6 7 8
Your laugh resounds above all
A solo from the audience
As proud and loud as any Jazzman’s improvisation
encouraging us all to do better
1 2 3…5 6 7 8
Earthy smell of your skin spread across the sheets
Curled up with tan litheness, I watch
green block letters rise and fall.
Wishing it was more than breath propelling them up and down,
I curse my own heart for swelling.
123...
May 2, 2019
May 2, 2019 at 1:22 PM UTC
Fixing loose-curl auburn lockets, the pins embed
And turn again. Step, and forward sway the hipbone,
Thirty, forty, a flight of granite looming forward,
Front and back, past my skirt tail – laden laced, pearly
Quiet go the foot pads, front illuminations rest forgotten,
Past the small mouse scuffling four-paw: zigging, zagging
Along the stair stage. Past the morning call in woodpecker
Tongue, squalls and loudly names the dawning. Softly,
I ascend the cold rough stairwell;
careful
Not to spend courage whole.
Wring the rusty thoughts of amorphous dreaming, eat the
Bad thought before the stairwell – ******* orts and morsels thin
Of single tipped barbs, and doubted quenching
alas
Before they mean too much.
Wave with white hands a fare-thee-well, the apparition
That pauses; portentously grinding its nothing on the wall
Seemingly real the whitewash of nothing, he is voided
But lives existent in that other-world well,
Singing, and that much better for it.
Twitch the dreaming skull-bone loose, and question not,
As I mask my tooth-grin with knuckled fingers;
He spots me slinking past the wound in time
and calls me closer,
So that I may meet him.
Jan 15, 2012
Jan 15, 2012 at 6:46 AM UTC
The woman who stands behind you in line presses her shopping cart
against your hipbone until you wince and tell her to
stop. She makes a face at you as she pulls away. You sigh.
You stare at the magazines that surround you;
you read something about the president having a gay affair-
(That can't possibly be true! you think,) and even though you
know better than to trust the tabloids,
you're very gullible. God. The person in front of you in line is taking
forever to check out, and you're tired of reading, so you hum
Fritz Reiner's Concerto for Orchestra until a man behind you tells you to
'Please stop humming, thank you very much.’
Well, **** him. **** all of this. And you can’t help but
wonder why they only sell weight loss magazines by checkout counters when, really,
they should be selling Harper Lee, George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway. You like
Edgar Allan Poe, too, but you figure that
he's maybe a little bit too dark for the supermarket.
Ah. Finally. After what seems like forever,
it's your turn to check out your groceries:
you place your items onto the conveyor belt-- milk, cheese, spinach, bread.
The woman behind the cash register scans your
credit card and asks you for your signature. Your mind is, for some reason,
stuck on some poem you memorized in high school, something about
disappointment and depression, and even though
you’re distracted, you sign your name on the little screen in front on you.
For a moment, your life feels thready and
vulnerable. But the feeling soon passes, and then you're back to
carrying groceries back to your car. What was that
poem you were trying to remember? Somewhere in the back of your
mind, you can recall the feeling of a woman pressing a shopping cart against your
hipbone. Something about desperation and desolation.
Ernest Hemingway? You shrug your shoulders. In the end,
you guess,
nothing really matters.
Sep 4, 2016
Sep 4, 2016 at 12:35 AM UTC
I've more curves than are fashionable,
And I love every single succulent contour.
'Pin-up petite' I like to call it,
A considerable ***** and bottom, fifties style,
Not the angled, jutting hipbone sleekness
That is so coveted, and Kate Moss-esque.
I like breaking the mould,
And dress to suit my out of era shape
In wiggle dresses, flouncy skirts, petticoats,
Red, and bold, and look-at-me,
Black hair, red lips, a look twice smile,
That's my style.
Oct 23, 2013
Oct 23, 2013 at 6:13 PM UTC
digging in,
the way your teeth crawl.
and latch onto my heart
or my hipbone, when we
do our thing. digging in,
like the first shovel into
the earth when burying
someone you love. you
remember how fresh
the soil is, and you think
it's ironic and somewhat
painful. don't think.
don't think. digging in,
and you whisper in my ear
like you're telling me something
no one else knows while you're
having your way with me, or I'm
doing something to you. don't
think. don't think. forget digging,
forget the hipbone, forget all
of your common denominators.
don't think. don't think. and
you won't.
digging in.
digging into fresh soil
like there's something
worth finding.
Nov 6, 2011
Nov 6, 2011 at 8:57 PM UTC
Your lips catch onto mine
And I fall hook, line, and sinker.
The friction your hips create, sliding across mine,
Imitate the drag of my lungs
When you first declared your love for me.
I kiss the freckles on your hipbone;
Orion's little constellation.
You guide my mouth to where it needs to be
Even though I don't know what I am doing,
Even though this is my first time.
You taste like musk and salt.
And when your eyes reopen,
You pull me up and kiss my forehead.
"Perfect."
Oct 20, 2013
Oct 20, 2013 at 6:35 AM UTC
she suddenly loses all control of herself.
her fingers are twitching and dropping razors
her jaw is clenched and her head is rattling
with the secrets of her blood
shhh,
don't spill the (blood) beans
her eyes are unfocused and everything around her
looks fifty feet away and yet
inexplicably detailed
she can smell his shampoo
on her fingers and
she can smell the scent of almonds
on her forearms
her feet won't stop tapping the beat
of a song she can't remember
her hair is tangling itself in her
fists, bruised from contact with her hipbone
she wants to be
destroyed
by hands that she (trusts) loves
Nov 14, 2012
Nov 14, 2012 at 3:34 PM UTC
This is not an apology or a plea.
Instead I'm building a home in your hipbones where i was too afraid to lie before. Our hipbone home will be made of titanium and the softest Egyptian cotton i can find. Security is our solace, and although solitude is my familiar friend, I'm trying my very hardest to be good to you.
This is not an apology or a plea.
But if it were you would feel the sincerity in the marks I've left on you. My intentions are left in bruises, as not so pleasant reminders that i am inconsistent. I am not apologizing for my lack of empathy, or the fact that i know when things end. My hardest parts will batter against you and you will take it, because i know you.
This is not an apology or a plea.
If it were i would most certainly plead guilty, but honesty was never my strongest virtue— or one of them at all. I will never take blame for my incomplete promises or the messes I've made.
This is not an apology or a plea.
It is simply a warning for anyone who tries to fill a crater with a footprint. Maybe i am speaking to a nonexistent lifeform, or maybe i am speaking to the eighth wonder of the world.
To anyone who thinks their footprint will fill a crater: the first man on the moon matters more than any asteroid.
Jun 7, 2015
Jun 7, 2015 at 12:14 PM UTC
I have run out
Of people to run to
When everything is falling apart
I touch my hipbone
And this one spot beneath my chest
Ever so slightly
When I want to feel better
About anything
I wish the earth gave you an option
Night or day
For when you need goosebumps from the sun
Or a calm, cool silence
Sometimes broken
Is better than bent
Because bent might break later on
Jun 15, 2014
Jun 15, 2014 at 10:33 PM UTC
Feeling so tired but i can't sleep
isnt that a ******* cliche?
suffocating feelings that would make me weep
but holding onto every word you say
Your hand print on my hipbone
a bite mark on your neck
tonight we wont feel alone
and we sure as hell wont forget
But for the nights your lover is a cigarette
and the kiss of death is one you love
it's not her you want, i'll take that bet
it's not her you're thinking of
Oct 6, 2014
Oct 6, 2014 at 12:38 AM UTC
underneath the nylon blanket I got the
impression that your hands were
these beautiful, shadowy, cecropia moths
reticent with their intentions, while they sat
idly on your ribcage before seeking out warmer
bases. My back, my thigh, my hipbone that *wasn't
connected*, you whispered.
You smell like cologne and beer; warm and perfumey,
faintly sweet. I wonder if I'm still tipsy, that was over an hour ago,
over an hour ago when I had to focus on my words
to make sure they came out in pieces and not viscous liquids
thick and sugary. I imagined gems hanging from my lips,
gems hanging from my lips and letters bubbling past
them.
you keep pulling down my shirt like a curtain, derisive of your
own actions, only to find that you have yet to prove yourself
and rock my thigh into yours which was perhaps too zealous.
Too zealous, I think, nonetheless quickened by your thumb
brushing the underwire of my bra. I laugh because we are far
too juvenile. Here I am protecting the sanctity found in patience
and yet you've evaded the rules.
all this touching and we haven't even kissed, I say, which wasn't really an invitation, but then we are and i am breathing all of you
in sweet staccato breaths, tugging at your skin and still doing the
guesswork, still trying to pin down your wings like a true lepidopterist
all the while knowing that butterflies on cork-boards are usually
dead.
Mar 13, 2016
Mar 13, 2016 at 4:33 PM UTC
The food rots when it is already in my belly
baby mush, cinders from its graceless fire trail –
I dig my tonsils with two fingers but
you will not return to our winter, the exterior.
So, hearts slip backward: a new abode
these intestinal earthquakes applauded in Hell
have stolen fruit I certainly could have froze.
In the woodshed, I discover a scalpel
and attempt to dislodge you from my hipbone
but now my stomach’s been kissed by Satan
I am birthing premature infants from a wound.
Another hour I shall give a funeral
for the apple core, swallow each seed so you
will grow once again safe and sound in my belly.
Mar 15, 2013
Mar 15, 2013 at 7:43 PM UTC
“’Have you ever seen a man?’ I knew he meant naked. He disrobed.Then he just stood there in front of me and I kept on staring at him. Then I felt very depressed.”
- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Afternoons while the dog sleeps
turned over on the side and i wonder what organs i push on
liver? spleen? clean the bile for me, please
and then I shall leave extra gratuity.
Please don’t cry, I feel a hand on my hipbone
my eyes pressed against the olive cushion
The green and the wood of the trees blur into one outside my
june july window
much like the book of Esther i look for a place inside
myself to stop the killing of decency inside myself and
i cannot muster it much like anything else.
I wish i had never asked that December night to go
I stop the disgust cut it at the bud
find a way to necromance up my personality
the outside is smelling of charcoal
i stare at his flesh,
then at mine then
at the floor.
he says we shall wait all i want and
now he is looking at me with doe eyes and i
nod. I nod. I feel i am ok now.
Jul 6, 2015
Jul 6, 2015 at 10:33 PM UTC
Sneaking smoking into diseased lungs on wet lonely spring nights
Jumping! Free falling,
Heart in stomach
Twitching in sleep as birds begin to sing
And strictly internal weeping
On trails less travelled.
Thusly, I am
Cold like asteroids
and
out of orbit
Chardonnay until
I can reject reality
Sleeping naked sweating shivering
And teeth grinding into
My tree trunk soul
I will see you
one day
Worse for the wear and tattered
And I will be caulked and
stuffed like dead dreams
But with you,
I want
to curl inside your decaying cavities
And breathe smoke out of my own coughing lungs
to smooth you to sleep
Your head on my hipbone
Is time blinking her eyes
in a seismic convulsion –
The outlier of our data
and
we have finished before we’ve begun
Despite the marrow in our bones surging in the tide to
one another ourselves
Moss could grow on our interlacing fingers
And have more intention
than we,
Skulls and vertebrae
Click-clacking off beat
To the tune of no drum
Algal lined membranes
effloresce and become
rainforests of decay and renewal
drip dripping on the tip of my tongue
Apr 11, 2015
Apr 11, 2015 at 8:29 PM UTC
She managed to forge her way through my forest of tainted leafed thoughts,
Torn ****** memories,
And a ripped, corrupted bible,
She became the book I could read over and over,
While expecting a different result,
Am I insane?
The soft pillows of her smile crawled all over my body and landed on my collarbone, hipbone, chest, and forehead.
The small wrinkles I have around my eyes and smile seemed to always let her in,
Even when she's never asked to come in.
The curves I have fit perfectly into the cups of her sweet nourishing hands.
She left her fingerprints on me.
I swear I didn't see them sink in.
I don't know how they got there.
She left her thoughts in me.
I swear I shredded them.
I don't know how they got there.
How would I know that she could ruin me?
Her fingertips would fly across the frets and I'd sit there idly, wondering why she let me stay there.
The tips of her hair would reflect against the sun's rays and I would think they were little snowflakes.
She was the dark midnight sky,
And the trees would sway in awe because of her pulchritude.
She was harmonious,
The way she blinked with her dark straight lashes fit uniquely with the way she stepped on the cracked, root showing, LA pavement.
The way she spoke and the way her lips moved made you wonder if she was singing.
And if she was singing,
Could she sing your name?
The way she wrote and the letters that were painted made you wonder if she was an artist,
If only she could sketch you.
The way she breathed with the slight sighs,
Made you want to breathe the way she did.
She made you want to write poetry.
And that all made you uncomfortable.
You wish you could just hit the restart button and have no saved changes.
You wish you could have just removed the tangling thoughts of her that slithered into your head.
You wish you could just walk away without second thoughts.
But there's only a tiny part that wants that.
Only a tiny part of this points to heart
Wishes she'd never existed.
The rest would let her slowly make your mind intact,
Even when you know that's not possible.
The rest would give up nights only to think if she was thinking of you too,
The rest would give up sleep so she'd have the best sleep ever.
The rest would stay up lonely, so she wouldn't be.
The rest would let itself be the paper she'd scribble on about how she wants to leave this dead end town.
The rest would do anything.
Anything for her.
Always.
I swear I don't know how this happened.
I didn't think she'd mess me up.
May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015 at 10:14 PM UTC