"hipbones" poems
Your body was wonderful.
I could cup your hipbones in my hand
and sip wine from your collar bones.
thin
slim
and beautiful
You cold never understand why I was jealous.
Until you saw my body through my eyes
rippling thighs
and curved stomach
~j.c.s
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 4:25 PM UTC
Forever beautiful until I saw you in raw sunlight
and realized you didn't shine anymore
you told me you would always love me
and ever since then I can’t believe anyone
I hate April now
it’s one of my least favorite months
and I blame you for that
One of the last times I saw you in your
beautiful tall pale freckled naked frame
you were inside of me and
you looked somewhere at my chest and
said you loved me
But you could not look into my eyes
And about ten minutes later when I was
resting my hipbones on yours
I started to cry
And instead of holding me close
and drying my eyes
you pushed me off
pulled on your pants
and left
and that was when I realized you are a
fox with a stone cold heart
incapable of caring for anyone
Much less loving them
Mar 25, 2014
Mar 25, 2014 at 3:43 PM UTC
My hipbones rock me on the wooden floor
Protruding from my frame
Skin bruises from simply laying on my stomach
Yet I am not skinny
red lines mark where the folds of my stomach have been,
my arm like wings
my thighs hugging each other tightly
stretching occasionally my eye catches the reflection of a stick like woman I can't recognize in the dark window until I realize she is me
as that settles in my true details fill in
morphing the strange woman into the ugly that is me.
Striving to become the strange woman that once was
I shove a finger down my throat
Mar 6, 2014
Mar 6, 2014 at 11:32 AM UTC
i dream of silk and black lipstick, leather and ice-burn
i fashion thoughts into clouds of smoke i ghost out of my mouth
into necklaces i will only ever give to you; you
are burnt russet bitten lip bleached bone coalesced into
constellation; you burn brighter
than any constellation i have ever breathed
i dream of your hipbones; stretch marks flicking over them
like lightning glimpsed between fingers; like wishbones silently pulled apart
in promise; you are wishbone you are gold plate you are sunshine
through a stained-glass window; my heart is glass
a cemetery to your footprints a cathedral to your broken
dreams; i can taste the honey in your scattered thoughts
like a prayer on my tongue
i dream of deep purple and yellow and green and
black and fading bruise and blood
at the corner of your lip; i can taste iron in your breath
rotting in my dreams slow-burning ice in my veins; vengeance
is a dish best served cold i know
that if i unfurl my skeleton and tuck you into the spaces between my
ribcage and my lungs you will taste just as sweet
i dream of ruby emerald sapphire in brooches pinned onto black i
think of the bruise-giver of the blood-spiller of cracks in my
ribcage of wishbones of constellations of iron-taste of ice-burn of you of you of you
and i let you in
and i am cathedral i am cemetery i am bonfire i am in l o v e
with constellation
May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015 at 10:30 AM UTC
the body of this poem is about two bodies, sometimes poetic things are ***** and sometimes ***** things are poetic things under the dirt of what i'd been taught my whole life about my virginity. i was told that if i lost it i wouldnt be able to find it again. i was not told about a boy, tall and skinny and blonde, blue-gray eyes, i was not told that i would kiss him, i was not told that my kiss would be his first. i didnt know at the time that summer would collapse into one moment, i could never have guessed that two crazy transgender boys could coincide with virginity as strongly as we pressed our bodies together. i was fourteen years old and my body was a choppy pencil sketch of anorexia and rib damage, of breast tissue and scar tissue, of anxiety and hipbones. he was fifteen years old and to me he was beautiful, everything strange and weird in our brains was erased and forgotten, fogged up with our heavy breathing. i am wrapped up in firsts and lasts and the first time was not entirely the world-shattering that it was built up to be, we were built up, and then i forget why we stopped. but we stopped. but we stopped being far apart and afraid to tell each other how close we wished we were. we learned how to commit heavy sins, the kind that make you feel good. we learned that our relationship is textbook unhealthy, but unhealthy people means unhealthy partners means unhealthy- means **** off, we are trying our best and **** you, this is what love means. this tangle of fingers. we learned that we have to not only have secrets but become them. we didnt have to be taught what it feels like to need someone. we didnt need to learn how it tastes to be absolutely sure of something.
my entire life i was taught that i should save myself for a man, but instead i let go of myself and loved a boy.
Jun 2, 2015
Jun 2, 2015 at 10:24 AM UTC
"Everyone wants to be a little anorexic" she says
"You know, like, in a glamorous way, like fashion friendly anorexic"
I bite my cheek and nod, pretend to agree
All I can think of is waking up to stars dancing on the ceiling
Pale skin with bruises of unknown origins
And battered feet on and off the scale
Almonds in Ziploc baggies
Bite marks on fingers
Hair down the drain
Measuring crunches by the marks they leave on your spine
And battered feet on and off the scale
Enough water to turn organs into boats
Eating an apple with a fork and knife
Desperate hands grasping for ribs
And battered feet on and off the scale
Standing and the world going dark
Coughing around shots of apple cider vinegar
Carrying an emergency rice cake for weak spells
And battered feet on and off the scale
Enough green tea to drown organs
Sugar free gum to mask the smell of decaying organs
Whatever nail polish covers yellow and purple
And battered feet on and off the scale
How many calories are in toothpaste
Thinspo blogs
Pillows squeezed between thighs
And battered feet on and off the scale
Is today the day my heart gives out
Waking every day in a new body
Fingers clasped around wrists
And battered feet on and off the scale
Notebooks filled with numbers
Purple crescents under eyes
Fingers clasped around forearms
And battered feet on and off the scale
Elbows knocking into hipbones
Being scared of your own reflection
Lies to get out of dinner
And battered feet on and off the scale
The stench of *****
Oxygen that tastes of Splenda
Fingers clasped around biceps
And bleeding feet on and off the scale
If this is your idea of glamour
Then you can have it
Nov 27, 2018
Nov 27, 2018 at 12:48 PM UTC
I’ve gotta go home and clean, you say.
Clean my scent from your sheets,
I want to tell you
*Come closer, baby,
Untangle my limbs and
caress me down,
orchestrate my symphonies.
Didn’t you see the stars, too?*
I remember your breath all
over me
and how I tasted my very existence
within it.
I remember seeing infinity
in the golden hazel of your eyes,
those **** bedroom eyes,
soothing me past my boundaries,
hands pushing past my hipbones
and into my infinity.
And I want to tell you that I still taste
your lips on my tongue
and I still feel your teeth grazing my skin but
I don’t tell you any of these things.
I look you dead in the eye
those bedroom eyes, boring into mine.
I wonder if you’re playing back the scene
you moving over me
and I say, Okay.
Our whole existence
narrowed into one word
and in that moment I think I hate you
but the thought of your hands on me
still makes my sun rise each day
and I wonder if maybe
I love you in spite of
all the things telling me not to.
Nov 9, 2014
Nov 9, 2014 at 3:42 PM UTC
I am just your average sinner,
sly glances say, I am second chance, time around .
I spin mediocre wildest-dreams
in rundown hope hotels
I am just a pretty sinner with a
dusty trail of lust
like green pollen in my wake.
A vehicle of possibility
to all the places we can drive our devils,
with cocktails and vague musician
who lean back on wooden chairs, against walls of fading paint.
with tables for sins
to be laid out like Thanksgiving.
My sins are neon signs in yellowed rooms,
My sins are rusted cans kicked in old beach towns.
My sins are hot pavement under cracked rubber tires rumbling above.
My back arched in a prayer to the sky.
The rise of my hipbones like majestic mountains.
My sins leak from my eyes. First one, then another.
Down, Down they fall
I fall to my knees.
They fall and I curse them for leaving me too.
I fall to my knees like the traveler who has journeyed too long,
On my knees and I kiss the dirt of home.
I am humbled and groveling...within my sinning.
And I pray a much louder prayer. I am a much humbler servant, with much to forgive.
I wear my sins like a raincoat to keep me dry from all the
good intention and 'well-deserved!' that might be coming my way.
I twist my sin into a paper flower and wear it in my sinful hair next to my sinful eyes by my sinful mind.
I am just your average sinner
Dreaming of living a better life someday.
Praying to be a better me, someday.
Someday is a funny place to live
With towering hopes
and skyscraping desires scratching at its sterile walls.
No, not for me.
I am just your average sinner...
with extraordinary sins.
Jun 23, 2014
Jun 23, 2014 at 9:04 PM UTC
You filled your skin with sharp lead and your arms with cigaret burns, without any screams, but with the blue mass that touched your cheeks. You used to think, that to put on a massiv amount of black eyeliner, would hide the fact, that you couldn't sleep at night. And you used to think that starving yourself, would make you feel just a little bit better about who you were, but all you ended up with was a stomach you could fit your hands around, collar bones that stuck far out from your skin, so they could break at anytime and your hipbones were like knifes, that could slice a man open. You used to do and think so many stupid things, and you were just this little self-conscious girl that needed to be loved and accepted by someone. That little girl is still inside you, but you have learnt to control her and say no when she wants to play.
Sep 23, 2016
Sep 23, 2016 at 7:46 AM UTC
It is 7.30 and I am still thinking about the way our hands slotted together like days of the week, normalcy perspiring in the air behind us.
It is 7.31 and I am still thinking about your cheekbones, collarbones, hipbones. I am still thinking about your bones. You haven't returned my phone calls in a week.
It is 7.32 and I am still thinking about forest fires.
It is 7.33 and I am still thinking about clocks ticking and how it's kind of funny how we are always counting the days we have left, instead of the days we have.
It is 7.34 and I am still thinking about how my apologies never really cut it.
It is 7.35 and I am sorry.
It is 7.36 and I wonder how hard it is to tie a noose.
It is 7.37 and I am still thinking about the normal length of a pause when you're telling someone you love them, too.
It is 7.38 and I love you, too.
It is 7.39 and I am still trying not to think about how loud the doorbell echoes in the entrance hall now.
It is 7.40 and I am still thinking about the absence of stairways.
It is 7.41 and I am still thinking about hunger pains and alleyways and the warmth of your hand on my spine.
It is 7.42 and there are some things you can't say to other people but holy **** I miss you.
It is 7.43 and I'm sorry again.
It is 7.44 and I am still thinking about short hands on clocks.
It is 7.45 and I am still imagining footfalls landing heavy on the carpet outside my bedroom and trying not to hope they're yours.
It is 7.46 and I hope they're yours.
It is 7.47 and I am still thinking about the glass in my ribcage digging in harder than your fingernails ever could.
It is 7.48 and I am still thinking about the way our hands slotted together.
It is 7.49 and I'm sorry again.
Jun 28, 2014
Jun 28, 2014 at 8:58 PM UTC
Black box breaking
Slowly breaking
Slowly
I saw the cracks
I saw them ripple down her back
I saw the freeze and thaw of nations
The renaissance and death and renaissance
I saw the wealth and worth of world powers
I saw them crumble
I was there
And I am here
I read it all and wrote it down
I saw it all and wrote it down
I kissed the survivors and wrote it down
I saw the earth in its entirety
I fell in love and vomited and fell in love
I saw her in her emptiness
I saw her sway in the winds
The winds grew cold and colder
She grew old and older
And so distraught
Mangled
Destroyed
Derailed
Demolished
Stripped of poise and polish
Stripped of it all
I saw her disintegrate
I saw her fall
Still I,
I still
I always standing
Watching still
Always seeing
Standing and seeing, I
Drinking tea
Calm, cool, collected, serenity
Now your turn
You see me
See me walking down the street
See my waist-long wavy hair
Blonde and sparkling in the sun
Lipstick smile
Hipbones and cheekbones chiseled and deadly
Long leg strut down the runway
Of center town sidewalks
The world is my oyster
See my backpack full of alphabetized books
Handwriting neat and perfect
Pen behind my ear I’m ready
For all of this
See me smoking cigarettes out my dorm room window
Listening to Mozart
And smiling fully when the strings jump in
See me on the park bench reading
Long Russian novels
I inhale the pages like heartbeats
In-hale
Ex-hale
In-hale
Ex-hale
Breaths and beats fully synchronized to the flipping of pages
And to the Metronome Mozart wrote me.
Don’t be deceived
I made my world and destroyed it and made my world
Independent to a fault
I made my living off stitching together broken bones
And melting old forgotten thrones
Sculptures that said I needed no one
No one could keep up anyway
I ran too fast
I ran all day
And kindof expected someone to care
But no one ever has
I was never worth the trouble
Pull me out from my own rubble
And kiss me if you can
No one knows my secret plan to live an embarrassing convention
All this glass is just pretention
I glued it together myself
I wrote my own pamphlet for self help
I pieced together my own face
I sculpted my own form and adorned it
I broke my own heart and mourned it
I arrived and left and arrived
And here I’ll stay
Black box breaking
Slowly breaking
Slowly
I saw the cracks
I saw them from the start
Death and renaissance and death
***** and love and *****
Jan 19, 2015
Jan 19, 2015 at 12:08 PM UTC
In your Sillouette,
Painted Gold, against Magic Curtain.
This Oz Stage, Hiding our bodies.
I am lingering.
You are gilded beautiful
Bare ******* pointed at Chandeliers
****** Capstones sealing perfect Arches
I am a foot protruding from your sculpture
In mustard.
I am that blot behind your Hip Bone
Cold Draft from the window
Opened Opposite the Magic curtain
A breath of ocean waves
Our bodies casting illusions
In ripples of Moonlit fabric
Dancing around our sillouette.
Black Moss collects in the shape of your tattoos
Silk screen thighs,
Underbust Corset
where the breeze whispered
where my fingertips wrapped your hipbones.
growing where we Calloused
In our Roughs
In our trenches
Rubbing Leather against Silk
You invested in our common interest.
A mirror, Fastened to the Ceiling.
Reflecting Our Two Loudest Vices.
Ownership,
And your body.
I love the Chips in your paint.
I hate the man who painted you.
infected by Tunnel vision Voyeurism
Sick with a Spiderweb brain
Spinning from your imperfections.
You are so, perfect.
Artists come from all over
To watch the magic curtain.
Your Golden arching Back.
My Mustard Toes.
we all look at you,
even you look at you.
we do not Blink.
Just stare, position ourselves.
behind this curtain.
Our callouses grow like the black moss
bodies marble under ocean pressure
erode from the chill winds
Your archaic exhibitionism
Carved From Counting Gazes
Mustard eternally pondering
why our sillouettes, different colors
Drawn by the same moon,
Casted on the same cloth.
Feb 23, 2017
Feb 23, 2017 at 6:31 PM UTC
Teeth, rib cages
Hearts, hipbones
Broken thrones
The enigmatic victory of horsefly contempt
Condemned fireflies in midnight sky
Social butterfly and awkward moments
Forced to live with baited breath
Exhale, inhale
Suffocate withering strands of hope
Embellished livestock
Wall street cattle
Compulsory impulse
Genetic malfunctioning solitude
The zenith is reached
Downfall is all that’s left
Watching with wonderment and sealed hearts
Apr 23, 2012
Apr 23, 2012 at 8:12 PM UTC
Note to stranger:
Don't let her long eyelashes fool you
Stemming off from eyelids filled with promise
Pupils composed of green and brown paint
Mixed and made permanent by the look on her face when you ask her what love means to her
Because to her
Love is an antique promise
Tic Tac Toed into her shoulder blades
Another lost game
Lonely is made apparent by the reveal of her hipbones
Sticking out from the belt loops on the waistband of her dreams
Her clothes become looser
She is welcomed by friends to parties that she refuses to go to
Because even in a room of people
The only emotion she is capable of feeling
REALLY feeling
Is lonely
And you may argue that lonely is not an emotion
But a state of being
But when she truly feels it
Lonely becomes both
Discolored tulips growing for a flowerpot of unfertilized dirt
Masked by a smile that could fool anyone
Even her own father
Sometimes even herself
Mascara stained floor tile
Quick change scenes
Equivalent to her multiple personalities
Sad happy sad happy
Sad...
She is capable of being both sad and happy
She is introverted AND extroverted
She is 5 million different people
Sometimes wishing she could narrow herself down to just one
She is ME
Dec 9, 2014
Dec 9, 2014 at 6:21 PM UTC
I’ve begun “The Wasting” once more.
That ragged uncovering of bones and peaks and ridges that crop up along my spine and shoulders.
My scapulas revealing themselves like the bed of a lake as the waters recede.
Indents beside and under my kneecaps, hollows that match the ones slowly sinking themselves back into my cheeks.
And the hipbones…the things I truly crave to see through the paper thin layer of my skin…
Those…I’d starve myself to waifish proportions just to graze my hands along the mountaintops of those things, those sharp little things.
I lose my hair and my colour and my shine just to dig my fingers into the hardness of my breastbone, just to know that my jawbone is an overhang, just to plunge headfirst into the thrill of being thin.
“The Wasting” and I are friends, and I want to drown in her.
Jul 6, 2023
Jul 6, 2023 at 2:50 AM UTC
You dipped into me like a pool
you hadn't swam in all summer, a hole
in the back of your mind you almost forgot
was still there. It was as if you predicted
the big splash, the droplets like crystals
I could see through to your heart, reading
your feelings like a bestseller on a lounge chair,
basking in the sun on the side. You broke
through my surface with your hands, those hands
that strip me down to just my tan
and hold my ribs like a steering wheel, driving
our bodies together as I kiss the chlorine
from your lips. I'd wrap you up in a towel
just to trace the slope of it from hip to hip,
use that momentum to tell you
how much I love the way your smile looks
when you think my eyes are closed
as we lay on top of the sheets with a fan
circulating in the limited space we leave between
my baby sundress and your khaki shorts,
our bare feet playing with each others toes.
I like the way your hands feel in my hair,
pulling it down the line drawn on my back
with your knuckles, landing in the dimples
of my back like a raft, floating
on the feeling suspended in this moment
where I bite your lip and you sigh into another kiss.
I like how it doesn't get dark until eight,
how you make little circles around my hipbones,
the sound of your laugh as it bounces off my own,
smiling into another push as you pull
my heart over yours into the shade to cool.
Dec 15, 2015
Dec 15, 2015 at 8:23 PM UTC
On a cafeteria table,
in the middle of February,
the kind where it gets dark at 5pm,
sat eight minature figurines made of shells—
brown, speckled, like a calico cat
with googly eyes on the middle of their heads,
one business man with a black derby,
one with a pretty pink bow,
or even one with blue suspenders,
and all their chubby bellies
rounding out over their pants. The woman
with her iridescent nails, bony fingers,
the skin pressed thin against her knuckles,
lines them up in a perfect row, tilting
their heads into one another as if
they are having a tiny conversation
admist the numbers being called—
B14! She stamps in red. B14!
A man pushes a cart around the tables,
like one mows grass around graves,
with fifty cent candy bars and potato chips
on flimsy paper plates. He asks the woman
if she wants ice in her Pepsi, but she just blows
a long sigh of smoke and flicks the sparks
behind her back. He doesn’t ask her to pay.
G56! She touches the head of the figurine
with the mustache. G56! I’ve lost count
of how many numbers I’ve missed,
but then there’s you, your hand on my thigh,
creeping, your fingers pushing
my cotton skirt up, up, and up—
O74!
We play with acrylic chips instead of stampers.
We’d like to win the lottery tickets,
maybe cash them in at the gas station
after we drink a couple iced teas and snack
on Mentos cause we ran out of money
two bottles ago.
The figurine with the fishing pole has one pupil
that lies at the bottom of the eye,
lop-sided, and staring at me while I pretend
that I have G47! or pretend that this isn’t
the first time you’ve brought me here, G47!
instead of a real date. Or pretend
that I can’t hear the woman cough, and cough,
and cough as she switches stampers between every ten calls
or touch this figurine or move that one, just slightly,
this way or that or
N44! She doesn’t have it. N44!
I don’t have it.
Don’t worry, child, you’ll have it all someday,
she whispers, sideways from her mouth,
with your thumb making circles around my hipbones,
and the man pushing the cart, the squeak of the wheels
B7! But I don’t have it. B7! I don’t have it.
I don’t have it.
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 12:38 AM UTC
Put a child lock
on the liquor cabinets,
and fasten me
to your kitchen sink.
Watch me drift slowly down the drain.
Watch shattered wine glass
stick between fragments of me
in the garbage disposal blades.
Watch broken sentences
arch over our faulty plumbing lines.
Watch pieces of you stick strictly to silver spoons.
Take the skin of your Cuban
and roll a noose around my neck
to yank the blaze from my throat
into the bile of my slip-ups
that pool on the kitchen floor
from an unattached pipe
that just can’t seem to keep
her pretty little mouth shut.
Penetrate my thoughts from behind
and throw plates at the walls
of my shoulder blades
when you need to hear the question again
because it doesn’t matter what she thinks
if her face is nothing but
a cracked serving platter.
Force your hands
onto the authority of my hipbones.
Pierce your wedding ring
through my belly button for safekeeping.
Decorate my body
with super glue
so your words can stick to me.
Sort me in
with the pots and pans
so your voice
doesn’t have to clang against
my eardrums anymore.
Reorganize me
again and again
until you can’t wash the stain
out of my bottom lip anymore.
Pour me a drink
while I drip Taps into the sink
because when I realize
water isn’t strong enough
to make me forget how blood
runs so much thicker over my skin,
tears begin to slip so easily off my eyelashes.
Let my death
be a pail
brimmed with ex-lovers’
cries for attention.
Let me kick the bucket
this time
when they begin to drown out
the sound of my own.
Let me be a reminder
that not all channels
you lose yourself down
have to be man made.
Mar 13, 2017
Mar 13, 2017 at 9:10 PM UTC
I want to run my fingers
along the indentations
your favorite pants
left pressed on your hipbones
after a long day
Jun 21, 2013
Jun 21, 2013 at 1:35 AM UTC
How could she do that to herself.
her collarbones almost popping out of her skin
because she is a skeleton already
her ribcage a tally of the meals she has skipped
one, two, three, four, too many to count
her hipbones protrude like shards of glass
shattered like her self esteem
thighs that no longer touch
calves miles apart
gaps on her body
gaps between meals
her head is a mixed up land
with broken mirrors all around
her friend ana reflected in the shards
she is so familiar with these eating habits they have a name
ana ana ana ana ana
runs through her brain
the calorie counter in her head runs
is an apple worth it anymore?
skip dinner
wake up thinner
pretty girls do not eat.
her body is brittle
she looks like she could break with a touch
but she is already broken inside
the fight is over
she knows it too
she is fading away.
how could i do this to myself.
Nov 22, 2015
Nov 22, 2015 at 5:49 PM UTC
Still sleep warm,
I am coaxed into
consciousness
by your fingers lazily
grazing the elastic
of my underwear.
That smooth plateau
between the mountains
of my hipbones: home.
Overnight, my shirt
has ridden up, too hot
in the California nights
neither of us are used to
yet, proven by the pool
of sweat beneath my
lower back. The sticky
staleness of my skin
matches yours.
We are anything but
a disaster, and still,
I am a fault line. Feeling
the tremors rumble low
in my belly, your overheating
hands the magma forcing
plates apart, revealing
the new earth beneath.
There's danger in my inhale,
the risk of being shaken to
the core and unfixable.
Yet not even an earthquake
could divide us: love.
V. K.
Jul 23, 2015
Jul 23, 2015 at 1:57 PM UTC
your life hangs in a balance
a rotting see-saw
of deprivation
you listen to the chorus
of growling, pleading
from your internal organs
begging for sustenance
and you smile
are you proud of the pain you inflict on your body
or just yourself?
I'll watch you decompose
and tell you your decaying flesh is beautiful
because I know you're not looking for bones
or extra fabric on your jeans
but while your stomach cries
for yesterday's missing lunch
your mind weeps
for something to be proud of
and if the only thing you can do right
is your hipbones
then so be it
Jun 10, 2013
Jun 10, 2013 at 10:35 AM UTC
sea’s quiet tonight, iris and vagabond gray
salt coarse in our hair we can see it in the
last pink light
count the bubbles in the wake
sprouting from thin air and
imaginary whale songs
they won’t find us in the stern let me
look at your hipbones—I won’t touch
not yet it’s too quiet tonight
there’s orion, and there’s cassiopeia
stars swimming white fish in our
rum-eyes
gulls’ heads tucked under wings
in the corners—goodnight goodnight
little gulls, dreaming you’re doves
even sirens sleep this moon
soft voices slumberous
smoky, hey—let me look at you again
under the velvet dark, sea in sterling drops
on our lashes, let’s take a break from steering
let waves and mermaids take the wheel
Mar 30, 2014
Mar 30, 2014 at 7:43 PM UTC