"placeholder" poems
Lying makes a placeholder for the inevitable truth. The lie will become the truth, as a rectangle can be squeezed back into a square.
Jan 25, 2016
Jan 25, 2016 at 9:12 PM UTC
Never again will I let myself be someone's back up plan.
I was a back burner, in the shadows, half forgotten back up plan. The last thing to be thought about, and the person to be considered least. I was a placeholder to keep the loneliness and isolation at bay.
All I wanted in life was to be made to feel wanted. To finally be able to claw my way up the priority list. Maybe that's what it was.
I was not a priority.
I was nice to have around. Convenient.
I mean, distance, seperation, empty promises... I took all of it. But not only did I take it, I returned it with love, patience, loyalty. I gave time, money, energy.
Everything I had.
Everything that made me who I was as a person.
In fact, I gave so much that I lost who I was. I forgot what it was to be...me.
So when he left, when I was no longer convenient to him, he took everything with him. My laughter, my joy, my ability to find the silver lining in any situation. He took my faith, my trust, my belief in others...
But, he did leave me with something at least.
He left me with a shattered life. He left me with trust issues. With depression, and anxiety attacks at work. He left me with more tears than can be counted and endless empty tissue boxes. He left me with a shell of who I once was.
And he was gone.
I guess when it's not a priority, it's easy to leave. When the one person who sacrificed everything she had...who gave every piece of herself.
But, HE was his priority.
So no. Never again. I will never be a back pocket, third place, maybe one day girl. I will never let myself beg for affection and love again. I will NEVER be made to feel unwanted. Forgettable. Disposable.
I want to be wanted. I want to be THE priority. Because when you truly love someone, they will always be your priority.
Otherwise, you never loved them at all.
Just the convenience of them.
Apr 27, 2017
Apr 27, 2017 at 9:21 PM UTC
I don't feel like reading words
I'd rather stitch an iceberg
You want a voice underwater
Let's keep going on empty
Breaking in style
The means justify an ending
Blues whites and lit skys
The summer was on fire
We felt it inside
Things fell aside
Cracks give way to more then more
It wasn't deep just murky
And I'm not reading anymore ******* words
Aug 8, 2015
Aug 8, 2015 at 2:19 AM UTC
do you know what hurts?
do you know what eats away at you
until you've been completely consumed?
leaving someone.
leaving someone you love.
leaving someone you care for so deeply
that the simple act of walking away seems to rip your heart in two.
leaving someone whose entire existence shaped your life
for one year,
two years,
ten years.
maybe you know that the life attached to him
wasn't the life that was best for you.
maybe that's why you're ending things.
maybe it's not.
it hurts and it tears and it burns,
but the one glimmer of hope to hold onto in the midst of all this pain
is found within a quick smattering of words.
they slip out before he's thought about them.
the saltwater they're mixed with only makes them stronger
and the gasping breaths they float away on only send them quicker to your ears.
*'i still want you in my life. i have to have you in my life.
even it it's just as a friend. you're the only one i've got.'*
do you know what hurts?
do you know what re-ignites the pain
that sunk its teeth into you the day you had to say goodbye?
it's the moment he realized you weren't coming back.
the moment he realized you weren't wrong.
the moment he realized that the golden days of
******* you
were really and truly over.
after that enlightenment, friendship didn't matter,
history didn't matter,
you didn't matter.
suddenly, he didn't see any reason for you to be in his life at all.
you were far from best friends.
you cried and you bled and you mustered the courage
to be selfish for once in your life,
to let go for once in your life,
only to realize that you were nothing but a placeholder.
nothing but a body.
that's what hurts the most
and what will never stop hurting.
Nov 4, 2013
Nov 4, 2013 at 8:34 AM UTC
He was a mid life crisis
Wrapped in black velvet:
A curtained tunnel
Of scarcity
the drive to create it.
I was a placeholder
A magazine while you wait
Your diploma comes in the mail
Marketing copy in Latin.
The only thing you fear
Is the weight of your own sound
Resounding:
An invisible fist
Beating a drum,
The one your rib cage locks away.
Soundless.
I use my pennies to buy experiences
Like your smile
The smell of your skin
Fresh and real
For those I steal
Lie
And cheat
A drug to beat
Another drug
To beat the need for drugs.
Aug 30, 2014
Aug 30, 2014 at 9:28 PM UTC
A friend invite from a former lover is the common cold.
It’s irritating, hard to get rid of. Try to ignore it. Don’t.
Hover over her main page. Bathe in the sick blue light
of LCD. Cursors open portals to the past, their present.
Approach every aspect of the page like a ghost. Read
through her interests. Browse her wall posts. See how
they change, don’t change, won’t. Surf aimlessly through
frozen moments. Find one frame you lurk around in, just
out of focus. Probably just your right arm or forgotten shoes
that have left a tiny footprint on her digital identity. Attach
needless significance to it anyway. Check out the page
of the new person in her life. Compare said person to self.
(Promise to) never go on the page again. Respond to request.
She’s a number, placeholder, a ones and zeroes memory.
Aug 25, 2012
Aug 25, 2012 at 1:32 PM UTC
I think what hurts the most
is that you are so deserving of love
and I wanted nothing more than to give it to you.
But you did not want it from me...Why?
It is in that moment, I am 8 years old again, and I am shouting
//WHY NOT ME?! WHY WAS I NOT ENOUGH?!//
I have so much love for you that it makes me ache.
It makes me angry. It traps me like an animal in a cage.
Why don't you want it?
Was I too willing?
Too honest?
Or fundamentally, am I just not enough?
Has this all just been a reminder that no one really wants my love? That they settle, if only temporarily, until someone better comes along and they no longer need this placeholder.
How was it so simple and so easy to pretend?
Sure, you never said the words, but your lips pressed against my forehead - your fingers interlocked with mine - we shared sorrows and dreams -
//WE WALKED YOUR CHILDHOOD NEIGHBORHOOD//
How can it be true that it was nothing?
How am I supposed to just forget and accept it?
How could you know me so intimately yet care so little?
How could you?
//OR MAYBE THE REAL QUESTION IS//
How am I still so dispensable after all this time?
Sep 10, 2023
Sep 10, 2023 at 4:06 AM UTC
This is more than a goodbye
more than a placeholder, or
a to be continued, this is a farewell
to everything both good and bad
This is all my fears, every last tear
placed on a platter, and I am forced to consume them
one by one, until I'm reminded
that nothing good lasts forever and everybody leaves
This is more than a death, more than a
resurrection, I know now the loneliness
Jesus felt in that tomb, but this emptiness I feel
is going to last a lot longer than 3 days
I will rise, slowly, dusting off
the remnants of a less-than heart
never to be the same again
too many tears have been shed, but
I'll see you next lifetime
Jul 17, 2014
Jul 17, 2014 at 1:14 AM UTC
Most moments in our lives pass unnoticed, without remark or consciousness.
Then, there are those that mean something, or that we choose to mean something,
that become a placeholder for our lives, to add meaning, understanding, passage
a demarcation that bestows significance
My daughter graduated, under rainy skies and cool breezes.
The white tents in the grass flapped empty and lonely like a cancelled wedding
We sat in a loud gymnasium rather than in the grass quad surrounded by trees
I was there with a thousand other proud parents;
I circled her name in the program. I waited for the moment when it was to be called; being
slightly afraid I'd miss it
And I whistled and yelled, but I don't think quite enough. I didn't seem to mark the moment.
It was a moment, and I knew it, expected it, wanted it to be.
so badly.
Bittersweet. I like that word, it explains life so well.
I like the idea of bittersweet and I wanted to have it envelope me that day.
I tried to hold on to it. Like a good dream that comes too late in the morning and wont be prolonged quite far enough
I wanted to hold on, to understand what it meant. I knew it meant so much,
or, at least, I wanted it too.
I held on to understand what this meant to her.
I held on to remember my own graduation and the dream I then only fainty realized I had just experienced in my four years of college
I held on because I know her next steps take her further away.
I held on to feel what she felt in the mixture of joy, relief, sadness, confusion;
all that goes with parting from friends who alone know the exerience you shared.
I held on to make sense of my life. Making sense of moments makes them meaningful.
I want life to be meaningful
I wish I would have written something that evening. In the full emotion of the day.
I thought about it.
And now, like that dream, it is fading into morning light. I can't remember all that was, or seemed to be, profound and important as I watched my daughter those two days.
I want it to mean something enduring, symbolic and permanent.
I want my life to be important, to reflect a famous quote from someone, to be in granite.
Not so everyone will know it mattered, just so that I will.
Jun 4, 2013
Jun 4, 2013 at 1:50 AM UTC
Take secrets
Sprint out the door
Burglar alarm malfunction
Wrong turn at a junction
Machetes cut a new path
Do the math
It isn't that hard
To draw the right card
I throw in rhymes
So maybe you'll listen sometimes.
All these things happened
I try to piece them together
To answer: why can't I find a single feather?
Sep 10, 2013
Sep 10, 2013 at 1:58 AM UTC
It's almost two in the morning
and I miss you
like a lot
and I'm not sure exactly
how even to express it
because lately it's been weird
but I haven't been very inspired.
And for you,
it's almost six in the evening
and I hope you miss me
but not too much.
But I've learned a little bit
that being even father apart
from your smile
isn't all that difficult,
until I'm falling asleep
as you're starting the afternoon
and you're falling asleep
as I wake up.
And so it's just a bit harder
to tell you I love you
as often as I want to,
but as it's two in the morning
while it's six in the evening,
I hope that you know
how much you really mean to me
and how much I hate missing you
but I absolutely can't help it
at two in the morning
when I think of you laughing
and try to recreate
feeling your hand in mine
with my own fingers,
hoping that at six in the evening
you're thinking of my teasing
and wanting our kisses
just as much as I do.
Since we won't be together
tomorrow at midnight,
I guess I'll be sending
my New Year's kiss
over a text message,
relying on
my slow wifi
and your bad reception.
Think of it as a placeholder, I guess,
at least until the next time I see you.
Cause even at my two in the morning
or even at your six in the evening
it's the very best thing
I can think of to be doing.
Dec 30, 2013
Dec 30, 2013 at 8:14 PM UTC
i remember when i was young
and would connect the freckles
on my mother's leg like it was
a game in one of those silly children's books.
thing's aren't like that anymore...
"why must everything change?"
i'm just a withered flower dying to
know what it's like to finally feel alive.
i want to be home.
my yearn for a placeholder.
this town swallows me whole, willingly.
shocked or overwhelmed.
i bustle underneath my bed only to find childhood memories,
but emerge to something more wishful.
home is but a variable.
i'm left to choose.
Jun 19, 2015
Jun 19, 2015 at 11:07 AM UTC
I miss you.
Yearn for you.
Yet I am at peace this time.
For this time I am yours and
you, you are mine.
All the insecurities and transgressions bob about:
Worried that I'm just a placeholder;
Simply a teddy bear in your time of need.
Yet I am calmed because you are mine
and I am yours.
Jan 7, 2014
Jan 7, 2014 at 11:53 PM UTC
My love has been left sitting too long/it has fermented into loneliness/nobody wants to be the last one standing/to be the last kid picked in gym class/it creates disappointment.
Emptiness wraps me in its cold embrace/There used to be more of us/but one by one they were picked off/Falling into the snare of an intimate relationship/I am merely a placeholder until they get the ones they will spend forever with/and that was ok...at least I thought it was.../
I had my cat/but now she is gone/The one constant thing in my life/I come home expecting to see her there/on my bed/laying in the sun/on the chaise with her favorite blanket/I said goodbye on a Thursday/and packed up all her things four days later/The reminder was too painful/And yet I have pictures of her everywhere/because I need her presence/Loneliness was never so bad because I was never alone/until now.
So yes I am growing bitter towards the idea of boyfriends./Boyfriends become priority/You become less of one/Maybe when I get one it will be different/But I have vowed never to forget who was there for me/but right now in this moment/I am sick of being abandoned/of being alone/Of grieving what I have lost and what I don't have.
Mar 8, 2023
Mar 8, 2023 at 12:50 AM UTC
Why is it,
That something so necessary,
Seems so dreadful and bittersweet?
Why am I so sad,
Over moving on from,
Something that made me so sad?
Why do leaves fall of the trees?
Why do hairs fade to grey?
Why do things fail to remain consistent?
Why can’t I live forever?
Why can’t I seem to want to?
Why can’t this fear of change make sense?
Change,
A dwarf sucker of emotional algae,
These bits of change that we face,
In life,
Are merely a placeholder for temporary discomfort.
Nov 2, 2023
Nov 2, 2023 at 9:59 PM UTC
It was already awkward, taking you
up the dubious muddy mountain, with
thoughts, unbeknownst of their occurrences.
All the more cliffhanging at the edges,
of the next moment, like a word expected
or not but not spoken, left alone in the mind.
But the lake and the wind, provided the lure,
to stay calm and composed and intermittently,
shut up and stare at the nothingness that the wind,
the reflections and the darkness offered. In the gaps,
between those nothingnesses, words place-held
the thoughts and bouts of past, present and future.
When you slipped, I pulled you by your hand,
harder than the pain stilling threshold.
My other hand carefully place-holding,
in the shape of your lower back, so that
just in case my pull became insufficient,
I wouldn't hesitate to prevent you from dipping
your clothes and slippers in the little mountain mud.
Feb 14, 2016
Feb 14, 2016 at 6:31 AM UTC
If that is what you call it, then say what you will -
You always have,
But that doesn't make your words any less untrue.
There was no placeholder until you made yourself one,
I wanted everything that I thought you were,
And then you went and changed.
I fooled myself along trying to believe that you were still you,
But you weren't.
You showed who you were, went back to him and every other guy out there,
So at some point I had to let myself know... and I did.
You weren't the one for me, and come to think of it
- Hindsight is always 20/20, isnt it? -
The fact that you could do any of these things meant that you never were in the first place.
You were the last place I should be, the last person I should be with.
Why did it have to become a war? Why do you want to give a peace offering?
Last I ever knew you never wanted to see or hear from me again -
So leave it be that way.
You had your chance, and you were her for a time,
But you let that fall into the road a long time ago where it gathered dust and fell apart.
Get real, don't get hurt,
Remember, you were the one who left not me.
Dec 3, 2011
Dec 3, 2011 at 1:04 AM UTC
Bo, I’ve just been Playing Pretend.
Putting on make-up and brushing my hair. Putting on dresses and smiling. Faking.
Dear, I wish I could say you’ve replaced the past, but all I can say is I hate me.
I’m dragging you about. Breaking your heart one atrium at a time. I’m putting you in his place, taking you to our old haunts.
Truthfully, I hate the product in your hair. I despise the nick-name “boo.” I could care less about champagne and “fine dining.” I wish you read more than non-fiction. I want you to laugh at my cheesy jokes. I wish you’d gotten upset when I told you about the boy. You claim to be free, but you’re more caged than me. Worry worry worry. About one word answers, about slow responses, about me, about the non-existent us.
I’m offering apologies, because I never told you. I’m sorry, dear, but the way you offer me your cheek offends me. The way you put my hand on your leg repulses me. Your damp fist in mine, makes me reach for hand sanitizer. Your love for eighties fashion causes me to worry for your sanity. Your style drives me crazy. I want band shirts, and thrift stores, but you want quality over quantity. I want fifty-seven fifty cent skirts that I’ll wear once.
I’m tired of playing happy for you. I’m sick of being sweet.
I was in it because you were interesting, now I’m in it for the drugs.
I’m avoiding your gaze more. Hoping you don’t see the things I do, because dear, I’m afraid to be alone.
Honestly, sweetheart, your hands get me nowhere. Every touch is just that. I’m sorry dear, but your kiss stops at my lips. I apologize love, but you’re not in my head. Or my heart. You’re just a placeholder.
You’re me trying to find solution.
Try, try, trying to find the answers. Trying to find the cure.
And failing.
Miserably.
All I’ve figured out, is I can’t stop looking left, when you’re sitting to my right. All I know is kissing you feels like cheating. All I know is I can’t get him out of my brain. All I wish is that I would have fought harder. All I see is how us ending has pulled him further from the surface. All I can worry about is his masochism.
Darling, I’m sorry, but I’m dead weight. I have nothing left to give you.
Sep 15, 2010
Sep 15, 2010 at 12:22 PM UTC
Why am I here?
Am I simply a placeholder
Sitting
In hopes of a way out
Maybe, no, yes, I'm just a placebo
Easing my way through a loophole
Accessing every cheat code
Now it seems I've run out of cheats
Taking them for granted to complete
Task after task after task.
Or, have I just run out of luck
Dreading this day
I guess it has struck
Even though I've been waiting for it.
Jun 14, 2013
Jun 14, 2013 at 1:22 AM UTC
All your fears come true,
you were just there in lieu.
A body to warm his bed,
a soundboard to ease his head.
You always were a placeholder,
again forced to grow colder.
Soon there will be nothing there,
no words or love to show you care
Mar 30, 2019
Mar 30, 2019 at 9:27 AM UTC
I wonder
If you'll spend hours
Staring at your phone
Waiting for the reply
My friends told me not to send
I wonder
If you wanted
Something to make your beer soaked lips
Curl up into a smile
Something to warm your already
Over-heated heart
Or if maybe
You just wanted me to know
I wonder
If when I didn't respond
You went down the list
Of girls that might care
Unless that's what you were doing
I wonder
If your friends knew
The nameless ones I don't hear about
With whom you have a summer built bond
Strengthened by drinks of the same nature
I wonder
If you'll find a plastic placeholder
When sleeping alone
Becomes the loudest thought
I wonder
If you'll wish she was me
Jun 26, 2014
Jun 26, 2014 at 9:47 AM UTC
Collapsing by the blue wall where the flies come to die
Where the sun is just hot enough to give you a headache
Flicking embers off, reducing themselves to ashes
Half a cigarette and I’m off
Drag myself up with tired, cracking hands
Push myself on with a bad ankle, old eyes
So many footprints in this dirt, lost its identity
Just a placeholder for a thousand impressions
Grass pushes itself up between the door frame
Green threads in her little blue room
Listening for the wind chimes in their silence
Listening for your footsteps, barefoot in the
bamboo
Jun 19, 2011
Jun 19, 2011 at 4:33 PM UTC
And so you have finally found someone new
Does he look into your eyes like I used to...?
Does he cuddle up tenderly to you like I used to...?
Step along the stones, the sidewalk of peril
Sing him lullabies and Christmas carols...
Is he a mere placeholder or an imitation of me?
Does he like violence and staring at the sea?
Is he all you really need? Does he not see your inner beauty?
Mother may I, a sorrowful sonnet for two
Had I puked out my words, just for you...
While all the beaten ladies sit and pawn their hearts
To the husbands who'd beat them
Inside the fancy shopping mart
Fractured noses and lacerated arms
Now your words will do me no harm...
Aug 24, 2011
Aug 24, 2011 at 11:43 AM UTC
what would it take
to fill perfectly
a page with line
after t i g h t r o p e line
of the way your cheeks puff
when you've had enough, or
the way your breath bounds
from your body when
i say 'we were made for love'?
what it would take
i do not have. for
i do not have you,
and without you,
my pen will not move.
May 7, 2016
May 7, 2016 at 2:19 AM UTC
it’s hard to bring back
to life someone who’s
already a shadow suspended
by dust in sunlight.
a partially eaten heart
trailed by ******
bread crumbs with no
start in sight.
replications of
past complications
forge a plagiarized
grin notarized by a shaky
pen on abstract paper.
bringing back to life
sand-burnt knuckles
reflecting tremors
through coils in the bottle
seems anything but feasible,
recovery and relapse are
few and far between
with a fine line that
splits at the seam
without warning,
the ice meeting
the bottom of the glass
again is a slow
graze of fingernails
across chalkboards,
help seems out of reach
when the leather begins to
leech to your skin
with each question repeated
over and
over and ******* over,
perceptions of positivity
can only withhold the
constant of being
a placeholder in
the tangent of
consistencies,
but light has the ability to break
through windowsills
and curtains,
yes I speak from experience
because it’s the only thing
that wakes me up in the morning,
but as I become use to
walking dead
I found my light that
wakes me up
in the afternoon
and puts me to sleep
at night
Dec 8, 2015
Dec 8, 2015 at 2:03 AM UTC