"shoeboxes" poems
some are hidden
by long sleeves
and baggy sweatshirts,
behind bloodshot eyes
and stale breath
written in light graphite
on crinkled sheets
in shoeboxes,
therapy sessions
and 2am text messages
May 10, 2013
May 10, 2013 at 6:35 PM UTC
in the event of an emergency,
return my eyes to the sky.
my hair to africa.
my skin to the rain.
give my smile to my mother,
she always loved it best.
give my mouth to my father,
my voice as well. make sure it is loud.
return my poetry to my English teachers,
give my words to my brother.
tell him there was so much i wanted to tell him,
give him both my ears, tell him i will always listen.
give my hands to my heart.
my heart will be tucked in my journals,
give them to the boy who loves me.
mail my songs to Maine,
with the letters you will find inside the shoeboxes.
give my feet to New York City,
my laughter to my students.
return my coffee mugs to my grandmother,
my tongue to her cooking.
give my books to my friends,
and both of my shoulders.
if there is anything left,
give it to the earth.
let the birds make of my bones a home,
let the spring find room to bloom.
give my lungs the air they were waiting for.
Jul 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018 at 9:48 AM UTC
i am the frostbite
spreading through the frozen fingers of your new lover's
hands, transferred body heat
burning the skin.
i am 3 am drinks in the
pouring rain, swerving onto
oncoming traffic.
i am the ship lost at sea of our love.
i am a broken bathroom mirror.
i am an unidentified purple bruise
on the neck of your ex-lover.
i am the fork in the toaster.
i am an untuned guitar in
a filthy venue.
calloused hands against soft skin.
slam the whiskey shot down on your neck. wash the blood off in the kitchen sink.
broken blinds forcing unwanted sunlight into your nightmares.
i am the definition of breakup *** i am the
aftermath of self-hatred and one more go around.
**** just for the fun of it, just to ****
pretend you are making love. pretend this matters.
i am late night emergency room
visits for rope-burned necks.
i am the car alarm blocking out your
one night stand's profound moans.
organize your bookshelf to spell out my name in the titles.
every song on the radio
will sound like goodbye.
i am the perfect time for a first kiss. swollen lips. swollen throats. inevitably calling your name on my deathbed.
i am under-the-bed-shoeboxes filled
with ripped photos that
still smell of his cologne.
i am one more dose of ambien
to get you through the night.
overdose on love, starve your lover.
stop.
rewind.
i am the first glance in a coffee shop.
play.
Sep 9, 2015
Sep 9, 2015 at 8:20 PM UTC
I like strawberries
I like the way my hair looks when I have no where to go
I like my bagels toasted with cream cheese
I like to watch movies, but only alone
I bake cookies when I'm sad
Music means more to me than almost anything else
Christmas is my favorite holiday
I drink tea when I want to be quiet
I don't have a favorite color, I can't decide
I love the outdoors
I hate insincerity
My room is pink, but covered in posters
I have shoeboxes full of old photographs
I love driving alone at night
Jan 1, 2015
Jan 1, 2015 at 5:10 PM UTC
I’ve left the oven on
for years.
Somewhere between metaphor and meaning,
something’s always been burning.
But no one’s eaten in a while.
They called it voice.
I called it
a slow confession wrapped in rhyme.
A sugarcoated breakdown.
Something easy to swallow
if you didn’t read too carefully.
They wanted brevity.
I brought blood.
They wanted truth.
I brought formatting errors
and a whisper shaped like static.
Do you remember the one
with the anti-light?
No?
Of course not.
You don’t remember the one who screamed last.
You remember the one who rhymed "heart" with "start"
and got 200 likes for it.
Now my name is on the box
but it’s spelled wrong
and the font is smiling too hard.
The cookies still crumble
but no one eats the edges.
That’s where the poison is.
That’s where I lived.
So I’ve folded the apron.
Swallowed the last word
before it could become a quote.
Let the gods of good taste keep their ovens.
Let the algorithm rot.
I’ve got shoeboxes full of unsent stanzas
and no more hunger
for applause shaped like echo.
Apr 21, 2025
Apr 21, 2025 at 5:37 AM UTC
Come, Friend.
I'll show you around the house and tell you all the trivial things that remind me of her.
(Here in the hallway)
These stacked, empty shoeboxes,
That I now keep my poems in,
These bare walls that I suppose,
She could make a better use of,
(In the living room)
This monochrome vintage tv,
That she'd have thrown out,
My books lying haphazardly on the table,
That she'd have cleared up,
My guitar that hasn't been restrung for 7 months,
The pictures of Dutch tulip fields,
The multilingual posters on the wall behind the TV,
Like a pretentious polyglot,
(Now,the kitchen)
And this bitter fragrance of tea leaves,
This divine scent of cardamom,
Rising from a hot cup of tea,
The rattle of kettles,
These dying rose petals,
Parmesan and cheddar,
The cheesier the better,
All of that pickled food,
According to my mood,
The battle of spices,
Those gingerbread slices,
Everything-
Everything reminds me of her.
"She's but a figment of your imagination,friend."
She's but a figment of my imagination, friend?
Apr 5, 2019
Apr 5, 2019 at 6:32 AM UTC
you are slouched against the back of a sofa with your
eyes half-closed, computer on your lap and
legs on the coffee table.
the sunlight from the large windows beside you
kisses just the corner of your forehead–
your neck and torso melt
into the chocolate-colored shadows.
it looks like the kind of morning you want to wake up to.
the kind that whispers in pretty lavender just when you think
there's never going to be another sunrise,
and makes you smush your puffy, tired eyes into a gentle smile.
the kind that puts you in the mood for blueberry pancakes
and piping black coffee, and a peaceful, quiet day at home.
you look peaceful
as the morning sunlight peeks into an apartment
that must be yours now.
it looks like a home.
it looks like a home, and not like the dingy shoeboxes
we lived in before, where you had covered the high hats
with pink sticky notes, complaining about the unnatural light,
and we stepped onto your rickety chair to climb onto your bed, and
ate Korean snacks with the ***** clothes on your floor for company
and comfort.
it looks like a home, complete with decorative pillows
and a lampshade, with tan couches and a coffee table, and
gorgeous natural light kissing the hair
you dyed a different color.
it looks like a home, with a pair of knees next to you
that must belong to someone who cares about you
enough to take a picture of you
on the kind of morning you want to wake up to,
as I still rot in the chocolate-colored shadows.
Jan 30, 2021
Jan 30, 2021 at 12:52 AM UTC
We all have a place
that we keep
(just in case)
our hord
or our stash
our clutter.
Things that had purpose
or by some chance
may be used again.
Oddities and nic nacks
Old candles and keys
obsolete rechargers and batteries
cables and thimbles,
coins of foreign currencies
manuals and letters and lint.
And they are stored
in shoeboxes,
beer crates
bottom drawers
wardrobes,
on garage shelves
or in hearts.
Jun 4, 2016
Jun 4, 2016 at 12:00 PM UTC
Shoeboxes in the upstairs prove
when veins were tight and hair was
that shining, gleaming, streamin,’
flaxen, waxen stuff of the 70s.
You would laugh if you could see
him in a toupee, shoulders broadened
against the end of a night shift, billy club
swinging steady by his side;
She, beautiful like Grace Kelly,
with high definition cheek bones,
her smile Rainbow Bright enough
to call the curtains down
and leave them that way forever.
But red velvet shrouds over them still;
His shoulders curve under tax forms and
knee replacements, cancer spots on his bladder and nose.
She plays with the extra turkey skin on her neck,
frowns at the grooves around her mouth.
The audience sees more than we want to.
They fade from unblemished black and white
into garish Technicolor,
Twenty-nine years
of dinner, ***** dishes left in the sink,
root canals, cat food cans,
******* stickers, laundry to fold, that milk
might be a week old.
They go on and I love them
for the death of romance,
for the things they've folded away in shoeboxes
for me to find.
Feb 5, 2013
Feb 5, 2013 at 1:55 AM UTC
I want to go home but I don't have a home.
I live in the middle space between where you're driving from
and where you're driving to.
I live on backseats and inside large purses.
I live in vending machines
and beds you used to sleep in all the time
but don't sleep in anymore
because you moved away.
I live on driveways that got redone while you were gone,
and new haircuts you couldn't see because you weren't there.
I live on promises that we'll do something.
I live in those cool new sunglasses you got,
but they broke,
and I never got to see your wear them.
I live in the little space between you and your lover,
the one that feels like "I love you"
but really means
"I love you, but I'm not in love with you."
I live on unsatisfactory naps
and the island your friends put you on when you finally said what you'd been wanting to say.
I live under the rug when you complain about people behind their backs
because no one really knows how to tell someone they don't like them
for who they are...
as a person.
I live in every spare shoebox that isn't filled with notes
and gets jealous of the other shoeboxes that are filled with notes.
I live on the top bunk
and I've never fallen off
but I'm still kind of scared that I will one day.
I live on the laugh that lets me know you're still listening.
I live where I never wanted to live,
but I live here,
because I choose to live here.
And you live there because you choose to live there,
even if it doesn't seem that way.
I'm here and you're there.
I'm here for you and you're there for me,
even if it doesn't seem that way.
This is where I live.
You should send me a letter some time.
Apr 22, 2010
Apr 22, 2010 at 5:07 PM UTC
At 2:30 a.m., I drink a beer,
as if it is a crushed Ambien.
I light a joint (the parents are gone for the weekend).
My girlfriend is asleep in the basement,
eyes closed, lightly snoring,
the left side of her face is covered in scars
and burn marks.
I look around my room:
white and blue Ralph Lauren shirts
hang from the lampshade,
the collars and sleeves are layered with dust.
The bookcase is littered
with shoeboxes, novels,
and poetry collections.
I take a drag from my joint
and realize my ears are full of static,
as if they had been packed
with black and white TV sets.
There’s the faint sound
of a car
passing by.
The car is a reminder: Civilization,
glass buildings,
happy hour
at my favorite hole-in-the wall
in Chinatown.
I’m naked, but
not totally bare.
All I’m wearing are blue boxer briefs,
as though it is my uniform
for my current occupation
as a poet.
The blinds are open
and I wonder if I open the window and jump out,
will anyone give a ****
My therapist will probably label me as suicidal,
if I mention that last thought.
I think I’m just restless and idle.
I take another chug from my beer.
I’m hunched over a notebook,
and writing with a blue pen,
not because I think I’m an authentic writer.
But because my computer’s in the basement
and I don’t want to wake her; I love her.
But I can’t stand her critiques, in regards to me.
Maybe I can’t handle the harshness
in her honesty, as if it is a foreign language
coming from a stranger who I’ve known for years.
I’m not sleepy.
I’m scared.
Scared about growing up,
scared about having to stop
giving a ****
and finally having
to care about
my life.
Dec 15, 2016
Dec 15, 2016 at 12:47 PM UTC
He taught me the pleasure of discipline,
and he taught me the discipline of pleasure
and though they were as different as winter and spring
they both loved me at my worst
opened their hearts like shoeboxes for a broken bird
craved and cradled the gentle fragility I was
their bruised rose, sweet and imperilled-
My loves, my loves!
Could you have ever loved me at my best?
Jan 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015 at 11:02 PM UTC
There must have been some leftover
Ticket stub mementos
Of your other life as a bus driver,
Bachelor, mystery man about town:
Faded polaroids containing
A slice of arm, of back
Though as a driver, you would have seemed
Mainly a rear view
To all the people on the tour buses you drove.
Some days you surely would have intruded,
Unknowingly, behind the welcoming hugs captured
In still black and whites;
The practical jokes breaking out in transit;
And tearful departures caught in snapshots.
In their lives you passed by so quickly,
A flicker of shadow
Forever hovering just at the edge
Of their days journeys,
Not even remembered as an afterthought.
You would have stayed there
In the background,
Your image often captured while
Taking the furtive smoke,
Stretching out your legs,
Checking the tire pressure.
Though we did not know
One another then
I can visualize the carefulness with which
You would have tailored your own route.
If I could gather up all the scattered,
Torn and trampelled puzzle pieces
Of your once upon a time life-
Thousands of amputated parts of you,
In my imaginings-
Now lodged in a thousand dusty shoeboxes
In the tops of stranger's closets;
Maybe then I would no longer be haunted
With the idea that the invisible fragments of you
Carry on a secret existence
In obscure places you never even visited
And beyond all reach of any capacity
To locate or recognize them.
Apr 27, 2010
Apr 27, 2010 at 9:15 PM UTC
Maybe you were never really there
Maybe the park never happened
I could never prove it
All evidence was destroyed
In the wake of your sudden departure
Memories faded
Like old photographs
Tucked away
Forgotten in shoeboxes
When you flood my mind
I write you letters to dispel your ghost
A one sided conversation
With your unknowable future
Boxes full of unsent letters
Someday I'll burn them all
And hope that the smoke
Carries my words to you
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 3:38 PM UTC
Once I would've filled my shoebox with tangible memories
Materialistic items
But movie tickets, receipts, newspaper clippings, they all have something in common
They all fade
Cease to be anything but scraps of recycled material
I have long since moved on from
Temporary importance
I fill my shoeboxes with abstract now.
What's in your box?
Mar 2, 2015
Mar 2, 2015 at 1:59 PM UTC
I want to write long rambling letters
Like Ginsberg, Kerouac Burroughs
Stream of consciousness
The sea of unconsciousness
But I have no correspondents
No one writes letters
None of my friends ever have
No one puts pen to paper
Texts are ethereal wisps of smoke
Letters are concrete things
That belong in old shoeboxes
Until the words fade into obscurity
I should deliver my letters to the void
With no mailing address, no stamps, no nothing
Just drop them in mailboxes
Like a single raindrop falling into the sea
The words won’t be trapped
In my head or in in old notebooks
Or in undiscovered corners of the web
But floating out there in the kosmos forever
Oct 2, 2016
Oct 2, 2016 at 2:43 AM UTC
She rested her thin hands beside her keyboard
and proofread the email to her landlord.
She was adamant about getting the most
from her lease and, though wealthy,
insisted on knowing the price of everything.
Milk is almost five dollars and gas is almost milk.
Littered around her bedroom were shoeboxes
of handmade jewelry, pearls, and war correspondence,
each as fragile as a land mine. Loose soil footsteps,
shrapnel, and a Sofield soldier torn in two.
May 24, 2014
May 24, 2014 at 3:13 PM UTC
Walls, painted purple and red
Closing off from society a black bed
Made up carefully and neatly with care
Looking inward, everything appears clear
The walls, covered with posters suggest
A young man, with nothing to confess
The monster energy banner hanging there
Shows a normal teen, one without care
The Xbox on the shelf, wires hidden away
The detail to cleanliness goes without say
Shown also by the kept up desk
No single paper rebelling, attempting to make a mess
Multiple chairs, all in range of the tv
Always thinking of others it would seem
But what lies beneath the elaborate ruse
Waiting to go off, with a short fuse
Open the drawer in the flawless desk
And see a pill bottle, hidden, unconfessed
Label ripped, with pen marks in place
"Emergency, the only escape"
Look under the papers, with 100 stamped
And find cigarettes, written on them, ******
The slow, warm sensation held within
Slow form of suicide, it would be okay then
Open the closet now, overlook the clothing
The button ups, and suits all neatly hanging
But look above, to the shoeboxes stacked
And notice the box hidden in the back
The box says goodbye, with blood on the side
Throw off the lid, which has to be pried
The tape on the inside, rips away to reveal
A note folded neatly, with a staple to seal
Underneath, a razor, which shines in the light
New and unused, sharp, almost hurting by sight
But why is the box so heavy
Open the secret bottom, you'll see
There is money inside, hidden away
What is it for? Maybe the note would say
Open it carefully, not to rip it
Before you read, you may want to sit
"Dear mom and dad, I'm sorry I'm not
Not the son you want dad, I'm stronger in thought
I've never had brawn, but I've tried, I swear
I've dealt with the pain, but I can't, it's clear
And I'm sorry mom, that I'm not enough
School is so stressful, it's harder, it's tough
I've been top of my class, but that was my best
You want more from me, but I need to rest."
One could know these terrible truths if they look
If anyone cared to open his book
He's more than the synopsis, and the cover too
But it may be too late then, ending the story too soon
Apr 14, 2016
Apr 14, 2016 at 3:33 PM UTC
there is nothing quite like being with you ...
sitting cross-legged on your warm crumpled comforter in dim amber light
with hunched backs against the white stone wall,
silently working to piece each other together,
merging thoughts and shoulders,
falling into each other's gravity and orbiting like stars–
we couldn't figure out
how to get any closer ...
we lived in shoeboxes then,
in ***** laundry and ramen-flavored freedom,
the soundtrack in our background
shuffled steps and muffled laughter through thin walls,
pencil scratches and elevator dings,
wooden doors and heavy coats,
cars in the snow rushing by our open windows,
hot cocoa, creaking bedsprings, and
singing–
I have been listening for the music in the things here–
I have searched in comforters, in stone walls,
in laundry and ramen,
in slippers and open mouths and pencils and elevators and doors and coats and cars and snow and windows and chocolate and bedsprings and everyday I try to remember something else I can dissect:
some texture, some melody, some pattern, some rhythm
where you might exist too,
but your music
is nowhere else.
we live in big empty houses now,
in hardwood floors and toothpaste-flavored loneliness.
I can still hear our shoeboxes
and feel the pull of our gravity
somewhere
fading ...
Oct 9, 2020
Oct 9, 2020 at 2:16 AM UTC
God isn't a face
isn't a finite place
no bird by mouth
or word by flight
quit trying to fit the universe into your shoe box
darling and
through energy in the simplest of ways
started light in days.
Oct 7, 2012
Oct 7, 2012 at 9:52 PM UTC
Returning to you sylvia in the black week of no moon:
the carapace
the awkwardness
aflame with evidence
the jew-net of Poland
-- your rack of guilt.
to fly at the sun or burn in its shadow
emptying pockets before you leave
you reap an abandoned harvest, but
the acolytes who call and call hear the ringing of rocks;
bells around the necks
of ghosts
lying down in
hallowed halls, somewhere bellowing
their words
like yours
punishing me
punching me up the middle,
every image jagged remedy
my **** to my heart
jammed with grief,
throat swolen with loss
the case of your broken bits;
crockery splintered
in capsules or
shoeboxes or drawers carefully there, there
you are lips pressing
cold glass,
to kiss you to drink your warmth
impossible
after death I hear you;
crow sends your messages
but sweet sister that’s not why you call
inimical oven: cavern and synagogue,
I am undone
discovering buried treasure.
in the breath of trees you are
somehow there,
in the quick-slip of feet across smooth linoleum
my mausaleum agrees with your arrival
but in the hour before dawn
in the silent roaring volume
you never hear of my love for you
we are cold lovers
both agony
MChallis © 2000/2014
Jan 1, 2015
Jan 1, 2015 at 1:59 AM UTC
Some are hidden by
Long sleeves baggy sweatshirts
Behind bloodshot eyes
And stale breath
Written in light graphite
On crinkled sheets
In shoeboxes
Therapy sessions
And 2am text messages
Sep 9, 2015
Sep 9, 2015 at 8:44 AM UTC
With the
Miracle of paper
And parchment
And stone
Think of all the things
We would not know
If ink and paint and blood
Had not stained vellum
And canvas
And skin
History and fantasy
And love lost
And found
The poems and plays
And battles
Of nations triumphant
And ruined
Lords and their Ladies
Beggars and theives
The bard
And the Muse
All hidden and stored
In shoeboxes
Stuffed with envelopes
Of confessions
And truth
Bounded by hand and stich
Between hard leather covers
Countless pages
That have survived
The relentless sands
Of time
And foul weather
And flood
Long after our flesh
Has rotted and feed the worm
And our bones have
Dissipated to earth and gust
Paper will still
Hold the secrets
And history
Of love
The miracle of paper
Stained by the pen
moved to dance
In my hand
As I scrawl your name
And confess
I Love You
Jul 14, 2016
Jul 14, 2016 at 5:22 AM UTC