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One of the most beautiful thing
I have ever seen
Is in your eyes
I have this revelation—
like some eerie recurring dream.
It dips and cleanses my conscience
for a full five seconds of clarity.
A situation, short in stature, where
I can take slow breaths knowing that
I am able to walk away from this
bearing enough grit and grin to
repair all of my cracks and voids
with something stickier—
something I found on my own.

I have this revelation—
and in it, the boy is just a smudge
in the upper left-hand corner
of a yellowed photo
depicting a new me
and a new someone else
skinny dipping in some unnamed waterfall
deep in the secret folds of Appalachia.
In it, the smiles on the faces
are so incandescent
that the person holding the photo
doesn't notice
the charming tummy rolls, disheveled hair
or the smudge in the upper left-hand corner.

I have this revelation—
happiness should not be Rubik's-cubed into impossibility.
I have this revelation—
happiness should be simple.
Happiness should be simple.
            Happiness should be.
                                   Simple.
© Bitsy Sanders, June 2014
 Feb 2016 Writam Allan Ray
Holly
There's a million ways to love a soul.
And I'm done holding back, just so you know.

Because I love so many people in this day to day life.
I can't hold it back, just to be someone's wife.

There's the way I love you.
I want to have our home.
I want to go on adventures.
Never leave you alone.
Make silly faces.
Caress your hair.
Make goofy videos.
Cuddle our pets.
Maybe a baby...
Fancy that.

There's the way I love you.
Always messages a few a times a year.
Happy birthday. Merry Christmas.
How are you my dear?
How is the wife? How are the babies?
I found your letter.
Man, we were crazy.

There's the way I love you.
You taught me so much.
A better way to think.
A better way to touch.
How important it is to value myself.
And how to let go.
That's why I love you so.

And there's the way I love you.
The unapologetic ways.
In which you take my hand
But make everyone the same.
The way you say,
"I just want to see you"
And even though it's temporary,
You make time seem brand new.

There are too many ways to love a person.
How you can be so sure what is real?
Which one is forever?
Which one would should we feel?

But I wouldn't be me, with out all of this painful action.

I want a world that's not afraid to love.
Not sure why I wrote this one
This is the place
Where one afternoon
I'll dance by the rosebushes
But be bleeding and bruised
Darling, my thoughts would break you
This heart is like a black hole
Pieces of you are everywhere
As the darkness unfolds
Here is a day you begged to never come
I'm melting then freezing
Melting then freezing
Its raw, its icy
But hot on your breath
This creation of god
Motions to the devil
So keep me where the light is
This storm that you call personality
Always changes
Calm to ill
My nerves are aching
Pulsating
Calm to ill
So promise me
If you decide to go before I wake
You'll leave the light on
If not at some point
I will succumb for my own sake
We can't downplay the dreary days
I've lost myself completely
But to keep going
I just need to remember my name
So could you whisper it sweetly?
As far as the unsaid goes
Were you scared
Or trying to spare me?
Be truthful now
I can't afford to sink into your gravity
This is a permanent winter
The entire home is asleep but me
They long ago committed
To the heaviness of rosy dreams
I fall victim to insomnia
As my pillow is untouched
They tell me I pose my ruins well
As the next morning
I still have a clutch
I'll never be a champion
So paint my hands gold
Like a weak little bird in a man's hands
I yearn to delicately unfold
I think that I'm finally catching my breath
But its not my air
Its yours
Tell me how to power through
Because my nails are deep in the flesh of desperation
And we mustn't forget
Its only skin
There's no leeway for hesitation.
the first time you touched me
I went home and scrubbed my skin to rid your fingerprints
the last time you touched me
I couldnt stop drinking the sweet musk your embrace
sometimes I cant help but drown in the past
tonight
no matter how many tears shed
I will feel some kind of proud
knowing that despite all this loneliness
I wont cave
*and call you
getting there
Some nights I tremble
at the images dancing in my mind
of the times you had me under your lock
twirling to your tunes
entirely enchanted by the present moment
I quickly interrupt those images -
"tomorrow is a new day"
one more day I will go without you
and be just fine
one more day you will wake up and regret
the bullets of infidelity you shot through my heart
the dagger of betrayal you repetedly pierced through my abdomen
lies
you deserve an oscar for your 8 month long performance
a dramatic horrific tragedy would be the category
but I wonder what you would disclose in your acceptance speech
regret?   loneliness?   despair?
perhaps I'll never know
my mother said "karma will have him withering and you not even a clue"
let it be true.
I'd love to be your beltloops

                                             *so you'd come to me first when you're nervous
i wish i could help you face the world
i gave you everything I had
and when i had nothing
i took everything from everywhere else
and left it on your doorstep

you repay me by haunting my heart with the constant reminder
that instead of me
you have another girl wrapped around you and your white linens
at this intimate hour
       *exactly two doors down
why does the heart resist moving on?
I want to start this off by saying that I still love you
And some mornings I wake up feeling like
Everything you touch is luckier than I am
Sometimes I feel empty
Because its easier when there’s nothing there
I miss your voice
When it was kinder
And some nights I hurt so much
I swear my body is bruised from the words you said to me

You were a band-aid drenched in loneliness
And some twisted mind above
Believes that I can wring out the insanity of all this
I’m trying so hard not to regret what I once wanted
But had I known what I know now
I would have never wanted you
Hell is only getting to make love to you in my sleep
And I’ve lived in hell for weeks

I initiated our first kiss
And I’m proud of this for two reasons
One.
Because it was down by the river where my grandfather’s ashes were scattered, along with your father’s
And in a way it made me feel like they were rooting for us to be happy –
Together.
Two.
Because that moment proved that neither of us are the people we seem
In all your confidence and glory you sat there staring at your shoes
While my fragile spirit made a brave leap toward your lips

I should have known it would never work
We’d look at the same stars and see different things
I have a long list of scraped knees but you never cared to ask me where I got them
Your apathy was more solid than my self-loathing
More solid that my sincerity
I told you the stories of what sculpted my scars
Stories that had my mind beating from the memories
But you have no patience for misery
And my misery really does love company.

As if you were a long awaited guest
Holding happiness at my doorstep
I welcomed you with open arms
But you were only in town for a night
And pain is my neighbor.
I forgot that having a big heart
Meant there was more at stake to be broken
Because I was so **** elated to give it to you
I’ve learned that we bend so we don’t break
That you don’t drown by falling in the water
You drown by staying there
I’ll keep loving you until I learn to love myself
I’m trying to swallow the fact that for now
Change is the only consistent thing I’ll get
I can only accept
that you will eventually live the regret
Of pushing someone away
Who only wanted to love you
I can only hope
You’ll torture yourself
Over your ambivalence when you had me
I wanted to be the only help you ever needed
But it seems your heart’s sickness is terminal
Now I am yet another thing
You can shrug off with indifference
I wish you let me help you.
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