the sound of your voice crawls against my throat [it's a tickle, a mockery, a mimic i cannot make / i crave, i'm addicted to the words that tumble from your mouth / i rather hear you again every day than feel the brush of your lips.] from the taste of my fantasies, my tongue has shriveled from the melancholy it leaves behind [i recommend to those who have never felt so unclose, don't recall the good times, since it reminds you that you can't go back to the past.] my soul associates, people with poetics: i remember people as lines, i press the seams of melodies so to see the shapes of their bodies [and that pitch she sings, the chorus of her tragedy / it's the chord i know your name by, it's a tune that i ache to share with you.] soon they whisper to me, though their comments slip past me entirely, the idealism of moving on [fictional concept if you ask me, there's always one song you hear once a decade yet still quote the entire thing effortlessly; you're that song to me]. my only wonders lay, in the safety you've become to me [does leaning far too much make you imagery or hate me?]

I feel,

Terrible.

Breaking in pieces,

Shattered.

Falling apart,

Cracked.

Shoved into a mold,

Of which I don't fit.

Told to advocate for myself,

And then told to be quiet.

Told that I have worth,

And then told they're disappointed in me.

Told that they love me,

And then told that they hate me for me.

Told that I don't need to diet,

And then told that I'm fat in the next sentence.

Told me that I'm beautiful,

And then told me I was an ugly thing.

So can someone please,

Please.

Help me.

I'm scared of here,

Anxious.

Feeling glum,

Falsely happy.

So what am I?

Hanging in the balance.

Too tired to fight,

To keep trying.

I need a breath of fresh air,

But there's no windows.

No door to walk through.

I need to forgive,

But how?

agonized identity // calloused thumb pads // broken chords for dissonant disappearances and // sad summers in mucky smog. // i tend to wonder if // i’d neglected to read // in primary school if i’d fled // from the bookshelves and // found solace in wet backroads would i // be at peace with my being // by now?

in waves of rushed tendencies // habits hard from attempted endings // flashes of past // envelop my gaze // unsurprised by the tired scratches // by the limelight’s damage to my skin. // i flash a strained smile i // stutter through my speech i // greet silence like a champ and // treat science like my rationale for // social scenes long missed.

reminisce with me in binary code // holes and slashes // batting eyelashes at the ghosts of lost // chances, fragments of // forgotten fidelity and unnoticed charm // the way time passes by // as if she’d lied about // how long she would wait. i would // sprint with my lungs, scream from // my legs if only they would // carry me to bliss by the due date. // i’m afraid i bask // in expired sunlight // with uninspired dreams // far too jaded for this life // its demands and my needs.

you big bruiser with the soft eyes, i found you lying in the train tracks at dawn, bathed in blue, as if the watery light could turn you holy. i was all red, covered in the burning sunrise, and the laughs you spilled on me like blood when i could you that you could have gotten yourself killed. wicked bruiser in the black denim jacket, i wish you'd learn that your face doesn't have to be bloody for me to kiss it better. we were two lovers, colorized and polarized, frozen between all the seasons, thawing our hearts in the basement when no one else was looking. you gave it all away to me, and i held it oh so carefully in my hands, your softness sitting on the couch and spilling like bloodstains. we weren't ready to be real, but we were. we weren't ready to color ourselves in, but the morning came, and the sun bled through our bodies, and we were given names. big bruiser in the combat boots, devouring the rotten plum dawn, teeth bared at the sky, how i wish i could go back and tell you to hold it in a little, to remember that sometimes this world is worth loving. sometimes it is.

I’m just saying I don’t believe Mercury would

hurt me like this. I mean we should be in love,

in each other’s cold orbits. It’s been far too long

since I’ve felt like anything other than a Lamictal symptom:

hangnailed & purple, this balling cloud. & unfortunately

the body makes more room for me.

Of course I pocket paint chips when I’m lonely.

I like my pink blue white

little striped America that pokes into my thigh.

I think Earth will be the next truly dead planet

which is fine, I guess, if you like dying

belly-up, awake to witness. I’ve tried.

My parents could never tell me the time

that I was born & that’s why I can’t sleep

good anymore. I mean well. I mean

the grammar of me doesn’t matter.

I could be so many untetherings. Predict my future,

the rings of surprises on all my fronts, & I’ll stop

waiting on some milky entropy to take me out.

I know I’m no Cassiopeia. But I’m working

on it. Before the seas swell, before the sky dips—

I’ll beat it. I promise I’m becoming

whatever self I’ve starred & plotted

the next time someone sizes up my chart:

LION SUN GRIEFSTRUCK MOON FUCKING RISING

Growing up, I got pretty acquainted with the definition of love. Not in the literal sense though, more in that sense you see and hear and feel. I got used to the idea of tangible love. And now, I know many people aren’t as lucky as I was, to know their biological mother, for her to know them back and get to keep her for seventeen years, but I did. I was that lucky.

Love, the tangible love, I knew was there when mother renounced her youthful body to create a human being inside of her. Love was spending sleepless nights with a smile on her face because she had to feed her new baby every hour. Love was working every day for eight hours to get some income to buy her baby that hella expensive formula from the supermarket. Love was hearing that baby cry the entire day and still having the patience to cuddle it in your arms until it fell soundly asleep. I knew all those actions meant love once I put some thought into them, a decade after they had happened.

I know the Bible paints hell as the space your soul goes to when your sins don’t equal your ‘good deeds’ tally. The absence of God, the entity that created you and loved you, because your soul was meant to be loved. And I think I’m starting to understand that now.

Love is essential for us, human beings. Something that cannot be seen but through actions, cannot be proven but by words, cannot be felt but by faith. And I was sure mother loved me. I am sure, maybe, she still does. I mean, the love I still feel for her, even now, it overpowers everything else. And love has a hazy characteristic, too. It is the strongest when everything else fails.

So, yeah, I’m a freshman in college, orphan of a mother, daughter of a widower, sister of another orphan of a mother, and I’m crying on the weekend of Thanksgiving. But that’s not because I have no thanks to give. On the contrary, I am way too thankful. For knowing and recognizing love at such a young age, for feeling it for seventeen years, and for being wise enough to know it won’t ever come again. Love like that cannot be duplicated or replicated, it is meant to be felt once in a lifetime, and I certainly did.

Love, like the soul, is unique to the giver. Everyone shows love different ways. My brother does it by trading awful jokes when he sees my sad eyes, to see if he might perk me up a little. My lover does it by saying sweet words and reminding me that, though my mother is gone, that love is still out there. And it is. It is alive in me, at least.

Love, then, does not erase itself. Once you have the wonder—or curse—of knowing it, it lives there. A mustard seed, a flower in the winter, it is undeniable. And though most of the time love is meant to be reciprocated, when there’s only one body left to feel it for the both of them, love lingers. It stays in the corner of your mind, bugging you when you’re falling asleep and you remember how love had a particular scent, coming from that person. You bury it, but you remember it when you’re driving down the street and their favorite song comes on the radio. And you collect it, for all those years, as long as your life lasts, until you find someone you can shed that love into, pour that love out of you and hope to fill someone else. In my case, I think if I’m lucky, that same love I learnt from mother will only be able to be replicated with my daughter. If I ever have one.

So, yes, I saw love when mother drove me to and from school against the clock because her lunch period was over. I saw love when she would refuse to eat so I could fill my starving stomach, and I saw love in that hospital bed, when she stayed just long enough so I could feel that love once again, memorize it, taste it, have a life ahead so I could miss it.

It comes in the love of a mother that, though gone, it is still enough to keep you going, even if you wish your organs would collapse one by one, too. Even if you wish it was you in the casket and not her. It is the love you still feel, writing piece after piece to pay homage to her memory.

So, if I knew such love I can depict it into words, I think you ought to meet my mother. Well… not in the full sense of the word, because, duh, you never will, but let me try.

My mother was my ally. She would be fierce when I was in danger, even if it was just a bully from school. My mother liked fancy high heels, but she also loved nude sandals. She did her makeup barely traceable, and her hair was always up in a ponytail with bangs at the front. She wore jewelry, not to brag but to look pretty, and she always spoke confidently, even when faced with her worst enemy. Yes, my mom was a lawyer, so she dressed and looked the part. She could sniff your lies and ask you to spill the truth, and she could intimidate you with fancy words she’d learnt in college. She had trouble sleeping because she always had a habit of planning, scheming and thinking ahead. Her laugh was peppery and if she had not been my mother, I would’ve been terrified of her. She was brutally honest and ruthlessly funny, and she could see the bright light in a picture full of black.

She was the same person who juggled her work enough to prepare a surprise party for me when I was ten, who planned a vacation every year to spend time with me, who patted the couch when my face was sullen and knew my crush had said a mean thing about me. The one who never complained over the always-there pile of dirty dishes, the stains on the floor because I had accidentally spilled coffee. She was the youngest daughter but the oldest mind, and she was the one everyone was jealous of. Not because she was wealthy, but because her soul was rich.

You see? Who will I ever encounter in the rest of my lifetime to match such characteristics? Even displaying it on paper makes it feel like it is a crafted character, but she is not. A year ago she was real and alive, and sad, and desperate. But breathing. And since she wasn’t a character, I couldn’t keep her alive for much more than her due.

In every one of those aspects I narrated, there was love. For herself, for her family, for her job, for her God, for life. She loved life as much as she loved me. And the way she did my homework for me when I was learning how to read, or how she managed to fit a trampoline into the garage because I wanted one as a kid, that is love. Is it not?

What I’m trying to say is, love isn’t a word. It is not a combination of letters so it adds to a syllable, and it is not something even movies can portray. Love is a combination of seconds that add up to years of knowing someone, but not even those decades are enough. Love, then, belongs to a person, just like the soul. For me, that was my mother. For you, that might be a sibling, your lover, or maybe no one. Not everyone is as lucky as I was.

And so, hell isn’t the place where you burn because you were jealous or surrendered to lust. Hell is the place you inhabit when that love is gone, and you’re left with its echoes, with the knowledge its existence was real but it is gone now. Hell, for me, has been the last year without her, with a father who complains over all those things she managed to do, not because she liked them, but because she loved me.

If you’ve ever been as lucky to meet such kind of love, don’t let it go. Take pictures of it, sing songs to it, write about it, touch it, hear it, live it. Because, one day it’ll be gone, and those memories will be the only thing that keep you from becoming loveless.

**

hi! this is. a piece i just wrote cause i was feeling nostalgic. i apologize for the sappy feelings in advance, and hope someone else resonates.

thank u for reading

profuse greetings, mel.

skip skip skip

once upon a time / i slept in half-lidded dreams of your curling smile and my eyes dancing in yours. / i was up to my neck in chocolate stares, darling. / and you / you weren’t even ankle deep. /

skip skip skip

your name never made it beneath my airborn feet. / i tripped too early and fell, my face melting in a watered-down confession. / for days, your wordless dimples watched me drown in chocolate, alone. / but i learned to laugh with collapsing lungs when your name swept in and out of somebody else’s mouth, / so i owe you a thank you, really. /

skip skip skip

i bandaged myself in tight threads of youth, the kind that comes neatly on a spool and dulls shame’s blinding glare. / when the threads ran out, i choked on the plastic remains and swallowed them. / they scratched my windpipe on the way down. / and i / i came up breathless. /

skip skip skip

i clutched cursive letters and charcoal blotches taken out of context. / how deliciously tragic it would have been if they weren’t. / i found myself pooling around the year’s edge, / and before the dripping began, / shame’s glare prodded me out the door, reminding me that reopening old gashes was my routine (like christmas mornings in a way). / with my head screwed on straight, my loosening thread didn’t even snag on a backward glance at you as i left. / perhaps it’s because the back of your shirt was in front of me. /

skip skip trip

so, dear, the alphabet is not to be trusted. / its song is contagious to short leaping legs proud, / and you shouldn’t hold the letter you land on close to your still-growing heart. / it may start to grow around it. /

tw: racial violence

history taught me white folks don’t care about our blood until they can wear it as nail polish. ma’am what shade would you like? perhaps the macabre of my ancestors, dressed by a haughty whip and slithering rope. you may always alternate colors as well! we have the scarlet cacophonies of our black boys. slurs beating skull, becoming bat and parents are told not to come to the ball game unless they wanna hold their child like a shattered flower bud, beautiful black boy never bloomed before his bruises did. and perhaps a blasphemous red sea? dip your crescent toes in tallahatchie river; claim emmet’s legacy and it’ll be gorgeous until it stains your white picket fence.

history taught me white folks don’t care about our blood until they can wear it as nail polish and i shame them though i know i am the salon. they say i claim my honey brown skin as a gown, fabrics ablaze. and i say soak me in your remorse. soak me, soak me. dilute the blood. this blood, this blood. take it. ma’am i can be your favorite color.

and when did i say this? i can’t remember but it must’ve been when i was drunk on discrimination. so desperate i’d seek another oppressor in the form of an ally? and no these words did not flow from my mouth like a red sea but they must’ve hid in the way i glance at my white friends with desire. or the way my pupils break whenever black history is taught as though it doesn’t reside in my neighborhood. or maybe it’s because i exist. aren’t i asking for your pity? your white pity drowns this land, making us a sunken bone and the vultures can’t find meat but are they even looking? yes, we are only bone and you know the beautiful thing about bone is it’s whiteness. strip us bare, strip me bare. ma’am, for when you want to wear us without brandishing grim. black is the new white and for once we are your favorite color.

this is just a short note :). As i told you before, i'm an exile from wtw (lol), but i decided to start my own blog. in there I will talk about real feelings. Depression, anxiety, weight gain, weight loss, basically, everything I always needed to hear but never found. if you have time, please swing by. it'd mean the world to me if you subscribed.

my very first post in getting to know me is up now! i'll leave you the link :)

https://melissagalindoleal.wixsite.com/melgetsreal