Not a Cicada Poem
It’s about fireflies,
how, as a child, my mother would fashion
their abdomens into earrings.
Those nights, I’d cry, not
at the cruelty, but the feeling,
the glow on my earlobes
a brittle-cut gorgeous.
While we wore the jewelry, we’d pitch
baseballs over the grass, watch the beanfields
frame the sunset as it deadweight-dropped
over us, draped us in starred space
where we, too, were blinking,
half-dead satellites. I never liked
the light I carried. I never wanted
to burden other bodies
the way their bones burdened me.
When the cicadas came, I worried
what my mother would make of them:
their shells finger puppets on the shelf,
how I’d hate the way they felt on my skin
but I’d never tell.
A Days Break—extended
Anxiety attacks have become the martyr of my story
stabbing away at my sanity
clinging to my skeletons
ripping up my clarity.
But I am trying
trying to train my own hands
not to shake
but to be brave and clench the desire that lingers in my heart and
hums throughout my soul.
I am trying
to face the pain that demands my attention
as it taunts my life
with every waking moment.
I am trying...
to let go,
to breath,
to control the uncontrollable by seizing its control over me.
a machine
my gears.
g.r.i.n.d.i.n.g. t.o. a. h.a.l.t.
w r e d e
o n g s
s*n*a*p*p*e*d c*i*r*c*u*i*t*s
a n d
spl it wi res
missing
memories
(shattered stories)
running & running & running
but
this
must
end
i’ll plug myself into the wall
~and hope~
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Coffee
If we were having coffee, it would be at the local place you work at. You'd make me a mocha with extra chocolate in it. You always add too much chocolate, and you don't make me pay extra for it, because that's just how we work.
If we were having coffee, we'd make small talk with the bartender, talking about how adorable her new baby is. Then we'd walk along the old sidewalk, side by side, sipping too-sweet coffee, laughing about whatever snippet of dialogue we've just said and forgetting it moments later.
If we were having coffee, life would be a blurry haze of sugary caffeine. We'd live, we'd laugh, we'd love. All of our lives would stretch out before us.
If we were having coffee, we'd be together, if only for a moment, and that's all that I need.
mature
if we were having coffee, you’d probably tell me how “mature” i am. for drinking such an “adultish” drink such as this.
if we were having coffee, i’d probably be choking the drink down, wondering if i could ask for whipped cream and chocolate syrup and two tablespoons of sugar and milk chocolate chips and some sort of really sweet creamer and not have you scoff and tell me how “childish” i am and how i “need to learn to grow up.” if i ended up asking, i would probably laugh and say something like “oh, but i don’t want to grow up, not if it means i have to give up all this sugar” in response. you would laugh. you might tell your husband later that night, gushing about just how silly i am. i am so stinking silly, i would tell myself sarcastically before bursting into giggles, and then tears, curled up against the safety of my concrete floor and denim rug.
if we were having coffee, i would bring my stim toy and mess with it quietly beneath the table, where you could not see it. you do not need another reason to call me childish, now do you? even if it is only for my anxiety. my anxiety caused by this entire metaphorical situation. you would think me childish for needing the stimulation, and would laugh at me for having any anxieties whatsoever--because i am so very safe with you, aren’t i?
if we were having coffee, you’d probably ask me how i am. i’d say something along the lines of my being “fine” and laugh to myself, quietly, thinking of the image with text i sent to someone who i’d much rather be talking to than you.
if we were having coffee, i would ask how you were doing, too. and i would sit alone, nodding and smiling, pretending i am such an “adult” for understanding all of the things i shouldn’t need to understand. things like how your taxes are coming along and things like how your extremely-gross-novel-that-makes-me-want-to-vomit story that you’re reading is going. i would nod and ask questions at all the right times. i would make light jokes of the things you don’t really like, if only so that you might be happy about them later.
if we were having coffee, you’d probably ask me what i’ve been writing of late. i would not tell you of the multiple stories and ideas i’ve been baking in the oven that is my brain. i would not tell you of my poetry, either. you’d want to see the poems. and you’d wonder why i’d say no. and i would not have the heart, nor the courage, to say that i write so much about you and that i am angry at you and that i do not like the way you treat me and that i am trying, so very badly, to move on. to learn to say “no” to you. to learn, to learn, to learn. i would not say any of this. i would change the subject--to taxes, maybe.
if we were having coffee, i don’t know what i’d say to fill the space between the things i can’t say and the things i don’t have the heart, nor the courage, to say.
if we were having coffee, i would recall all the things you would say and i would store them up and stew on them, before hating myself for nine consecutive days afterwards. i would probably write twenty-three poems about it the day of and the day after. and i’d write so many in the days following. and i would feel more exhausted than i do at the moment, only thinking of even having coffee with you.
if we were having coffee, i would begin to hate the word “mature.”
Medicated and Motivated
It's not enough. I am - what? For some reason I think of Virginia Woolf, who had a room of her own, and also stones in her pockets. Do we die for art, or does art die with us?
I'm not actually that retrospective. I'm just a girl. An administrative assistant who writes poems under her desk on post it notes, hoping to god today isn't the day someone empties the trash and finds out about my existential crisis.
I have forgiven my enemies. My mother is sincere now, and I am fond of her absolute disdain for everyone. When I was a child, she would throw things and chase me and call me unspeakable names, and I learned to internalize it as one does. Therefore, I am convinced everyone hates me. But her vocabulary is utterly fantastic and I laugh heartily at her mockery of others, her ability to laugh at what is utterly ridiculous.
I am a psycho. I count out the number of times I read sentences because I am anxious I will get the meaning of them wrong. I am convinced cameras are watching my every move at work. When I write those aforementioned poems under my desk, I make sure the person reading them will be entertained, so there's always some comedy to my madness. I do not forward emails because won't the sender know? They won't. That's the point.
In a panic, I text people back whom I haven't responded to in days because I was writing and submitting to contests. I refresh my email twice a minute. I apply to new jobs, eager and desperate to not have an old crow of an office administrator tell me to file the paperwork for a third time in one day. I'm done. And I am over it.
In 2018, I spent New Years Day at McLean, a mental hospital where Sylvia Plath and other illustrious poets slept and ate while overly medicated. I saw the ball drop at midnight and heard a song sung, one I hated at the time but now relish. It reminds me of sickness and being utterly out of control. Nostalgia, if you will.
I don't remininsce often, I am far too tired and still hopelessly medicated into sedation. But one thing I know for sure is: I'm still figuring out who this body is. I breathe. But do I think? For myself, about anyone else at all?
It is hard being mentally ill, harder to fight it, easiest to write about it.
we gotta spend more time together
“I was ten years old,” she said,
her head resting on
my shoulder. “And the flames
covered the damn sky. Though our
neighbor was actually
lucky. Lucky I
didn’t burn his house. I mean,
motherfucker had it
coming. You don’t run over a girl’s
puppy and expect to
get out scratch free, you know?”
“I too had a neighbor
who ran over
my puppy with his tractor,” I said.
“I think I was also around
ten.”
“And what did you do
about it?” she asked
“Nothing,” I said
“What? But how?”
“Like I said, I was just some
insignificant kid from
the countryside. All I could
do was cry.”
“My God,” she said, “that’s so
fucking lame. Where’s
that neighbor of
yours today?”
“I’ve no idea. Perhaps he’s dead.
He was pretty old
when it all happened.”
“If that’s the case then
you have the duty to
go piss on his grave. At least.”
“Um… I wouldn’t know where
that is. And besides,
I learned to forgive.”
“That’s what the weak say. What
kind of man are you?”
“One who doesn’t hold grudges?”
She sighed. “We gotta spend
more time together.”
“And learn from one another?” I asked
She didn’t reply
***
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