reasons i want to say hello but don’t move my mouth to say ‘yes, please, i would like to go’ (aka: the irony of my twisted anxiety)
if i am an abyss, you are a circus ringleader constructing places to host your entertainment (places that jut out from my ribs and things) / if i am a living thing, you are a parasidic counterpart (feeding, leeching on my walls) / if i am an abyss, she is a trapeze artist going against your orders and painting friendship over my walls and dancing pretty words over the hateful things you taught me to think (she is a ray of sunshine in a dark place) / if i am a child, He is my Father and loves me more than you could ever make me believe (i believed you for too many years, i thought myself incomplete without you, which i now know isn't true) / if i am a canvas, he paints over the things you've made me believe (tells me things he says are truths, but i still wonder if making me smile is really the best part of being my friend) / if i am a living breathing being of belief that has finally discovered that you treated me wrongly, then i am not sorry for writing so many poems with your name (so many, and you will never see a one of them, do you hear me?) / if i am a building, she is the one fixing all the windows and putting new locks on the doors and singing me soft tunes until i fall asleep (friendship never felt so much a companionship before) / if i am an abyss, then i will carve windows from my homes and dust myself off and lock the doors before going out to say hello to you (and finally move my mouth to say 'yes, please, i would like to go')
these are the reasons and not one of them will ever be told to you, do you understand, do you hear me, do you do you do you? understand me, please, mary lee. understand and leave me be to carve my windows and dust the sills and paint the walls the lovely colors. understand and leave me be to find new locks and hide new keys in new places. understand and leave me be to figure out whether or not you'll find one. understand and leave me be until i say i'm okay to see you again.
there is no golden door, emma lazarus
it is 47 degrees ; overcast & the kind of chill that creeps into your eye sockets & demands to be noticed ; you speak like a true child of the desert & let gila monsters puncture your lips with their claws ; you wonder how you are cold when it has not yet to storm
;
you've pinched calendar pages into melting rosettes ; & they disintegrate as you float them down the river ; & we all know how it goes : river, delta, ocean, & then where will you be ? drowning against the bleaching coral polyps ? or suffocating against The Abyss ?
/ you hate to not know what swims beneath you /
always moving air seeker *life written within the structure of her bones
I miss the presence of you . in the back of my lungs
hope you’re well with that soul of yours
that always seeks adventure
belonging to the world,
always gliding
with the stardust on your arms
and catching low sunsets,
a wanderer set in the humming of restless willows
and blooming dreams,
with wings build within those pained,
heavy structures
muscles always flexing, yearning for more space
footsteps moving in whispers
white and teak feathers
embracing
the ground
leaving a trail of you in everything you touch
I miss you
in the hours of our shared time,
yet knowing you need to fly on your own
but pass me by sometimes as the dawn filters light between your fingertips
just as it does with mine
the same sunrays touch our skin,
and it is the same moon that guides our paths
because in the end,
we are all tiny starseeds
just searching for a home
or, maybe, i am/hoping/that they/will.
i’ve got panic in my bones, it seems,
building up so rapidly and it won’t
stop
filling
it’s constricting, from the inside out
pressing up against walls that feel so thin
pressing up so hard it feels like they’ll burst, soon
my spine feels rigid against thick-pale-worn-leather skin
like poking spears from the inside, a warrior
standing close in between my ribs
clothes are becoming too tight, again
chest is far too large for shirts that felt all right last month
when will i stop growing? when will i feel as though i fit,
inside my skin? is not my skin a home,
for the bones and organs and the blood inside?
except it feels like great big caverns stuck inside
thin thin thin walls
and the ghost of grief drifts between,
through hallways and rooms and up to HQ,
where he operates on a dusty-cobwebbed-rusted control system,
spinning wheels when he so decides and
cranking bars up to their highest extent, this is when i feel exhausted at the surge of
energy,
the ghost of grief shoves levers up and down and sends telepathic messages to smaller workers,
the snails of loss and hummingbirds of fear,
and then the ghost of grief sits back and maybe
maybe maybe maybe he grins with crooked white teeth lined up oddly on crooked
white jaws, while he watches the snails of loss slither over dry dry dry bones
until they reach the fingers, where they type words inside small boxes and say,
‘hello, i am doing fine; how are you?’
and the ghost of grief might grin while he watches the
hummingbirds of fear flit round and round and round
my head and round round round the place where my heart supposedly lies
and he’ll watch as these birds will spin me so far down into
great big tornadoes of SELF-HATE and into the large crashing waves of
THE WORDS THEY DON’T SAY (BUT, OH, THEY MUST MEAN) and even into
the CRACKS IN STABILITY made from earthquakes shaking me on the outside,
almost as much as how much i am shaking on the inside.
but the ghost of grief will walk down from HQ late at night,
and he will say, ‘a job well done, today, a job well done, i think i’ll say!’
and he will stand tall in between by ribs, like a great big man coming in for a hug
because he is so large that that is the only place he’ll fit
and he’ll take up his big, old spears
and he will array them in such a way that they will point my spinal cord
in odd ridges poking out of my skin
(as they are doing right now)
and he will close his eyes,
and he will sleep--
as i am unable to do, with snails of loss and hummingbirds of fear still
slithering and spinning inside of me.
the ghost of grief will sleep,
and i will try to close my eyes,
and fight off the fear of the coming day
with very weary arms and very weary swings,
until i will fall, to the ground,
unable to keep do anything more than
lie with eyes wide open and hope the vultures don’t pick me dry
(drier than i all ready am).
or, maybe, i am
hoping
that they
will.
Red
I should be working on an essay but I'm not but whatever I need my professor to email me back anyway.
Passion,
Love,
Fingers interwined,
Fires raging in our eyes.
This is the color of my blood
When the pain cuts deep,
Scarring my skin.
Anger,
Hate,
Blades in hand,
Drops of blood staining the floor.
This is the color in my soul,
Shamefully, humanly so,
Making me just like my kin.
focus
this is how it always is
the lift of your mouth,
the tilt in your eyes but
not towards me : you're looking away
water laps at my feet and i
kick it but it lashes out, wrapping a
tendril of cold-soaking water around my
ankle and
there are birds here
underwater?
floating by your sound
it's the sound of your laugh ringing ringing ringing
it rings
bell chimes and that's the noon-time warning:
time to what?
shaking myself and trapped by a seaweed
cage of cloudy structures just
hoping to catch a glimpse of
you or even just myself in a
mirror would be nice but its all
so suddenly dark and
when did i get just so
lonely alone
The girl of light and dark
tell me a story
the one with the girl
in blue teared oceans
with red winged scars
and a black filled heart.
tell me a story
the one with the girl
who dances in glass roses
with white whispered secrets
and frozen violet hands.
tell me a story
the one with the girl
with mossy green life
yellow kissed cheeks
and tender pink lips.
tell me a story
the one with the girl
who breathes rainbows.
who wakes in orange rays
and falls asleep in milky indigos
who bathes in light and dark
to grasp what is ungraspable.