Handlebars
The smell of the city
I got warm feelings from a Mike’s Pastries box on the train
Like a warm haze in summer at the docks with a cannoli and a striped umbrella
The temporary bliss we lived in
Poor as we were there was sun and
July was our month,
Cockroaches and nights up crying
A boat ride to Salem in my pirate dress
Cornflower blue sheets like a glimmery dream
As I dance along the edge of 16 hour days
Candles ever burning on that shelf
Homeless gutter surfers laughing at me and my coffee
My last day off was Monday,
A month ago
Men and women that blur before my eyes
The weight of my body heavy in our bed
A bike ride along the river where your brother found his mind
He didn’t know he’d lost
Your ring left in the Target bathroom
My bones made of iron and ice cream
Rigid exterior
I’ll always remember the perfume of lemon and sage
Staring out at the lights on Stuart Street
I was a columbine blowing in the breeze
Amidst a sea of cacti
We danced
In the living room
To old music
You played on your piano
#love #music #poetry #sadness #boston #newengland #newenglandpoetry
Crocodile Tears
You cannot tame a woman with half the strength I have -
I was never meant to bend to the will of another
And yet still I will give you everything I have to offer
We had a broken beauty
And still a broken familiarity
That makes it all too hard and all too easy to reach you
Your voice sounds like old music
On a radio
To my ears
Your words beat like the drums of my memories
Green grass in the field behind the stadium in summer
I want my love back
#love #heartbreak #poetry
Angel
I think I started my new life
As an anorexic angel.
I woke up to my chapped pink lips
Breathing snow that looked like ash
In a world full of that heavy dampening
Like the afternoon your stereo
Fell into the lake.
My milk skin, stretched too tight
Across my curled bones
Had long forgotten the flavor
Of your cigarette stains on the curtains.
I stretch out my paper thin body
And I swear that my dark hair is
The only contrast between
My shallow collarbones and the winter.
I was clothed by the nudity
That is thrust upon us by innocence,
My soft, slight, shivering breaths
Puffing up into space,
Unsure of their destination.
Wearing a blanket of goosebumps,
Reaching out with dry hands
And cracked nailbeds
Sent me reeling into an ocean of white
A blinding silence,
Like a mute into a trumpet.
I was not born beautiful.
The first sounds I made were that of choking
On the memory of my crimes of self-hate.
My first word was why,
My first movement a nauseous whirl
Trying to collect some semblance of reality
Inside this blinding whiteness.
I was born with the aftertaste
Of the little white pearls I had swallowed
And now found spilt about my breast,
The acid memory of wanting to die,
The corrosive scent of my fear.
I think I was stillborn,
With aching bones and a breaking hair
And no nourishment within my skin.
My dented halo tastes like iron,
And it’s wrapped around my throat.
My wings are ragged and white, so white,
So new and so dead.
I let the water race over my skin
Until it ran as cold as the ashes that fell
Because I wasn’t pure enough for snow.
I let the memory settle in my mind,
The way it felt when
You invaded my brokenness.
I traced your scratches on my hipbones
And the soreness in my limbs.
I laid on the floor
And prayed
That God would have more mercy
On his little anorexic angel.
PTSD
Promise me I’ll never stand in the dark crying by myself again.
Remember that I am only fighting against ghosts that touch me as though they were stable.
Open your arms and comfort my sobs, I cannot sleep because of all this
Screaming that burns my throat as I am thrust into nightmares I once lived.
Even the inflexible concrete cannot withstand the depth of my anguish-do not leave me to carry its weight alone.