these sheets feel like a sea beneath me, but i’m still unsure if i’m just the floating debris or the shipwreck in its entirety. i crawl out of bed just to say that i did despite having an anchor for a heart and i wonder if that’s what separates a castaway from driftwood – the attempt to swim. so i flail toward an empty horizon, despite having salt water for blood; the fish coast by and hear me gasping for breath, but they scoff and swear that i’m drifting at best.
-
“i plagiarize people”
i won’t ever write like Shakespeare
and i don’t fall in love with men like Romeo
who fall in love at first sight
because i couldn’t look like Juliet if i tried.
but a love like yours could make
even a mediocre poet like me
pen marvelous poetry –
a love less like a muse
for my crawling thoughts,
and more like a cocoon,
that sprouts wings from rot.
but sometimes i feel like a fraud when i craft,
because i swear i’ve never made
anything beautiful from scratch;
i plagiarize people and all that surrounds,
it’s now what i write that’s beautiful,
it’s the things i write about.
-
“festering”
you speak so angrily, as though letting go is simply that: unclenching my fingers and dropping my hurt to my toes, as though i wouldn’t fling it like a frisbee if i could, but it just hooks into my palms like barb. and i dig and i pry to try and dislodge it, only to bleed repeatedly from spikes that stuck me ages ago. the past is in the past, you say, though these pricks make it feel permanent; there’s no future to face if everything feels like yesterday or years before. there’s no moving forward if my feet remain rooted in history, a history that’s starting to look less like a thing i can bottle up and more like a grave that you dug for us both; you climbed out and demand that i follow, but now i’m festering, alone.
-
funny how i breathe
yet you treat me like i’ve died.
though i think to myself
if a funeral was held
you’d just reject the invite.
-
“beautiful catastrophe”
our lips collide like cars wrecking on a street,
but one man’s crash site looks like another’s masterpiece.
they swear any passionate love has its sparks,
so who cares how these fireworks start?
when you tell me i’m as pretty as a planet,
i consider there’s beauty beneath all the damage.
but when the smoke dissipates,
you’ll leave me mauled in your wake
like scrap metal demolished
by a wrecking ball;
you wonder how you made it here, with me,
but i just wonder how i’ve made it at all.
-
“purpose”
he loves me because i’m beautiful – beautiful in my thoughts, beautiful in my actions, beautiful in my words, beautiful in the pictures he asks for and saves, beautiful in his arms, beautiful in his car and in a bed and beautiful to touch, and beautiful close and beautiful far.
they love me because i’m beautiful – beautiful in my concern, beautiful in how i love, how i laugh, how i cry and how i live and how i grow, beautiful because i’m light even when i’m messy, even when i cry, even when i’m sick, i’m light in their days and i am light in their nights, beautiful when i come and beautiful when i go.
i don’t believe anyone loves without reason, whether the purpose is to take or to have or to keep or to hold, but for whatever reason i am loved and that’s success, sevenfold.
-
“shopping list”
the only time i’m ever organized are the days i jot down shopping lists for grocery trips, and even then, things i never wrote still wind up in my cart. most days i brush my hair, but some days i’ll just toss it up because i simply don’t care. and some days i color coordinate and other days i’ll slip into something that’s not even mine to wear. i have birthdays and favorite things and interests for other people logged into my mind, but most mornings i will stew in bed for an hour or so, struggling to remember the value of my own. in fact, i’m a lot like my phone; i’ve got pictures and little notes and poems stored in a variety of apps like sections of my brain. there’s so many different folders and there’s so many different albums, so many things i don’t erase, i imagine now i have little space. it’s a mess in my home and it’s cluttered in my phone, it’s chaos in my head and there’s disorder in my soul. but i still make my lists and i still make my memos, the ones i sometimes forget to even read, because i think that’s as “in control” as i could ever be.
-
“floral lover”
floral lover,
beautiful and fragile
should you need a drink
i will drown you in love, not water
and warm you with laughter, not lighti will watch you grow for me,
outstretched towards the skies
and then watch you shrink away,
as your affection withers and dies.
-
“sanctuary”
what a beautiful soul you used to own until you gave it away to someone else to hold. someone you assumed you could trust, someone you thought who would give it back. then they didn’t, but you didn’t mind, not at all. then they tried but you refused to take it, told them it was theirs now, to keep. “just be gentle,” you said. “don’t you like it?” you asked. and they did. they even grew to love it. for awhile. now they just tuck it away in their pocket or stow it away in their basement, only looking at it when they need to remind themselves of the power they possess. soul snatchers, thieves? no. just another lover fallen out of love, overcome with greed and insecurities. you see, you reassure them that there’s someone there, someone always ready to give and give until nothing is left, but the remains of a tattered heart. share your best parts, bits of you, but never your entirety. never more than you can stand to lose. because now look at you, lying there, just a thing of skin and bones – rubble, when you should’ve been a sanctuary to call your own.
-
“footprint”
i grew up wanting to be a tattoo on someone’s arm, terrified that instead i’d eventually peel away and fade like the stickers on a binder. each headstone reposed in a cemetery was one more morbid reminder of how impermanent a body is, how forgettable names can be after they’re said and how unrecognizable faces look after you’ve passed them by. but as i walk, will my feet imprint the earth? if i’m not seen or heard, do i really exist? and if i’m forgotten after i’m buried in a coffin or stuffed in an urn, did i ever? can i be remembered without a legacy to leave behind in a book or a painting, or on a screen or from a skill? they say people never forget how you make them feel, so perhaps i’ll find comfort in being kind and i’ll hope that a gentle heart is enough to persist even after it’s stopped beating.
