to the girl in love with Christmas lights
and the sweetened scent of pine,
the one too small for all that plagued her mind.
to the girl who lived a thousand lives
and ached so many nights,
the one with bones so new,
her heart aged twice the time.
to the girl who believed in forever and after,
smiling through tears to find laughter,
i’d love it if she stopped by,
but i’m afraid i’ve closed that chapter.
Tag: longing
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to the girl in love with Christmas lights
anxiety, Christmas, depression, grief, holidays, life, longing, loss, melancholygalaxies, mental illness, poem, poems, poetry, quote, sad, sad poetry, seasons, writing
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on a whim
but you don’t kiss me on a whim
and you don’t say you love me
like you’ve never loved someone like this.
but maybe i want more than i deserve,
perhaps i seek more than i am worth.
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am i something
am i something that can be loved far away
or something loved a little less,
the farther the distance?
am i something that can be savored
without being embraced
or will lonely nights feel like
grasping for ghosts that look like
the last time you saw me?
am i something that can exist
in your thoughts
while you live in a place
that i hope makes you happy,
but not so happy that you
start to forget to wish i was there?
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skipping
you infiltrate my thoughts like a song
i listened to excessively.
my mind’s a radio station and you’re a top-ten hit,
so your tragic chorus plays on repeat;
i’m a sucker for nostalgia, so i hum along to it.
life’s a vinyl record skip-skip-skipping like a kid
playing hopscotch in my haywire headspace.
because i can forgive like a saint,
but damn it i can’t forget,
and like a dachshund yearning
under the dinner table, i beg.
the future wants to welcome me in its embrace,
but i keep pausing for the past
like it’s worth the hesitation.
if i linger long enough, you could catch up
while i catch my breath
because it wears your face like a mask;
it gazes in glimmering green.
i glimpse its glint in crowded corners
and vacant city streets.
the song imbues the room like your laugh;
i can see your front row teeth
as you applaud me with a smile,
and i’m entranced, but the world scolds me,
“the past is in the past.”
my loved ones wag their fingers
when they see me glancing back,
but i would live there if i could,
but yeah, yeah. i know that i can’t.
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take me past
take me past the strands of hair
coiling down your neck,
past the freckles spattering your cheeks
like spilled paint on the childhood pavement
you rode your oversized skateboard on,
the same sidewalk i would stumble on,
falling for your dimpled smiles
and your cloudless gaze.
take me past your middle name,
past your favorite shade
and around the corner
to your deepest fears and the softest secrets
that cast black shadows on the rosy things you love,
like the pine trees we practiced kissing under
when we were much too young
to go anywhere past hand-holding
and 21 questions.
take me past your contemporary clothes
and warm skin;
let me into your charming heart
and your vibrant mind,
past your well-built skeleton.
take me past the moments
that flash before your mind
when someone asks you to picture
what an imperfect mother
and an angry father looks like,
take me past the nights
when you wake up wide-eyed,
itching to talk about your dreams,
and tell every part, every massive fantasy
and tiny hope squirming to break free
to me
and i will stow it all inside
like i’m a treasure box made
for you.
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algorithm
my heart is a half-empty glass
pouring what little bit’s left
inside my sinking chest
out to an abyss,
an audience,
that sometimes
spouts back.
what they see
and how often
is determined
by an algorithm
often favoring bare skin
and seething rants.
i won’t make it big,
and sometimes it feels bad,
but i write to survive
when i feel like i can’t.
anxiety, depression, life, longing, melancholygalaxies, poem, poems, poetry, quote, sad, sad poetry, writing
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exposing body parts
exposing body parts like journal entries i wrote when i was fourteen and lonely in a house full of people i loved but couldn’t talk to. straps sliding past my shoulders like teardrops slipping down your cheeks on one of the rare occasions you sobbed “i’m sorry.”
with only the thinnest fabric concealing my pounding, perforated heart from your bare naked eyes, i shed my clothes like snakeskin, peeling away my jeans, my black skirt, my denim shorts, my tank top and t-shirt like an epidermis. the layers are strewn about, sometimes on linoleum, sometimes carpet. i pose myself like a doll just to please him, just to feel him pretend to worship what i used jackets and hoodies to hide, long before we first kissed.
he unearths my chest, unclipping my bra with his insatiable hands, pupils wide like a pilfering pirate beholding gold, but i just want to hear him say “i love you,” as we grow old, so i give him what he thinks he wants and i let him scour my curves and folds like a curious dog examining a new yard; with adoration, i watch as he salivates and whines like one.
but once the drool dries up and i become a home he knows too well, another dilapidated chew toy that’s lost its charm, he’ll dig through the fence, tail-wagging for something exotic to undress, another place with greener grass. and when he thinks of me from time to time, he’ll envision my undergarments by his bed and me tucked in it, before he ever recollects the way i crumbled like a stone erected just to praise him.
sometimes he’ll think of me with his tail between his cowardly legs, uncomfortably aroused with a pang of regret. and sometimes i’ll forgive him, and then i’ll recall all the skin i revealed like soiled secrets i should’ve kept, and all the bouquets i deserved, but didn’t get.
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nowhere to be found
palm trees smolder, smoke clouds my sight, the planet’s on fire, and i’m a smiling whisper in your melancholy memories, an absent friend you knew way back when life was test scores and algebra worksheets. embers in the air, scorch marks on my arm, sometimes i miss when we were teenage girls sharing one town, but i’m a weary woman marveling at my phone because you look so beautiful in your summer wedding gown.
if you ever speculate how far i’ve gone, i’d hate to blow your mind and confess how it’s a crusade every day just to escape the confines of my bed. i’d hate to confess i’ve spent years restrained to an open cage like a parrot too afraid to spread her wings and glide in search of something different, something proud i could display, like an expression on my face or a merry photo in a wooden frame.
and if my absence has been weightless, just a chapter you flip over when you seldom think back, how on earth could i blame you for that? you see, i’ve always been purposely inconspicuous, like Sue Storm (still in search of her Mr. Fantastic). how can i resent existing unloved when i have always hidden what’s most precious from everyone?
a black sky in the day, our childhood street granulates; i can still recall how we would sprout joy from concrete. i can still recall how you promised me we’ll always be friends. i remember how a part of me, that was already seared to a crisp, didn’t believe what you said for a single cynical second. i knew back then, i was a crystalline catastrophe in the making, a ghost-to-be waiting beside a headstone that no one visits, a hazy thought that strikes with the proper breeze, an unfamiliar name never passing through your teeth.
