[x]

tear the skeleton from his comfortzonei want to build a skyscraper, seventeen stories high
and fill each floor with a story from the people who never said goodbye.

i.
a middle child, born in 1994,
she always wanted to be loved the most
until she learned how to give a blowjob
in an alley behind Miss China’s Takeaway
at knife point.

ii.
she lost her childhood
to an ocean who always thought it was small
and never stopped pushing its borders.

iii.
he’s not sure how he’s supposed to live without her.
staring at the closed coffin, he loses the ability to want to.

iv.
it’s not fair, she thinks,
that the house creaks when she’s trying to sleep,
but when

truthsi.

there are 2 things that not even the most
forceful of rains can cleanse me of:

-memories
-mistakes

ii.

sometimes, i feel like a caged lion.
only with a lot more impatience
and a lot less resilience.

iii.

i have yet to discover what it means to be content.
i am either too stagnant or too fluid.
no middle ground.

iv.

i have mastered the art of leaving.
it's the idea of moving on that still haunts me.

v.

i fear that the light in my eyes is so dim that it will burn out
before even i have a chance to see the world with it.

vi.

i am not as clever as i pretend to be.

vii.

someone needs to teach me that
i don't need reassurance; i

ily2i wrote a poem for you because
you make me believe in happily ever afters,
romantic suicides and the fact that one day
i might not break everything i touch.

i don’t know what i’m going to do in four years
because i can’t comprehend a life without you.
and i hate you for it.
you’re just so—

you adjust my skirt and give me a pair of jeans
and say, “don’t let society make you .”
you stay up late with me to watch the sun set
only to wake me up early to see it rise.

you guide me out of the way of
already-broken leaves and
piggy-back me straight into puddles and snowdrifts.
you steal pieces from

fast-forward through the goodbyesthis is the beginning of the end
“i know you,” he says.
and he looks defeated, he looks sad, he looks like
he's a boy who may one day realize how much
he cares for you, so you cut him off and say,
“minus all the secrets i don’t tell anyone.”
“well, yeah, minus those.”
“then you don’t know me at all.”

and then you tell him,
i love you. but you don’t use those words
because those are taboo. are jinxed.
are knock on wood three times fast.
instead you press him in a hug and say,
i’m sorry, knowing he won’t understand
that this is the first time you ever cared for some

slingshot words.there are a million worlds living in your head
begging to be wrapped around your tongue and released like a slingshot
into the heart of some stranger you may never meet.

001 i am a whirlwind of
bruised knees
(purple)

an aching heart
(dark blue)

twisted guts
(red)

&
a regret that could
crumble mountains.
(green-green-green)

Decemberhe laid her life out in polaroid amid the dark blue tendrils of a dying december; it was all he had left after summer had taken the rest.

post meridiemi am no lionheart.
look closely. there are small cracks
along my fragile frame. where purple
and blue blossom underneath flesh,
and pink/white lines decorate hidden skin.
i am far from what you see.

count to infinity before you sleep.cause i know
there are days when
it's painful to even breathe,
your throat closing up on the knowledge
that you don't know
how much longer you'll be waiting on this
band-aided, superglued planet.

every cell in your body vying to be the next to die,
and all you have to tell them is
maybe. maybe next time.

those are the days you spend
cutting rose thorns into your palms
and clenching your fists tight around
jagged reflections and prismed rainbows.
the days you realize
we're losing so much faster than we're learning.
we're maturing faster than we're growing.
adults stuck in the bodies of kids,
moving around, making the mistake

Midwestern Roadmapsi.

wine-fed confessions
are what brought us together;
with a stir of paint chips and skin,
we made clumsy love on the concrete
of a condemned factory,
moving in the shadows of machinery
that loomed like winter trees
or judgmental Gods
who still stopped to smell the alcohol
in our pores.

ii.

"will you pass me a cigarette
and along with that sign your lust
on the paper that will gray in a flicker,
bitter acrid and addictive
like the first high of tobacco—
a euphoric quiver
that lasted only a minute,
gone when you inhaled your second
seeking the same."

iii.

indiana is the land of crossroads,
where the wind blows
to find a better des

Hallelujahthere is an angel sitting next to me.
her hands are tucked like wings against each other,
each blue life-vein peeking out through
too-white, too-thin skin.
a dog-earred copy of The Great Gatsby
waits in the pocket of the seat in front of her.
any other day, that might be a metaphor,
but today it is just a lonely book
whose owner is even lonelier.

there is an angel in the plane seat next to me.
while i am closing my eyes to say goodbye to the ground,
she is opening hers wider to say hello to the sky.
her spine is bending against the metal side,
like maybe if she pushed enough she could be free.

as the plane starts moving faster and faster,

A letter I'll never send.The letter I keep writing
to my children.

'My darlings,

I have never told you
that I once lost you to my
own sadness,

that your tiny flailing
fists once made me feel as if
the world was striking out
at me through you.

I used to feed you in
the bath tub, wondering if
perhaps I could let your
weight drag us under.

I still believe that it was
you who kept me afloat.

I keep writing this letter
to keep me calm, to keep me from
hating myself for ever thinking
of you as burdens.

And someday I want to tell you
that I once lost myself to
my own sadness, and that
it was you that kept
me here.'

things i wish i knew why you follow me like a ghost
though i let you go hoping,
praying,
that you'd find your way out of this
godforsaken place

but you linger in shadows
you fucking haunt me
and it hurts
[more than leaving you
did]

i would say my father is a wari would say my father is a war horse but that is a failed symbol
because he has been dragged through the dirt as many times as this metaphor

i want to write in abstract like in a book of
contemporary poetry i bought over the summer;
it was all syllables and lines of 'talk talk talk' repeated over and over
i want to write something that describes how i feel without saying a word that describes it -
like:
dust and ache and tired and bone and overflowing and lonely and fuck and .

i want to write poems that have meaning without being cliche i want poems
that defy grammar and space and time because when someone reads them, they become me

starsi pray that someday soon, in a lonesome winter, your bones will cease to ache.
regrets will no longer break your morals like glass figurines,
you will not ask God to pardon your sins.
you will forgive yourself.

i hope, for your sake, that your butterfly-flutter eyes
will only be dampened with tears worthy of shedding.
your glory will shine out of those 2 crystal windows
and you will finally know what freedom feels like.

one day, in the midst of a dreary december, i wish for your wings to open wide
and carry you to heights far past any you have ever experienced.
your lungs will become blooming forests
with snippets of poetry carved into

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More from ~MisfitableGrae

emergency exits are for quittersviii.
"you coming back?" he calls lazily from the bed. you still love me?
there are bruises on her hips, and her mouth is slick with someone else's spit.
her hair is ratty from being clawed at, and her eyes are messy
from a love that hasn't been right since winter
she leans her head against the hotel door and stares at the emergency exit map,
and its big, bright, red exe-
you are here.
(maybe that's part of the problem.)
"no."
i'm sorry. i'm not strong enough for you. you've broken me.
you've hurt me. i'm sorry, I'm sorry but
i can't love you.

"No." Stronger.
"I Quit."

vii.
"you look like an angel when you cry," he says,
cat

Ady{sen}Seven year old Adysen Reader
Took her mother's most fancy wine glass
And filled it with apple juice,
All the while telling me that one day,
She'd really be able to taste the stars.

"You know," she tells me, "You could jump from the
Empire State building and survive."
I tell her she's wrong, and that you'll die.
"No, no," she insists, "it's not the jump that kills you- it's the ground-
The sky just hugs you and wishes he didn't have to let go."

Ady's been able to draw since she was four,
But she hasn't been an artist till she was nine, and
Manned up enough to tell me that she really didn't
Believe in dragons, but she hopes we can

CameronCameron Bergeron stands tall, but I'm not sure it's
Because of pride, or just
Because he's already 6"2
With only up to go.

His hair is in a constant state of
Too-long-for-dress-code
And his face is in a constant
I know something you don't.

I know mathematical formulas that will make your head spin.
Just kidding, I don't but I could probably
Convince you I did.
I can ace tests without studying,
Argue the beginning of the universe,
And never turn in homework, but still get A's.

I'm out of the loop, he tells me with a frown.
I want to tell him that he's so lucky to be out of the loop.
Because inside, it's always hatemehateyoulo

they say they're geniusesThey say the greatest lessons in life are learned from the small things,
But it takes a war for someone to realize that all
Mistakes can't be taken away with an 'I'm sorry'.
It takes a hurricane for someone to realize that
You can't always fight, and you can't always flight.
And it takes a lover for someone to realize that
They never really had control.

They say that life is a rollercoaster.
It is not. Life is not a ride.
It is approximately eighty seven years
Of the worst choices you'll ever make, spread out
Before you like a highway, and you're in a car with no brakes
Desperately wishing for a wreckspeed limit.

They say that lo

Mili1.
it took me six years, one promise{dream},
three secrets
and four little words dropped like a bomb
for me to realize that Mili Shukla
was not special.

2.
mili has this way of entering into your life
out of nowhere, like a Tennessean storm,
and disappearing like the last minute of a sunset.

in sixth grade, Mili was the first one to decide
she was old enough to cuss. I always made fun of her for
being short, but now I think she grew up more than all of us.

mili doesn't eat a lot, but she swears she knows she's thin.
she also swears she knows she's loved, but once
she spent an entire lunch crying in the bathroom.

when Mili real

Sydney MerrellThe first thing I ever noticed about Sydney
Was that her last name was branded on my no-laces shoe.

The second was that she was the first person my age to smile at me.

That was when we were five
And played pirate on the run down playground
Where a splinter was a death wound.
I can't make it. You'll have to go on without me.

When we were in first grade, she held a Barbie
Up to my nose, and told me,
"When I grow up, I'm going to be just like this."
Maybe I shouldn't have laughed.

I can't make it. You'll have to go on without me.
It was easier to go on without her than I originally thought.
Just ignore a few house calls, then a few

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a town i don't want to call mine

by ~MisfitableGrae, Feb 25, 2013, 9:10:19 PM
Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

_{on the right of the turquoise green sign
that welcomes you to columbia,
there are two gas stations and a church.
on the left side, there’s a morgue.

when i was five years old, my father pulled over
and stopped on the side of the road while black car
after black car passed us, going the other way.
“did we know them?” i asked.
“no,” he said, putting the car in drive. “but someone did.”

at seven, mr. jimmy down at the ice cream shop
let me have free samples of all the new flavors he made
before he put them out to the public.
a favor, he called it, for his little henry.

(years later i would realize that my mother
brought henry into the world.
i would realize my mother brought most everyone
in that town under the age of twenty
into the world, and she never regretted it
even if some of them became gang members, murderers, victims, and
little henry’s leg was crippled in a four-wheeler accident)

i would stand in line during church communion
and accept their offering of holy blood and body,
thinking to myself that blood tasted kind of like grape juice
and that i would make a great cannibal.

i learned to drive in an empty church parking lot,
my hand on the lever, putting it from park into drive
to reverse to park again, feeling like i had finally found
my way out of the town.

“hello grace, are you coming to church tomorrow?”
“um, no ma’am, ‘fraid not—too much homework to do.”
“too much homework for church? you’re never too busy for our lord and savior.”
“tell that to my science teacher, ma’am, he’s loaded us down with projects and labs.”
“yes, well. that’s no excuse. the church is having an excursion soon—
reading to little kids and feeding the poor. won’t you like to help?”
“oh, uh, maybe. i’ll talk to my father.”
“you do that. and come by more, hun, the children miss you.
you’re a good girl, and i don’t want you to be led astray.”
“of course not, ma’am. i’ll visit next week.”
“make sure you do, hun. now god bless.”
“yes ma’am, god bless.”

columbia has two grocery stores
and no bookshops. there’s seven pizza places
and too many empty buildings in the town square.
the churches taste like stale cardboard and expired grape juice.
some neighborhoods you don’t want to go to
past six o’clock at night, and the funeral home
burnt down six months ago, in a fire we all could see—
our eyes hungry to watch the consuming flame,
our hands already baking the sympathy pies.
i’ve told myself that columbia is a pit-stop—
a temporary place to rest before i fly.

so, no. i’m not scared i’ll never get out of columbia.
i don’t know where i’m going, but i know it’s away.

i’m scared that when i come back,
i’ll pass that turquoise sign saying ‘welcome’,
pass those two gas stations, miss nancy’s house, the liquor store
and the customary church on every block,
and people will smile at me again,
ready to take me back like i never left.
smiling, welcoming me back Home.}

a town i don't want to call mineby ~MisfitableGrae

Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

_{it would be much appreciated if someone could tell me what's happening in this poem. our english teacher told us to write about a poem based on a place, and i wrote about my town, Columbia. it's small and that's a blessing and a curse. i'm not lying when i say i want to leave, but i'm also not lying when i say i'd always have a part of me that would want to come back here.

to clear one little thing up, cause i'm not sure if everyone does this or not, but in my part of the south it's customary to pull over to the side of the road when there's a funeral procession going by. take off your hats and just sit until it's done.

and the whole conversation is between me and a member of my really old church, who basically embodies everything small towns are.}

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*glossolalias Mar 9, 2013

your work has been featured here: [link] please go check out the other pieces & have a nice day

~Lacewinged-Beauty Mar 1, 2013 Writer

_{Pulling over is a sign of respect here too, in Australia.

I adored this.}

*dragon-fly-to-me Feb 27, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I live in Michigan and it is our custom (one that seems to not be passed on these days

) to pull over when a funeral procession is going past. It is a sign of respect.

And...to me (who the heck am I anyway??

)...lol...what is going on in this poem is, you are growing up. You are experimenting with the future idea that you will leave. Which is scary and freeing, all in one. You will encounter many situations in life that might have the same mix of feeling...this is the first safe place you can test them.

Roots are important...even for trees which are one-hundred years old.

(i'm only 37, btw.

)