I'm pushing you out,
I don't want you to stay.
I'm sorry I hurt you.
It's just easier this way.
We found one another
But remained ever lost.
You were so warm,
But I was like frost.
Yet somehow you didn't notice,
Were you so blind you couldn't see?
I am what I am
No one will change me.
You promised your love,
Undying forever.
But love is ever changing,
And some ties are born to be severed
I hope this can be forgiven,
But I hope its never forgotten.
You must remember, I am a rock
Cursed to weather but never to soften
the leaves of my heart can fall away too by Mercury-the-Queen, literature
Literature
the leaves of my heart can fall away too
i.
my chest knocks
but no one answers;
on lonely nights i
write you into poems
and you,
foggy-eyed and
morningmad and silent,
look at me like something you could love
and walk away.
ii.
at dawn i’ll
hold my heart above the sink
like splitting pomegranate,
feel your weight inside my lungs
as a scream;
iii.
i tried to pull the dark from your eyes
and make a sky of it,
breathe you full of love-stars
before summer’s end
iv.
each crunching leaf sends me into shivers-
(such a relief for the heart
to hear something else breaking.)
I want a wreck I
can connect with
some un-
settled sun
to be sung
and soon strung
from
strings
previously
unattached
a heartsong
plucked
in resplendent
collapse
breath snatched
in gasps
hands clasped
spanning gaps
and gulfs
engulfed
in our
grasp
a long longing
that laughs
as it lasts
we'll make
memories
(a thing
ofthe past)
I need to be loved today.
and nobody feels like clapping
just for the fact that I am alive.
I want banners, welcome back cupcakes,
and cheering so loud that I forget his overlapping tooth,
and the numbers on the backs of cereal boxes.
It feels silly, really, but the hill we used to sit on was beautiful,
not just because we were together
but for the distant streetlights that were like sequins
stitched to a black velvet sky.
And I could look outwards back then, at a pattern of events,
instead of in, like I do now, at my greying insides.
You wouldn’t leave a pimple half squeezed,
and yes it hurt, so much,
but maybe, just maybe, it didn
i cracked myself open for all those other men,
but that wasn't enough to make them stay
so i took a hammer to my kneecaps
and a pistol to my heart and i
bled and crumbled and let every-
thing spill out so that maybe
you'd see something that would
make you brave enough
to stick around.
god knows i've tried to move on,
tried to glue the confidence
back onto my shoulder blades,
tried to tuck the insecurity
and distrust into the softness
of my stomach
but that's not possible anymore
because i've shown you every-
thing, i've given you every-
thing, and i thought this time
it'd be enough but then you tell me
it's too much, you're
too much,
i
my throat is full of knives.
"strep", they say.
but i know better.
there is a duel to the death
taking place inside my throat,
just beyond my tongue.
the words have armed themselves
with steely aplomb,
and they care not for my discomfort.
the words, the words are fencing,
cutting dazzling patterns with their blades,
treading swollen paths with flashing feet,
and although i would speak to cry out
for help, this battle has stolen all
my hard-earned words,
so all i have left is my scream.
i use the only weapon that remains,
but - traitorous fiends! - they realign
their loyalties, shed their ideals,
reconcile with each other -
and turn on
only speak when spoken to by inthespacebetween, literature
Literature
only speak when spoken to
i lost myself in the voi(ce/d) of feeling
and drifted away,
inching closer and closer to the edge of the rubicon every day
until i was so silent it was like
i'd never existed in the first place.
so i stopped trying to speak up
and i stopped trying to speak
and the next time someone tried to talk to me
without listening
i bit my tongue so hard it bled.
god is probably gay so at least there's that by scheherazades, literature
Literature
god is probably gay so at least there's that
after danielle
i say talking is a superpower i do not always have. i say the only thing i understand is the moon. i say the stars are toothy and young yet and i feel old.
you say god is probably gay so at least there's that.
i say i've clothed myself in the trees of this city and it isn't enough. i don't fit into my jacket. i have sewn my jacket into my shoulders and it isn't enough. i say i have bitten into the soft rawness of the sky and tasted blood and it isn't enough.
you say you know the feeling when you sink into yourself for comfort but it's sharp instead? yeah. that's what this feels like.
i say i'm suffering for trying to leave
my grandmother devours
photo albums
like i devour
sylvia plath anthologies,
mémoire aprés mémoire aprés
mémoire
memory after memory after
memory.
she tells me the same story
about her first job
without a car
five times over,
looking away
to another
world,
black & white to me
& full-color to her.
alzheimer's is a language.
like french, it is
just another part of her.
she does not remember
conversations from a week ago
or to turn over laundry,
but she remembers
bus rides in the south, pre-1964,
white weddings in
grey cathedrals
that are shopping malls now.
i have learned to translate
her repetition,
the ways sh