Category: Poetry

ours is a distance which seems evergrowing.
like vines climbing a fence,
this aching missing of you
dances through my veins
in the graceful breeze of springtime.
i hear birds chirping in the morning
and wish for you to snuggle into;
our bodies simply vessles
by which we feel the pull of gravity
toward each other,
and as we escape
the velocities of this earth
we forever feel nearer, faster.

until then, there is this missing
this slow melancholy of waiting
and the growing sentiment
of cannot live without.

you are like a quilt
some sort of patchwork
taking every good part
of those who held my love before
and the tiny little stitches
which make you seamless
also bind me to you
where i burrow in yr warmth.

i am like a bedframe
strong in my hollowness
and creaky with the unerasable memories
of those who have faded
into notches on my posts
but you could stay with me
knowing me by the scent
of weathered mahogany.

our love is like a matress
providing rest for our worn muscles
while being so externally generic
because comfortable is unillustratable
that is, how does one draw that
this is the only place we can sleep, held;
or when floods come and destroy us both
that this love will be our rescue.

and i can’t make poetry out of something so hideous
in fact, i can’t even feel
except for the occasional bubbling
of guilt and self-hate
and the darkening realization
that he had to know what you meant
because i said it over and over
and he had to feel the hesitation
behind my giving into
what he was taking

i could write a novel
based on the transitory way
in which i smoke cigarettes
like nicotine is my forlorn lover
and i’ll hate-fuck myself over
wishing for a greater alternative
to this love-hate game i play with myself
like in every single heartbeat of
inhale-exhale-inhale-exhale
i would escape my new
and ever-lengthening tragedy
all there is is you and me
and this aching regret
combined with all the puking
which leaves me feeling
retributed more than better
and i could suck cancer out of this stick
but this drag is more
self-destructive than the last
and the taste of self-loathe
leaves me humble
and aching for more
while i look for reflections of myself
in the rorschach-blot yellow of the filter

i am the female figure fragmented
against a sidewalk of my own regret
and that swandive i took
wasn’t worth the climb up the stairs
or the pool of blood i left

and i was enculturated
to believe that blood and skin
and lifelessness
can be traded for its weight in oil
but prices stay high
despite the ever-climbing death toll
and i meant for you to be anything but
my latest, greatest victim
you, my darling, are my
latest, greatest hope

and i don’t even have the words
to explain that the words
i say to you are different
than those that have fallen on any other ears
it’s not even about this long drive
for someone with nothing to say
it’s about every boy or girl
who ever came before you
and the new sensation
of fear which arises

not from the stunning reality
of our love like an aurora
which we drove so many hours to see
but from the lack of fear
as i fall into that love with you

i guess i was looking for someone to catch
me beneath the weight of my own bad decisions
not out of fear of being alone
but simply out of love for me
even in my failures you exceed my greatest dreams
and my apologies are as much for my actions
as for actually having tested something
which i never needed to
and i love you more than you could ever understand
but i’ll spend my whole life trying to show you

I’ll write this poem in the style
of your choosing because
I know you are familiar with it,
the way the words spill out
and the lines break like they’re
supposed to break that way
I guess it’s just always open letter
and you get so many open letters
these days.

from these girls you want to hold your heart
and i remember being one of them
it’s odd, being here without you
i guess a piece of me
always expected you
to be the first person to make me spend
an extended period of time here
but then, that part of me was incorrect
inconcievably incorrect
and so here i am with some new boy
who always meant more than you
in the back of my mind, he was always
who i was waiting for.

i wanted him to say the words
and make me feel like if i was with him
then i would just be his whole world
and now i am that, and i find it fulfilling
but you, well, this poem was meant
to convince you to be my friend again
and i realize that i’m doing a shitty job
practically talking myself out of the whole idea
so i’ll just put it mildly.

here’s the deal:
i’m often caught between my feelings for you
and my feelings for you then
sometimes i think i loved you
and that love was never reciprocated
sometimes i think love was just a word
a word that sounded like the starting gun
for some long, long footrace
but then, we never said it
until the finish line.

so what is love,
in the context of you and i?
we both fucked it up so well
and then the truth is that i fucking miss you
but i don’t miss fucking you
and if i had it to go back and redo
the night i asked you
“do you want it to happen again?”
i’d take it back and say
“so that night was fun,
let’s just be friends”
and maybe then you’d say okay.

it turns out i hate the alternative.

i want few things more
than i want you to call
and ask me how i am
and pretend that we never loved each other
to say hello
like there was never an iloveyou
at the end of the line.
i want to erase those moments:

that time on the bus when you said i love you unprompted
that time in yr bed when you confessed to yr infidelities
that time in yr room when i decided to stay despite thinking i should pack up and go.

i’m sorry.

i know you as well as i know me
when it comes to the fucked up
things we do to each other
and when it comes right down to it
i think we were better off as friends.
and i think i love you.
but in the worst way.
i love you in the past tense now.

my mouth falls open
while i hear you speaking
of past careers
and suddenly the familiarity
of your face
seems obvious, i think

i could catch you up
on two years of my life
which you never actually knew
but i think i knew me then
as well as you know me now
so what could i say?

And then you leave
With the subtlest of warnings
And I wonder
How to stop the ache
I wonder
If it is simply
that I am not supposed to miss you.

And these relationships are unfair
because they are not reciprocal.

The way I used to love you was so quaint
our heads pressed so close
in all of those pictures we took
me smiling close-lipped
and looking prettier
than my alternative
with the bile choked back
and hidden by my teeth.

lately i wear my heart like a weapon
and every new break heals with a scar shaped like a suture,
and despite my failures in chess
i prove my talent at calculated and calm
so that this stone is whittled into a precise point
and the black volcanic stone remains protected
within a sheath made of letter from the folds of other boys skin
and it swings at my waist with each step i take

you, somehow, pry my fingers from the handle
so you can hold them at my side
and with my focus distracted
you remove my weapon from it’s cover
as i glance in terror more than anger,
i am immediately calmed at the sight of yr reflection
printing itself on the polished black

let’s change this rock into something beautiful
like a necklace to adorn my clavicles
to honor them for carrying my heavy, burdensome heart
until you arrived to carve it into chambers
capable of pumping blood.