Again and again and again

Every time I check the mail and the box is empty of everything but bills and advertisements I swallow a tiny disappointment. I wonder if those disappointments will collect in my stomach, undigestible, making me heavy. I wonder if the combination of their weight and the way my heart skips beats when I read your name—even if it’s not you being written about, even if it’s the name of a stranger or included in the title of a book—will cripple me, make me unable to walk without my knees buckling. I wonder if one day I will be picking the paper up off the end of the driveway and your name will be there on the front page and I will fall, crying out, onto the pavement and the blood on my knees will stain my jeans and no matter how hard I try to scrub it out it will remain there, a reminder. I wonder if every time I stir honey into my tea you can feel the curve of my fingers around the spoon, a spoon you once handed me over breakfast on a Tuesday while you smiled and said, “You’re so sexy in the morning.” Can you hear me, when I breathe into the pillow? Because I can hear you: the absence of your soft snores, same as the absence of your hands on my waist and the coldness of your feet on my calves. I say your name and the walls toss it back at me, my own ears cages for the sadness in my voice: the same pain that leaves dishes in the sink and laundry on my bedroom floor. I stare into the bathroom mirror and I tell my sunken-eyed reflection that no matter how many hours of sleep I lose, I won’t dream of you. But I wake up remembering, every time. And it’s only on Sundays that I can forgive you for the letters you never send, because I don’t have to listen to the mail truck rumbling past, knowing that there’s nothing coming for me. But still I sit by the window, watching. Swallowing, again and again.

I made a blog

dedicated entirely to my poetry, because I didn’t want to flood this blog with the results of what has obviously developed into an addiction. But I swear I wrote a sentence earlier this week that was prose. And I will continue to post prose here. And if you want the link to my poetry, just ask, and I’ll give it to you. 

birdofthesummer:

i want to climb
the height of your esophagus,
fall out of your mouth and curl my body
over the curve of your lips,
feel the way my name feels
when you say it out loud

i want to touch your heart
with my bare hands and be swallowed
by the sound of its beating
and i want to fall from the ledge of your ribcage
into the air that you’re breathing

i want to run
the length of your small intestine
and be absorbed like nutrients, i want to be
what’s good for you

and i want to live in your fingertips
and bathe in the light made 
by the electricity
that sends shockwaves up my spine,
i want to hide in the shine of your eyes
and when you look in a mirror
i want you to see me
smiling 

I am

i am
an escape artist and you
are the greatest tool a girl could ask for
like an infallible ladder
or a long piece of sturdy rope

the memory of your hands pulls me up
each time i reach for it 
and then i am flying high, free
of everything that would try to hold me
down

i step across the clouds that are soft like your hair
and walk my way into the memory
of your closed eyelids and the summer air
that would come sighing out
of your open mouth

your lips are damp like rain
but i don’t wear a coat because i like the feel of them 
sliding over my skin
and sometimes i tilt my head back
to taste the water on my tongue

my heart is racing double time
like i’ve been struck by lightning
but darling, from this far away
all of the dirt looks soft and smooth
brown and warm, like your eyes

and if my heart is all the price i’m paying
for living up this high
then baby, you can have it whole
because every morning i wake up
and ask myself, “are you happy”
and every day i answer myself,
“yes,
i am” 

Come back to me

Lover, I’m so tired
Of the way these other girls wear their hair
It’s not ugly
They’re just not you

I keep looking for your curls, for the long rolling waves
That I liked to pull my fingers through
My thoughts are so tangled, I need to brush them out
But I’ve forgotten how

Why can’t I unbraid the twist I get in my stomach
When someone says your name
Upbraid my heart for the way it skips
Beats when I catch a breath of your perfume
Catch my breath running up the steps
Skip
Trip, fall

Like leaves on the pavement
For you, like a ton of bricks
God, god

I miss your hands,
The color of the bark on the trees
Soft, like the undersides of leaves
The dirt being beaten to death underneath our feet
Taking worn-out paths to avoid the road

I hate the way the cars honk at me,
Hate the yells, catcalls
“Hey baby, do you—” no, I don’t
I want to buy tea
I want to stay up all night jacked on caffeine,
Writing stupid things, I want to drown
In a sea of your laughter

What I wouldn’t give to stop crying
To stop saying, “No”
To stop asking, “Why?”

I remember just how high
The feel of your fingers made me climb
Into bed, up the steps,
Not falling, no
Staying straight, I’m wearing heels

There’s this guy in the chorus
Says I’ve got a great ass,
Likes to watch me as I stand in front of him
Sining songs, sometimes we sing in French
And I remember the taste of your whispers
On my tongue

Tons of words
Tons of weight
On my eyelids, in my shoes
Oh, I’ve got such heavy boots

Heavy books in the stacks of the library
Looking through the “L”s,
Maybe someone’s written a book on this feeling
Loneliness, love, longing, lust
Lack-luster, yes
My life is lesser without you here

Where’d you go?
Pulling stories off the shelves
Reading between the lines
Of people waiting at the desk, waiting to check out
“Did you get everything you need?”
No, not even what I want
Help me,
Please

You’re gone, come back to me
I hate the way these other girls look at me
Like I’m wrong

And every boy I touch, I’m dancing
Their hips don’t roll like yours
Swell up like balloons
Like wounds, not waves
Not the tides of you crashing, but thrashing
Wild animals hungry like me, angry like me:
Biting, snatching

Baby, it’s getting cold outside
My showers are more steam than soap
I brace myself against the wall,
Yeah, like that

Fuck me, why’d I have to leave you?
‘Cause baby,
I hate the way these other girls wear their hair
Too long, like the distance between us
Come back, lover
Come back to me 

Sometimes when we’re lying in bed,
your eyes glistening in that wet, sleepy way
fingers twisting in the ends of my hair
I see the roll of muscle beneath your skin
and I can’t help thinking you’re inside out,
a bag of blood and bones
pressing to me with the hot weight of heavy veins
pink, fleshy fingers tracing over the bulbs of my spine.

I close my eyes to the thrumming of your exposed organs;
anxious muscles that shudder against my side
but as I recoil from the jut of your skeleton
I find myself reaching forward,
aimlessly searching beneath your ribs to find
that dark, fluttering heart,
fingering the sticky sack where you keep me
feeling the life of you rushing in my palm.

I draw my hands back and look up
to see your lidded eyes and your face taught in skin
and for a brief moment I wish you were a vault,
something made of stone or steel and locks and promise
instead of a bag of blood and bones
trembling in my bed. 

“Are you laughing or are you crying?” You asked me with your eyes shut, darling, and I wanted to  tear open your eyelids and make you see me.

You are forever not looking, my love.

You are always trapped inside of your head, the way that I am trapped inside of my heart.

I ache for the weight of your gaze. I hurt for the hot feeling of your eyes on my body. Not hands, no, don’t touch me. I don’t want you to touch me.

“Look at me, at me, at me.” The words fall out of my fingers. They settle in the cotton of your pillowcase, in the skin behind your ears, in the soft pieces of hair that brush the collar of your shirt.

You are forever not listening, my love.

I want to be more than wanted.

sometimes when you speak to me
i watch your mouth for signs
that you are doing more than
speaking, that you are somehow
showing me what you want.
i watch your hands, too, and i
watch your eyes and the way
that your toes curl when you
are trying to hold in your
excitement, and sometimes when
i touch you i am searching
for the words that must be
hidden beneath your skin,
running through your bloodstream and
crowding into the spaces
behind your eyes and your ears.
i am always afraid of
missing something. 

Selfish

I don’t remember what part of the Bible it’s from, I don’t know, I’m not religious, but isn’t there that passage that says love isn’t selfish? And isn’t that such bullshit? Of course love is selfish. It’s the most selfish thing in the world. You want to have every single part of someone, you want to know everything about them, you want to climb inside of their head and their heart. You know that they have secrets, you recognize that, and you think that you’re comfortable with it and then they show you a little piece, a little slice of that secret world. They share it with you, and then you realize that it’s a sharable thing that they’ve kept hidden from you, and you feel a little lost, and then you feel awful because of course you want them to have that, you want them to have everything. But you also want everything they have. You want to feel like you know them completely. And you feel a little sad, but you forgive them. Because you love them. And maybe that’s the unselfish part, maybe that’s why they say love isn’t selfish. Maybe that’s where I’m wrong. Maybe it’s just me that’s selfish. Maybe it’s just people and I’m just looking for something to blame.

Away

At night, when it’s quiet, I can hear your laughter. In the back of my mind is an image of you leaning forward, overcome, the top of your dark head the only thing I can see. I love to hear you laughing but I cannot see your face. It is such an exquisite sort of ache, to want two things that cannot exist in tandem, to know that to have one you must relinquish the other. I saw you in a girl on my first day away. Her head was turned from me, and her long hair spilled across her shoulder in the way that yours did—no, does. It is so hard to think of you as someone separate and other, now that you are not with me. You exist beyond me, without me, as I exist without you. But oh, I feel half here, and each night I disappear into my memories of you. I am less myself. You have taken some part of me and kept it. On the second night I searched my bags and ran my hands along the pages of my books, searching for the piece of you that I must surely have. Tell me, do you feel it? Oh, to know that you are with me in a place other than my dreams. See you in dreamland, you would always say that, but I do not want you to become a dream. Once, you were real. Still, you could be real. Be real for me. Be real.