After nearly a year of forgoing caution and letting baggage float away in soft waves, dropping the heaviest from BA passenger planes over the Atlantic, my whirlwind love has been severed. In the following collection, my heart beats in erratic morose code and bleeds fresh and fragrant with the unbridled flood that flows from first real love. Some written at the precipice, the peak, the fall, and all riddled with the fire I felt burning and tied myself to until all that was left was smoke and bone. Here lay the pieces, and I hope you enjoy picking them up.
Fall
Waking up without you is like chewing gum instead of brushing your teeth.
boy&santorini
it was nothing at first
sat across from me on the patio
nursing a cigarette and
it makes my head spin now but then
I didn’t even notice how much I was paying attention
how much I liked the way his lips tugged and his eyes softened
as he took each drag from his cigarette
Grecian Aubade.
5 am, I wake to a rustling.
Hasty hands scrambling in the bunks below.
7 am, I feel salt under my brows,
under my eyelids,
saltwater washes over new bodies.
You, next to me, consumed me
like the waves that stripped us raw.
3 am last night, friends made mistakes
as we played out our own transgressions,
but I feel more than Catholic guilt this morning.
By 9 am, you wake,
we kiss because we’ve kissed before.
When you leave me in bed,
it’s to come back with bottles of water,
the object of my throbbing head’s greatest desire.
10 am is too long
I tell you, I have to go.
11 am sees you cross the abyss,
between dock and deck,
five hours late to meet your friends.
They are there, but not waiting,
right there
at the harbor.
The next 11 greets me above your name.
Your voice streaming tears down the screen–
you meant everything the night before.
I cry too, I don’t know who for,
but a tear falls from my cheek,
as I whisper to you.
I love you too.
never have i been so sure.
i don’t understand how i am sitting here,
a pillar of sparks
lit up by nothing more than the heart that beats inside a boy
a million miles away,
and im not scared.
Not in any real way.
I am terrified,
of the feelings i have and the daydreams that circle my mind.
I am frightened,
By the way, my heart jumps when i see his name and pounds when i see his face.
But i am not scared.
Not of him. Not of me.
For some strange reason
When i close my eyes- When i think of the reality of him,
I feel safe.
Signs.
You are everywhere, walking in whispered visions through my mind.
Your name written in mine like we’ve been written together before.
You wear black on black every day like what I wanted all along was simply, you.
You add Amy to the playlist you make me and I cant help the goosebumps that line my skin everywhere
I want you to touch me and
I want you to touch me everywhere.
& you say
I’m written in the chant of your favorite team.
My hair, falling down my shoulders the color that caught your eye.
My nose ring you notice and my lips you want to kiss.
I make you nervous, as you mix your drinks and tell me my spiderman shirt is sexy
& i like that.
loverboy.
I fall through sheets
Silky and soft around my figure
When my name falls from your lips
When your voice touches my ear
With the hint of your touch
Cities of nerve endings erupt
Down my spine, faltering my breath, quivering my skin
I want your hands on my hands and
Your breath in my lungs
Your taste on my tongue, I want the
Yellow sun that lights our skin
to immortalize you in my eyes.
declarations.
How am i supposed to tell my friends that we screamed i love you.
I love you.
I love you to each other.
I love you between waves.
I love you all night.
Winter
Few and far between are the moments of absolute clarity.
Those sparks that illuminate who you have been all along.
Fleeting knowledge- a diary burning quickly in the dark of my heart.
I Fear You Love the Romance of Me.
With your arms, embrace
my shaking corpse and chase
your blazing yearning from my body.
I want this branding kiss on my forehead,
to feel flaming fingertips as you slip,
down my flickering wick
until I can’t belittle the power
of your finger.
I, the instrument you play and tune
With eyes- soft when they strike.
Fingers- careful when they pluck.
You never burn through.
I love the way your rough hands cover me
and I fear
I love the danger of you.
ENG 101.
Im trying to bite my tongue
as I sit in a class I’ve outgrown, but
Id rather it be your teeth on my flesh
pressed against my mouth to stop my voice.
Id rather it be your hand on my neck
latching onto my throat,
Than the tight grip of the clock
as it ticks the time between us.
Victorian Love Affair.
his thumb traces my lip like a secret;
the taste sweet and sultry and sleazy.
he glares at me with eyes sharp and piquant.
he bares his teeth to diamonds, greedy.
I am too modest to love with all he desires,
though cold and stuffy in his supposed nature.
our tempers kiss with lips of raging fires.
toeing the line of passionate anger.
with corset tight- taught enough to collapse a lung;
I still see us written in the stars like a zodiac.
rich and pompous with his reckless tongue;
swiftly speaking, the ribbons off my back
and now there is nothing left but him
as we tear each other limb from limb.
Iris.
Just like the waves rolling over our weightless bodies,
There is a soft peace reflected in your eyes
Your pupils, dilated just enough that I can see
Windows to worlds where we are infinite
always running, but never away
you play me like an instrument
tuning me with your touch
Our footsteps pounding the pavement
A metronome
keeping tempo as I get lost in colored iris
So much depends upon my smile.
You hold yourself responsible
for any twitch that curls my grin
and for finding peeking pearly whites
under these lips you part as the sea.
So much depends, yet
as with anything holy,
you hate being held responsible
for the tremors
that tremble these same lips apart.
So much depends, so
through silver lens, I hide
tearful reflections
from sparkling their presence
upon my cheek.
So much depends, still
I am powerless to hide
the quiver-
holding taught all arrows
behind mute lips.
So much depends for you,
my amenable God, in
seeking my eternal providence.
Taking my silicone path of least resistance,
with white knuckle grip on the short leash that snaps,
upon my smile.
Spring
I miss you. I think it is time. Maybe. I think it is.
Confessions, you watch my body and imagine you know my soul.
Never doubt my fondness of your happiness, nor my devotion to my own.
Too many words crowd my tongue
as I speak of you.
LodontoChicagoistoofaradistanceforlovetoomuchtoofarawyandIneedyourighthererightnowbabypleasebringhometome
These syllables fall
flat against the open pale palms
you reach to my lips.
All these worries
Silenced with touch & Raised with a look.
All parting lips licked
in perfect harmony.
Sweet sweat drips from our temples
drip-drip- dripping from the sun,
combining on the tongues
of bleach blonde brunettes below.
Shape me into an object of Permanence.
I am writing you out of me, but
the only one who could change a name was you.
Acceptance is self-love,
blaming bruises left of lust
as they mark the way my eyes meet my own.
I am more beautiful in ruin,
no tension clouding my features,
no pressing or impressing anymore, just gravity inflicting it’s slack truth.
You couldn’t take too much.
It was all too much.
Still, I remain sickly grateful that once,
your lust was enough to fuel the rest. Enough
to move your hands
to make love to clay
to mold an object with permanence
Public Transportation.
With a gold band that binds stone to skin, I imagine I am tying
you to me.
Under any gold glow, we see the best version of the truth —
and assume all is revealed with the sunlight,
bouncing from edge to edge,
crystallizing uncorrupted purple.
I can’t help thinking about you in train cars.
You, the same way I can’t avoid the ring of blue around my heart.
The very same shade that lights
my finger under the fluorescents of the underground.
And here it is again– this CTA blue,
so strong the chlorine color prickles your nose
just as your eyes meet the acrylic blue-bottomed pool.
Why is it in transit that we chose cheap blues,
sparkling away from noble purple,
under artificial light.
Eating.
Where is your smile?
Where are your teeth?
Did you eat them while you were waiting?
Did they crunch different from my flesh?
Did they crumble as you did as they were broken by your lips?
Did their cigarette-flavored bleach burst on your tongue?
Did they taste as poisonous as your words?
Did they slice your gums and gnaw on raw pink?
Do you ever think about these incisions?
How they came from you and consumed you,
while I, powerless, watched.
The Knowing.
To know someone is to accept an anger born from understanding their trespasses.
No.
To know someone is to hate everything else.
Summer
Today we dared each other to say something, but it could have been all in my head.
To Date A Man.
They come in every shape.
Tall & always falling short.
Big & suffocating with skinny arms.
Fast & Slow with Fingers & Minds.
Trading types with the twist of their tongues that
say this,
say that,
say anything
they think will unlock you.
Like all humans, men are self-conscious,
staring daggers into your most intimate corners.
Hilt forward,
the tip breaks their skin.
Watch how he bleeds for you.
Watch & clean up the mess,
he shouldn’t have to ask, it’s for you.
So many men & so many games,
how am I supposed to remember a name?
This question I ask
until I wish I could forget.
Men are easy
until you find a good one. Then you
Say this & that & anything & falling over
the dull point of your own blade
to keep his eyes open.
Cutting hair & ties just
to keep him calling your name.
But what you forget is we are all the same.
Distract him,
he falls,
he is warm putty in warmer hands
until he remembers he is
broken.
We are all broken,
but he thought you were meant to fix him.
Writers Block.
I have not written this version of you in lyric,
saving your absence from becoming real
from being past & not present,
this hurt
because we no longer walk the future.
hovering
your vacancy in me must hover
must keep its pulse
beating.
away, but not a ways away,
just close enough to feel your fingerprint
even if I can’t feel your finger.
08/22/22
Like a pen with half its ink,
I am splintering,
lost & tired & running out.
I am so many things.
A child.
A woman.
A free spirit.
I’ve been so many things to you.
For you.
A lover, a consoler, a daydream, an idea.
How can all these things mourn you?
I dream of the space you used to fill,
I can’t afford it anymore,
only you can curl my limbs in that direction.
My body has writhed and twisted and lied,
but only yearned for you.
You are too easy to replace,
too hard to replicate.
I’m not drunk enough to touch you,
though you still live just behind my eyes.
There, you ruin me.
Thank god I’m too strong to be ruined.
Toppel my tower,
and my stone will still see the sun.
Suns.
I need a new side of the sun to glaze over
my eyelids in the morning.
I thought different lips would make me cry,
but they are just different.
Pillowed skin powerless to change me,
only yours could do that.
Yours showed me new parts of myself,
other sides,
other suns.
Different lips don’t make me miss you more,
you are chronic.
Different lips are just different;
different from me so I am not alone,
different from you so I am not changed.
I need a new part, a new place, a new sun.
But what if like lips,
different suns cannot change me.
The Truth.
Static cling to the thought
of you.
Just static.
You pull apart easy,
as I fling you into a different corner,
hoping to hide you for longer
among the dust.
While I was honest.
you gave me half-truths,
devotion with a half-life.
I knew, even as I signed myself over to you.
I knew, so I am okay
in the aftermath I saw coming.
I knew you couldn’t hold on forever,
but I would still choose to dream with you.
over&over.
Nomadic Thread 