My metaphors are knives tucked
beneath shirts and riding the thighs of
women with short dresses and a look in
their eyes that scream, “I dare you to.”
They are gunshots echoing the streets
and through the trees, bullets piercing
the skin of a man who never saw it
coming and these words are thick and
laced with the memory of you, whose
back was always my favourite target.
I’ve only ever had a boy memorize the
apex of my thighs in the shadows of his
closet door, drawing lines of latitude
and longitude with his tongue to map
a mountain’s expanse. Fingers tracing
valleys and ravines, skimming over the
areas on my skin that was scorched by
hatred. He told me he loved my body
despite its imperfections - he could get
lost in the curve of my waist, stranded
in the crevice of my breasts with blind
eyes to the marks mankind left across
my wrists, to the uprooted forests that
once sprouted in my veins.
Just once, I would like a man to tell me
he loves me while the lights are still on.
Let’s play a game where I accept you despite your past actions and the flaws you so fondly point out and we’ll call it “Being A Decent Human Being” and I’ll puppy dog-eye you into building a fort out of your two blankets and three pillows and that quilt you never use and it’s going to be a makeshift, mangled mess but we’ll sit beneath it like seven-year-olds who are so proud that our hands actually built something instead of destroying it, and maybe you’ll finally tell me why you’re afraid of the dark while National Geographic talks about great white sharks in the background. You’ll rest your head on my lap and I’ll play with your hair while we talk about the time the goat fish-hooked you and I had almost fallen over laughing and we’ll talk about your disappearing acts and you’ll get quieter than the night outside because you’ve never been good with emotions or saying what’s on your mind, so you’ll lay there and listen to me describe you in words nobody’s ever had the strength to use before and I’ll tell you how happy you look when your reflection isn’t staring back at you. And somewhere between reiterating my affections and tracing the tattoo on your chest with the tip of my finger I’ll say the wrong thing and you’ll begin to think about how some days you have to convince yourself to get out of bed, how you feel as though you should continue this life alone and I’ll know you’ll never confess it but some days, you want to die. There will be nights where you think of what you’ve held between your calloused palms and although I can only hope my body is the first thing to come to mind, it’ll be surpassed by the weight of the knives you tend to like a newborn child and you’ll think about their power and you will know their strength and how easy it would be to give up. And some days you’ll be marathoning American Horror Story or working for a company you hate and you’ll count the number of ways you could kill yourself with the items that surround you and you won’t say it and you won’t have to, because the way your muscles tense and you twitch in your sleep speaks more words than I am capable of comprehending and I’ll lean in and kiss your lips with the intent to take the pain away and I’ll have you know we all have those days, and I want to love you through all of them.
They say that happiness is as easy as waking up and saying that today will be a good day, but what’s a fool supposed to do when they stay up all night counting the reasons why it won’t be?
i want passionate fucking and someone to read me to sleep - is that far too much to ask?
A poem in which I don’t compare
you to anything.
In which you are not an
elevator that I got stuck on,
or a train that never left,
but no more than a person.
No less than a person.
Today, you are not a mistake
or a rip in my tights or a lesson.
Today, I take myself home and undo,
undress, unlearn.
I take myself home and
write a poem about my skin
for the third time in a row and
then wash myself in it until
I’m clean and new.
A poem for the first full month
that didn’t hear the ache
of your name,
and for every month after.
A poem in which I am singular.
A poem in which I am more than
the people who never wanted me,
and I know this.
My secrets cannot hide in his cracked
lips as they once did in yours -bruised, and bleeding stories of our love to remember the next morning when our reflections would scrutinize the apex of my thighs and the crook of your neck.
I am drunk off the whiskey lingering on his breath while craving the lack thereof
on yours, whose lips have not touched a bottle in four years and I myself am beginning to miss the life of sobriety.
His lips are not steady: they are quick and they are fumbling, and he utters words between meetings that he thinks I want to hear,
yet no phrase speaks your name and he does not kiss “I missed you” into my palms like you once did.
This is not home to me.
I have become a vacant house and he is ignoring all signs of “KEEP OUT”,
taking his time exploring and getting to know every overgrown blade of grass between my teeth while pricking his fingers on the thorn bush in my lungs.
He does not kiss me as you once did, with compassion and delicacy but a ferocity that told me that I was the one you loved, leaving a mark that nobody would dare forget.
But his lips fill the void yours left behind
and tonight,that is enough.