[x]

the tidiest white bedthe tidiest white bed means nothing
under flower sheets covering grandmother's hand-sewn quilt
and power rangers blankets-

this is waking up in sunshine and warm skin;
clean sheets and dirty nights;
love and peace and holding hands before sleep ends
for the subconscious fear of losing the other.

breathe deepbreathe deep.

breathe it shallowly if you need to,
if filling your lungs to bursting
is too much,
too soon;

but breathe the depth-

of ocean,
of history,
of tree roots
and ethnic roots
and the roots planted by love.

breathe deep
and the orgiastic fullness
it gives the empty shell
you try so hard to stuff
but nothing sticks;

breathe deep
because deep is star-soaked
with constellations,
desperate with creeping beauty
like attar and trellis
and the june moon.

this is how you keep her.
this is how you say,
this is our permanent address.
this is how you say i love you
with something more than words.

the destruction of destructioni leave
toenail clippings
bobby pins
&empty watter bottles
on your floor
in case you decide to forget me.

this is just our dynamic
this is just how our relationship works.
i read you chapters of the
silliest,
strangest book i know
&you have me create
voices for each character.
i am most comfortable as the narrator,
plain &unassuming,
but you like my crazier caricatures best.

it reminds me of how you like
the stranger ways my mind works,
&how you will pry sharp things
from my clawed fingers
&show up late for work
just to make sure i eat;

the hateful frustration i feel
when my body yearns for its
self destruction
only to be thwarted by somet

the best way to remember somethingi cry
every time you write me a letter-

me,
in all my damaged glory,
still loved across miles of river and fields.

you are unyielding and unforgetting,
finding the words we never had
before.

there are many moonlit stories
to recount and to expound upon in
coming months-

i've got a burn on the toe of my shoe
from getting too near the fire with you-
the bruises on your skin
lasted for days;

the headband your sister gave me
and the way i cried
when it broke;

climbing up stairs, skewed like piano keys
in the winter air,
and entering your house, where you told me
to tug on my sleeve
because my battle wounds were exposed;

your dog curling up

lovedrunkshe looks at me, all big doe eyes and cupid-bow lips, tells me, now i'm not trying to say i'm about to kill myself, but i'm about to kill myself.

the traffic light is glass. not that it's reflective, not that it's bright, but that it's so slow, a liquid, moving like a year. it's also what my blood has become with these words.

we're in my car but i'm scared. i know i'm the one behind the wheel, but i don't know what she's got in her purse. i don't know her name but i do know she's drunk. so am i. i know we shouldn't be driving but i couldn't leave such sad eyes at a bar. i guess, if i'm being entirely honest, i also couldn't leave suc

ambivalence"you're the only one
i want to fall asleep with,"
i say to two men.

schadenfreudei found love
in your bone structure,
troublingly beautiful
with your soul worn across your lips.

you remind me of the sunshine
i lost in the circles
i left behind
to find someone an ocean
less far.

instead,
i am here,
watching the birds take flight
from the edges of your mouth,
watching their wings curl
with every word
strained with an accent
owned by my ancestors
born on ships.

i want you to tell me again
about the times
you found a purity in his eyes,
the blank skin upon which
they were set like jewels
and those when
you grinned cheekily
when i told you how
terribly beautiful
you really were.

i find myself wis

i wish i could just be a monsteri am some
thing less human than
a monster.

a hunger artistthe next time it happens,
maybe i won't be there.
i could have sold my soul
to the circus,
to starve myself
til my dying breath,
unadmired,
as it should be.

perhaps i will unravel,
skin like streamers
up to the bends of my elbows,
before you realise that, maybe,
you can feel the electrical discharge
from my broken circuits,
and that that is enough.

or better yet,
i will learn to love
another
while you're stuck
in your own crog,
muck and mire
piled to a level
just below the lips
i used to kiss
and keep safe
inside my memory.

but mostly, oh
but mostly,
i will never leave you,
dear,
i will never leave.
i am not fa

a letter of hatred, to myselfdear child,
dear little girl,
dear melissa,
dear sweet, innocent, beautiful melissa,

there is none of this that you would choose for yourself; there is none of this that you would see coming. a beautiful infant, born bright yellow like your favourite dress when you were three, you were perfect. you wore jaundice like a mink stole, blocked tear ducts like cat-eyed glasses. you cried because you were unafraid to show others how you felt: you were not scared to let them care.

strangers paused your parents on the street to peer inside of your stroller, marvelling at the porcelain doll within; the big blue eyes, reflecting the sky in grand

sugar freetoday my stomach told me i got a letter from you.
it clenched and cursed,
seeing my name on an envelope with no stamp,
cursive writing and no return address.
i didn't know.

once i did though, my stomach swung
its angry fists and crowed,
I TOLD YOU SO.

it was right.

my hands were like stoplights
in a hurricane,
malfunctioning and saying stop
when i turn green,
shaking with each gust.

i don't want to read how you are
or if you still love me.
i don't want to feel anything
or see you in my mind's film reel,
now shorn and with glasses,
but worst,
in uniform.

it makes me swoon on my feet
and not in that lustful, romantic, 1950s way
but the kin

adulthoodwhen you interact with other grown-ups,
there are things you need to remember.
i am learning the fine art of Adult Small Talk-
banter for banter's sake and smiles and short, impersonal anecdotes
because you can't risk letting anyone in,
god forbid someone actually gets close.
you keep your friends in your stomach and swallow them at night to keep them close
and put your cheery face on for medical professionals even when your throat is too swollen
to drink down those friends.
those friends, you know they'll never let you down.

you see your human companions on lunch breaks and weekend days.
at night, young adults have sex and fall asleep toge

things i don't know about you that bother me thati wonder what it's like
to fall asleep beside you
in a post coital haze,
and to wake in the morning
to run to class.
do you wake me,
do you kiss my forehead,
do we make love again-
i don't know,
not yet.

and do you wet your toothbrush
before applying toothpaste,
oh,
tell me you don't leave the sink running,
it must get awfully tired.

and what do you dream of
when i lie next to you,
blissfully more than just a body;
what will you dream of
a year from now?
please tell me i can fit into
your big picture
as easily as i can fit into
your arms,
eternally.

go to sleep for the love of godi kind of feel like ripping my face off.

look-
it's not one of those sad, suicidal stories. i mean, if i believed in suicide in the way that means i could do it, then yeah, it would be. but i don't, and i guess you're kind of lucky for that because now you can go to sleep with a clear conscience.

i won't ever tell you about how many pages and books and scraps of paper and unsent text messages and notes on the backs of my hands i've written for you, or how inarticulate you were when you wanted to say how you felt. i won't ever tell you how i wished for a few words that could tell me that i was loved, even a little, and i sure as fuck won

dissociationi have entered a tunnel,
archways and curled walls
of the clash of unwanted bodies,
fingers in my throat
aching to summon blood,
and palpitations.

i hear nothing.

trapped in the fence of my head,
i am thinking in scattered seeds to plot
in further regions, safer than
they can be now.

i am thinking loudly
about amorphous concepts and rhetoric,
the wavy distortions of my body,
the undulations of my skin,
the black vignette of my vision.
i am gulliver in lilliput,
enormous comparative to my surroundings;
the world is tailored to fit my body,
but nothing else.

i am dissociated,
i am a sliver of the moon
untethered-

at best, i am a petal in t

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unending, ceaselessnothing exists
better
than the moment
hesitant
anticipatory
of entrance
entranced
by the sway
porch swings
of hips
how pendulums
tick

and we talk
murmurs
until taciturnity
takes hold
of each others' tongues
and gasps
sudden
cause gaps
in the connection
unbreakable
as unity
unties
only to retie
in ceaseless
reunion
again.

alpengloweverything hard-kept in the heart is falling onto paper. each word so well-fought to be kept within the chest becomes a snowflake from november skies, but the winds are unseasonably warm and a fire is kindled inside each bone in place of a bitter chill.

there are ten thousand things i can never tell you.

the way that wars are fought, i wage battles among my selves to keep the quiet. you will never hear my voice, too soft like the pillow beneath your head each time our bodies find each other, say how my breath becomes a porch swing when we touch and i sway.

i can never call you by any name, given at birth or given by heart. you will neve

standing armyi didn't feel myself signing away
the next indefinable period of my life
to worry and unease
when i couldn't find words
to tell you what you saw
in the
spaces
between.

if i don't break our bonds
tying us like kite strings
across a few cities
and maybe a couple hours,
i will write you letters
instead of quiet times
resting on your pillows,
or the inlets of your arm.

i will be segmented
like the trunk of an earthworm
between boston,
the berkshires,
and missouri's banks;
i will wait for the mail
and days of leave,
the way i never was able
to project ahead to see
i was the last person,
a child in a woman's body,
to enli

a thorough submissioni have found my heart-
it has put itself into this.
my hesitations are little more
than bad habits,
filed somewhere between
biting my nails and always saying i'm sorry.

the expectation of the winds
blowing softer til they ceased
ended with your mouth on mine;
the nerves fraying from fear
have been tended to with needle and thread;
and the water i so wiklfully wouldn't touch
feels warmer as it inches
like your hands
up my ankles to my bare knees.

i have found my heart-
it has put itself into this.
my stomach turns the ocean calm
when i think of the messes i'll make,
and the sewing you will stitch.
and i'm terrified
like ni

things i don't know about you that bother me thati wonder what it's like
to fall asleep beside you
in a post coital haze,
and to wake in the morning
to run to class.
do you wake me,
do you kiss my forehead,
do we make love again-
i don't know,
not yet.

and do you wet your toothbrush
before applying toothpaste,
oh,
tell me you don't leave the sink running,
it must get awfully tired.

and what do you dream of
when i lie next to you,
blissfully more than just a body;
what will you dream of
a year from now?
please tell me i can fit into
your big picture
as easily as i can fit into
your arms,
eternally.

the commutei keep your kiss
under my bed:
i won't lose it
just because you aren't here.

instead,
i will hesitate in the spaces
between the weeks
we are together,
and we are
apart.

i will write you letters
and gaps and commas
when my head stops spinning
and my pride takes a bow
to the lion of my heart,
and feel the stinging air
of imagination
seep out of its balloon.

put your (love) affairs in order, dear
and find me under your blankets;

i want the places i know best
to be the ones made of skin,
secretly tucked away
in the crook of your elbow
where my body rests, or
behind your ear,
like a pencil-

i want you to write me words

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charlestown

by *ohsostarryeyed, Mar 7, 2013, 1:29:32 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

there are days where everything-
every ladder,
every sister,
every river-
reminds me of charlestown

i jump to correct those
who are talking about south carolina
when i remember they're talking
of charleston,
but i can't flush out the feeling
that they're wrong,
or when there are no dropped r's
hitting the floor beneath them

there are days that nothing
but green eyes or gapped teeth
hold interest for me,
and nights where i feel myself
break
down
and i dream of you,
just you,
and you stand before me
in your newly-shaven hair
and dark-framed glasses,
and i can only feel
the most overwhelming sense
of completion.

it is nights like those
that terrify me
beyond any
nightmare.

charlestownby *ohsostarryeyed

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

©2013 *ohsostarryeyed

idk get this out of me

~BMWYSP Mar 8, 2013 Professional Writer

You just...captured the way I am feeling right now to perfection. -arrow to the heart-

Reply

*ohsostarryeyed Mar 26, 2013

thank you <3

Reply

~BMWYSP Mar 27, 2013 Professional Writer

you are welcome.

Reply

~charlie-aux-fraises Mar 8, 2013 Photographer

love

Reply

*ohsostarryeyed Mar 26, 2013

i miss you/your work!

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