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between two months is two shorti like to think of you.
sometimes you are a butterfly,
wings stretched back
in long arcs,
bones breaking into flight
behind your protruding chest-
you are beautiful.

i find myself sinking
into the irish kills in your eyes,
the gaps in your smile.
i touch the cauterised cuts
sealed by metal and fire
on the backs of your swollen knuckles
and kiss your crooked lips.

in two months you will leave.
in the wake of st. valentine's sacrifice,
i will send my heart to war with you.
look beneath your pillow
and find it there;
look in the space between your walls
and there it will be;
look within your chest, beside your own heart
and

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.

a letter to ethanyou're fifteen minutes away.

that's a quarter of an hour, that's ten miles, that's space enough that i never have to see you again.

but still i feel my heart beating like a rabbit's foot against my rib.

look.

i'm a girl still in denial
of being a woman with
breasts and hips and a womb.
i'm a child with my heart and i will surrender it foolishly
to the first boy to give me roses and push them into my hair.
i don't know how to love,
the way i don't know how how to stop.

but let me tell you this- it happens.
they both do.

i loved your fragile brown eyes like i'd never seen a warmer fire.
i sank my bones like an anchor to

the first poem i wrote since i told you i love youthe star-soaked stains
that covered our nudity
gives way at last
to a tequila sunrise,
so low in the sky;

it's still bright enough
to sting my eyes,
and yet i can't bring myself
to hate it.

your body next to mine,
every effort is made
to move a heavy limb
closer
because any space
we have
is space i don't want.

i am sometimes humbled
by my feelings,
the way they swell
in my throat
just how the ocean
tastes the shore.

there is always something new
to find hidden in my heart,
summoned by my words,
or the salt of your skin
wearing like wind on shale
against mine.

i don't think i can ever tell you
i love you enough.

i

mariah's love songi feel a fire
starting
somewhere within me,
hot and licking
within,
a tongue that misses
no nerve-
it is not a body.
it is something.

the kind of something
that grows legs,
tall and bare
like the rest of our
outstretched bodies
that we tuck between
two sheets,

the same something
that lulls us to sleep
with no more contact
between our nude frames
than fitting ourselves
in the nooks,
and wakes us with the
eleven o'clock sunlight
and the smell of frittata.

wiping the sleep from my eyes,
i don't mind
if the eggs
are burned.

life without youi watched you,
bone-handled
battered and floral
suitcase in hand,
as your knotted tree-branch fingers
grip the doorhandle.

i watched you
disappear
before the door swung
shut.
i saw your thin skin
slip between pavement
and cracks in the concrete
city walls.
your keys sunk through
the hole in your pocket
and are sitting at the
side of the sink,
your lunch in the bowels
of the toilet.

i watched your mouth
of broken teeth
spit vitriol soundlessly,
your tendons splitting
from your frame,
you have unravelled into nothing,
i watched you
pack your things and
i smiled.

denial can only stretch so farwhen asked if i am
in love, i shall say, no. well,
maybe a little.

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

scattered grassrootsi am the great plains-
vast,
barren,
and sparse.

i begin losing my hair and
scattered grassroots
define me.

i am tumbleweeds lost in the wind,
tumultuous dust storms
from the dryness i leave you in.
this becomes my skin.

i miss having someone
to tell i love,

but the ache it left in my bones,
deserts and sands,
is reminder enough

that fond remembrance
doesn't mean it's
there.

the saturday after your birthday is where i foundbefore you there was an incessant need to be touched
but for no longer than the time it took to touch, sweat, and moan
and never by the same hands twice;
for vacancies to be filled
and to never have an empty bed when sleep finally came.

when i found you it was dark and i was drunk.
it wasn't a story built for the centuries,
but we will be the lovers whose names are remembered for the years to come,
tied and woven in song and into the bodies of trees, we will be so in love
that the angels above will cry in jealousy because in my haze,
heavy and raw and with everything burning inside me, i'm afraid i fell in love that night.

being

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.

first weekend and realisationsyou begin to talk
because talking means that
someone else can't
&you start to realise
(as most girls do)
that you have a boyfriend

&soon
he's not just a boyfriend;
he's your boyfriend
&he's not just better than
anyone else in the world
he's better than
anything else in the world

&you would trade years off your life
to spend a little longer with him
or to see him smile when he's sad
or to feel his face in your hair
the way he does when he hugs you
&you can't feel it
because right now he's too far away

but distance is only the space between
point a and point b
between you&between me
&if you give it just a little more tim

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

spoiled little girli have turned my body
into a void
so that i can love
with it
instead of my heart.
i feel nothing
so i feel nothing
for you,
but your skin has not
met mine
in a week
and it has me
worried.

this one
loves completely vanilla,
though there once were poems
of red clay and sun;
this one
kisses with no ridges
and i cannot seem to
find a way to stay captivated;
this one
touches when i cannot remember,
so i run
when i see the silhouette of his face,
giving flashes
like nightlights or fireflies
of a dark room
i seem to have almost
forgotten.

i think you have spoiled me terribly
because i feel nothing
worth feeling
and k

constellations are just bodiesyou left me in my bed-
i was crying-
when you walked down my stairs
for the last time.

you were to spend the night-
you lived hours away-
until you told me
you couldn't do this
anymore.

i was fine-
you were just a constellation-
until your words
forced images of my last love
before my mind's eye.

i cried before you-
i hadn't cried in months-
but i didn't cry for you.

in retrospect, as you closed my door-
it was the last time-
my only thought is
why didn't we fuck
before saying goodbye?

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a burialimagine being the first person to discover death.
your lover has passed in her sleep.
you kiss her, you touch her thigh,
you whisper her name and stroke her hair,
you listen to her empty heart
and wonder at her silence

you wore red to her funeral because
that was her favorite color and
the pastor wouldn't let you play
landslide on the speaker system
in the chapel.
the gospel choir watched you like
a bruise.
the trees sighed.
and when the service was over
everyone asked how you were
but no one really wanted to know.
thursday the air tasted like stale apples.

grief holds you in
like a corset
red twine tying you
together
wh

melatonini scared you into saying you love me.
i am two pills of melatonin,
i am a mouth drier than the sun.
i scared you like a snake,
a rattler wrapped round your ankle,
a python about the perimeter of your neck.

i made you cry.
i heard your throat
swallowing your sadness.

i am sorry but not sorry enough.
i choked on my words,
i gasped for air
like a fish on the shore.

you don't love me when i am a monster,
you love me when i laugh.

i am sorry my smile
doesn't shine like the waters
of greece;
i am too grey
for the joy
you could bring me.

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christmas doesn't have to be lonely

by *ohsostarryeyed, Dec 24, 2012, 3:39:06 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

this is the first christmas
i have not spent alone;
when i have had arms,
sand-specked like the beach
and as encompassing as it is
to my body (of water, my ocean),
waiting to hold me
and steady my waves

there will come a day
that i am so fully loved
that the effulgence mimics and empty room
until entered,
and the engulfing fire
exudes the warmth missed
in the winter snow
in which i am kissed

this is the year
that my endless yuletide wishes
have been made.
this is the year i am christmas lights,
glowing,
warm
and loved
(again and again and again)

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28 9 1

christmas doesn't have to be lonelyby *ohsostarryeyed

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christmas eve 2012, train from north station, 4:28pm

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Submitted on: December 24, 2012
File Size: 798 bytes

Views: 376
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!hazeltown Dec 27, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

you write in water colours

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*ohsostarryeyed Jan 28, 2013

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*IAmPoetry Dec 26, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Splendid throughout. The close is marvellous.

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*ohsostarryeyed Jan 28, 2013

thank you kindly!

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!mypuppetboresme Dec 25, 2012

keep dreaming

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*ohsostarryeyed Dec 25, 2012

i have no reason to. i'm sorry that you're so pessimistic and hateful that not only can you not be happy or simply neutral toward strangers, but that you feel compelled to try cutting down their happiness.

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~projectilewordvomit Dec 24, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

I still feel alone ._.

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*Sye216 Dec 24, 2012

Lovely. I especially like the christmas lights comparison.

Though there's a typo in "this is the yea i am christmas lights".

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*ohsostarryeyed Jan 29, 2013

oops! thank you <3

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