[x]

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

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

the end, actuallylassitude builds
nests in my bones
flightless birds
forming words
as effective at becoming airborne
as the words "i'm sorry"
and sometimes
they just refused to try

the most prominent thought
circling my head
like the words that could soar
was knowledge-
there is a big chance
we will not make it through the night,
that i will never be held
captive
in the cage of your eyes
and trapped by a heart

i must be committing
some atrocities
but i do not know which ones-
there just might be
a limit
on the number of tears
you can shed
over one person;

we are not snakes
and cannot remove our skin
so we cry instead

but throug

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

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

if people didn't filter their emotions and justthrowing yourself on
floors doesn't fix anything,
but it sure seems to.

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

the vomiting crowd of coney islandthe destructive walls are shaded
in grey and i am remembering
every feeling i have forgotten-

i am terrified.

this is a city that never sleeps,
the bones of my chest thrumming
like taxi cabs in the streets,
my fingers shaking
in want for comfort and solace
and love.

i am not standing
in lorca's vomiting crowd-
i am his vomiting crowd,
looking high and low
and between my clenched fists
for catharsis and purification,
for the reason of this illness
pressed against my skin,
for the indefinable sickness
i drown in like bubbles of spit
day in and day out.

i fear the restraints
i've placed for myself,
that they may not be the

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

barcelona is burningi owe you an apology-
you, in the crowd,
the one panicking about reading
or the mess at home
or the sheer volume of people
pressing into you like corners;

you,
the woman who birthed me into this world
through hours of agony
as though that wasn't enough
because doctor appointment after therapy appointment after residential stay after thirtieth pound lost,
i've put you through countless
sleepless nights
warped into months of agony
you never asked for;

and you, oh, mostly you.
you, because as hard as i've beaten my own heart into the wall,
and as deep as i let you bury mine,
i know, somehow, i managed to do the same to you.

yo

mother.i'm not exactly a person-
more like a body
filled up with
things i never should've known
and things i never could've said.
and i wonder what you'd do
if i could.

so i tell strangers, i tell you,
because i'll never have to
look you in the face
or see your eyes hide
behind walls that never had to be built-
there are bodies buried in those, you know.
i never wanted any of that.

the way i never wanted to be the girl
who ran away from womanhood as it approached,
because adolescence was so much sweeter
at four feet tall.
i sprouted breasts in panic.
my limbs stretched and the pains at night
weren't just from growing pains- they

when the eastern sun sinksi wonder if you would
change your mind
(change yourself,
find it in your
heart
to feel a little something
for me)
if you saw the words
you've pulled from
my mouth;

uncovered by your lips,
i find poems under my hands.

i write strophes and lines
imprinted on your skin
when i move my fingers away.

i have so much to
show you,
i could give you so much
to feel,
but you slink like a
nightcrawler from light
to a comfortable recession,
and there,
you stay.

one day,
we will talk again
and no stammered heart
will beat like birds
if our hands touch;
one day,
you will realise
that sooner than you have,
you could have
shar

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

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

before georgia takes you again

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More from *ohsostarryeyed

projected profitsi keep picturing us in fifteen years, but it's more like ten. we're sleeping and the quiet sun gently pushes on our eyelids. we turn softly in the mounds of white cloth covering our bed, one or both of us making those slight moans of vague consciousness completely against our wills.

we live in a house, or maybe a flat. it might be in europe, in one of the countries you visited when we found our ways back to one another. the buildings are smooth and white, but the garden is not lacking for colour. the greens are denser than water, the sky more saturated blue than our swimsuits, hanging off the lip of the small balcony.

maybe it's switze

breathing takes a second too longi'm just going to write this all out because if i stop to so much as breathe or count the seconds in my head until i feel like maybe you're a little closer to me then i might just fall apart. i don't have much control over my punctuation or spelling or grammar but i also don't have much control over myself and especially not over you and me together, and it's terrifying but it's all i want.

i want to be able to see you and i want to press myself against you as tightly as i can because there have been way too many miles between us for way too long and all i want is you and when i stand up i want you to still be against me and when i lie down

how not pretending anymore is a blessingi won't pretend to anyone that i'm not scared. here i am, standing before god-knows-how-many-people, telling them things i don't have the heart to even tell my mother. especially things i don't have the heart to tell my mother.
i could never tell her how many times i've looked at the stars and used them to hold onto my wishes on paper strings, make them hold onto my wishes and me, mostly me, like a marionette
until the sky faded from black to blue, just like the bruises i put on my skin. sometimes a girl doesn't know how to cope, and that's why those paper strings, those thin, angry lines hanging from the heavens,
found their ways to my ar

in four weeks,i cannot wait to fall asleep
peacefully and soundly
with your skin,
tall and warm
beside me.

we will slumber and dream
two, separately,
and awake in each other's arms.

you will come home
in four weeks.
the flights will taper away,
and you will leave behind
barcelona
munich
london
basel
rome

and remember, please,
that i am what waits
those thousands of miles
ahead of you.

i want you to buy me flowers
so i can feel guilty over you
having spent money on me
but feel beautiful
because of how beautiful
the petals are
and the hands that gave them
to me.

i want to put us in photographs
so that i can remember
the way tha

mother.i'm not exactly a person-
more like a body
filled up with
things i never should've known
and things i never could've said.
and i wonder what you'd do
if i could.

so i tell strangers, i tell you,
because i'll never have to
look you in the face
or see your eyes hide
behind walls that never had to be built-
there are bodies buried in those, you know.
i never wanted any of that.

the way i never wanted to be the girl
who ran away from womanhood as it approached,
because adolescence was so much sweeter
at four feet tall.
i sprouted breasts in panic.
my limbs stretched and the pains at night
weren't just from growing pains- they

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constellations are just bodies

by *ohsostarryeyed, Sep 20, 2012, 10:29:22 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

you 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?

constellations are just bodiesby *ohsostarryeyed

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

©2012-2013 *ohsostarryeyed

in the sky or in your bed

featured!
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i find this funny because literally this is all i see our relationship as nowadays
i get mad that he has a new girlfriend, whom i'd already met
because maybe she's better than me
and certainly thinner
but really
no sex? we had all the privacy in the world hglkdfhg

~peridot-magelette Dec 27, 2012

i like

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

powerful sentiment. as is the entire poem.

Reply

*ohsostarryeyed Jan 28, 2013

thank you!

Reply

~wongy06 Sep 20, 2012

My dear, "better" is a relative term.

Just like constellations, we don't get warmer as we get closer - only with time.

Reply

*ohsostarryeyed Oct 7, 2012

thank you!!

Reply

~wongy06 Oct 8, 2012

No problem - just be you.

Reply

*dietcocaine Sep 20, 2012 Writer

_{Oh my god. This. Thisthisthis.
This is exactly how it went, the only difference was the distance (because he only lived about an hour away), and "I didn't cry for you", because I did. And just oh my god this.
There are so many things you just said without saying that I couldn't put into words in all these months.
I needed to read this. I'm sorry that it happened to you, too.
I find it funny that we didn't have sex until months after we'd broken up.}

Reply

*ohsostarryeyed Oct 7, 2012

i'm so glad <3333

Reply

`YouInventedMe Sep 20, 2012 Writer

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

the rhythm & sentiment are heavenly.

also, there is a place by my house
called Heavenly Bodies
that is either an observatory
or a male stripclub.

(okfineitsthelatter.)

Reply

*ohsostarryeyed Oct 7, 2012

this comment just makes me happy every time i see it.

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`YouInventedMe Oct 8, 2012 Writer

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