[x]

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

one hundred waysthere are one hundred ways
i have to fill myself
that still keep me empty,
and for all the love for you
i hold in my heart,
i treat you like you're nothing.

you have built structures
and outlines of cities to press
against a dark inked sky,
you are the blood of a broken pen
coursing like a river
through my veins.

i look the other way.

i look for holes
in the sweatshirt you gave me
because there are holes in you,
and i wonder if they match up
with mine.
i leave it tucked just
inside of my closet
so that i don't see it
unless i look for it,
but when i do
i pull it in piles
up to my face
to be sure
it still smells like you-

four months later

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

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

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.

charlestownthere 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 t

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

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

i've gotten a military letteri've gotten a military letter.

we're not together anymore
but the way my stomach
undulates its tides
tells me i'm worrying as much
as your mother.

in a month,
you aren't home but you can
be touched-
i am trembling like autumn's last leaf
while caught in the interim.

i have two hearts in my hands,
frozen as your late january ponds
in fear of holding too close.

i tell boys at parties
that i'm very good
at not breaking things-
i lie.
i will hold onto drunken cups,
vodka and glass,
but i drop hearts-
yours, his, my own-
like water in fingers.

seeing you again
will stir up oceans,
send floods over the levees
and,
foetal,
i will weather the st

my first drunk poemwriters write whilst drunk
because every word
fumbled and smisspelled
comes out beautifully
because of the truth it holds

my ear bleeds from constant burns
and my stomach burns from constant bleeds
because beauty is never enough untouched, it seems,
the way anything i put in me is always too much.

i bled and evoked sympathy tonight.
i drank until i needed a body to stand me straight.
my organs writhed like heathens in moonlight ritual
and i let it shake.
i shook to be honest
but i was never honest enough
to admit from where the vibration came.
i shook with fear
and trepidation
and loneliness
and never, ever being adequate

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

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

romanticism is such bullshiti don't understand a bit
what's so romantic
about missing-you and distance,
love stressed and strained like string
across miles of roping rivers;

it's ugly and sad
and there is no cure
because i will not wait by the letterbox
praying daily on my knees to a god i know i believe in but i'm not sure you do
to hear word from you-
that you're well;
that you're happy;
that you're eating and sleeping and feeling alive;

that's what i want, you know-
i want your vitality to blaze like the great chicago fire,
i want to see your scrawl emboldened with each word
i want to see you concretely on your feet
and certain of where you are going
without a ser

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.

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

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12-18-10 .collabi am sitting with rumpled pieces of paper and my hands stained with ink, as if blood has turned indigo, wringing your name like a paltry confession. and i feel as pathetic as you think i am, i feel as though i could walk across the ocean with salt making my lips sting and i could travel for miles just to get to you, and you would be standing on the other side with empty eyes and you're asking, "why have you come?" and, somehow, you're bigger than me, somehow, you're a giant and i'm forced to look up at you and admit —i don't know.

i have lost my footing. the sky is the earth, my head is underwater and hair dancing with seaweed. i am dro

a desperate bout of melodyas the sun melts into streaked paint,
as your hands trail listlessly along my spine,
as the paper frays like twine,
i can remember your heart.

the kind of beautiful
that only exists at night
fire of skin and prowling cats
friction of hot tires
and mattresses creaking
under the weight of the love
that is made over it.

and i,
well,
i,
i think
of your skin still
sticking to mine
like sugar in
sensuous
flames.

the heat is quick and
i'm morning sick,
i am your flower and
won't my petals please
fall away?

the wind
a sighing of a
heavy breast.

i will love you
in the morning when
the fog paints
windows with
hoary br

vanishing from view .collabi am missing something,
i am that old woman with her
car keys forever on the
back of her mind because that
is the closest to the front
she can manage
anymore.

i've forgotten who i used to be.
shallow screaming dins the room,
shakes the walls, as i try to cling
to something real, not this made-up
world where the ocean is suddenly
the sky, raining salt
upon open wounds.

the static is like poetry over
empty air, radios humming to
the tune of nothing but your
airplane parts and rioting
heart.

i am the grass beneath your feet
that you trample. i want nothing
to do with this cardboard city
full of ghosts and ashes. i need to l

rememberevery time i enter my room, i have to tell myself who i am.

i am melissa, i am eighteen years old, and i suck at calculus.
i am melissa, i am eighteen years old, and i am in love.
i am melissa, i am eighteen years old, and i can't wait til the day is over.
i am melissa, i am eighteen years old, and i am sick of being alone.
i am melissa, i am eighteen years old, and i am the fattest fuck on the planet.
i am melissa, i am eighteen years old, and i hate everything about myself to the best of my knowledge.

every time i enter my room, i have to tell myself who i am.

just in case one day,
the person who enters it
isn't the same person as

a new heartbeatyou would have told her that she was the most beautiful idea in the world if it meant getting in her pants. please, close your mouth: it's unbecoming to gape so openly. this isn't disgusting, this isn't piggish. this is called human nature. you are a filthy, instinctual body following your hormones instead of heart. if you say otherwise, you're a liar. if you agree, you're a liar anyway.

let's backtrack. the music is so loud, you can feel it in your teeth. the bass is thumping hard enough that it's resetting your heartbeat. your bones turn to s

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how to stagnate

by *ohsostarryeyed, Feb 21, 2013, 12:58:17 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Haiku & Eastern

the best way to stay
miserable is to hate
everything new.

how to stagnateby *ohsostarryeyed

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Haiku & Eastern

a waking thought

featured!
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~MariaTala Mar 27, 2013

_{this is why i'm always a little sad.}

*ohsostarryeyed Mar 27, 2013

i'm sorry, my dear :/

~MariaTala Mar 29, 2013

_{no, I'm sorry that was a little depressing}

*ohsostarryeyed Apr 2, 2013

we're all entitled to it, we're entitled to anything we feel <3

~MariaTala Apr 3, 2013

_{Thank you for writing that. :]}

`YouInventedMe Mar 20, 2013 Writer

indeed

*ohsostarryeyed Mar 26, 2013

~EpycWyn Feb 21, 2013

I enjoy the new
But leaves me envy and greed
My craving unfilled

*ohsostarryeyed Feb 28, 2013

i c wut u did thar

~AxelChicRikuGirl623 Feb 21, 2013

That is... So true.

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how to stagnate

how to stagnateby *ohsostarryeyed

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