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155this is not the time or place for us to speak like this.  we are sitting in your car at the walmart parking lot.  it's not a mile from my house, but it's better than stopping at the dead end of my street.

we don't move for the five seconds following the moment you cut the ignition; from there, your eyes drop to the stuffed animal you won me -- a token of the high-noon days of our summer -- that oscillates between your hands.

the sun shifts from low to lower, dipping behind clouds and city silhouettes until the lights come on.  the list of things i need to tell you becomes unreadable in the failing light, so you press a button and i can see
first datei wanted to hold your hand, but i sat on mine instead.
the mat that clung to my backmy story was that
love knew me,
& i knew love;
that we embraced,
our limbs interwoven
like the fabric
of the universe.

it has been two weeks,
& i have two freckles
like tooth marks
right where you left
a bruise,
that last time
i saw you,
the last time
i thought maybe
you could love me
as i am.

the sadness of how
mistaken i was
fills me up now
& blossoms like a flower,
hot tea like twigs & branches
within my bones.

my story has changed thus:
i loved
i lost
i fell
apart.

i hope,
more than the number of wishes
made on the stars tonight,
that one day,
you can be in a relationship
with me
instead of my sickness;
i'm not going to say i've missed youthere is enough air in me
to shatter the ocean.
i will tell you straight,
another thousand miles
would not dim the stars
i hold for you.

the aches in my thumbs
are tremendous,
forceful and hollow,
strong enough to
kill a rabbit.

i never want to meet
someone like you again.
i never want to move on,
i never want to move -
i want to wait
where i sit, bleeding,
unnoticed,
until you come around.
i will know this
by the way your eyes
become glass
in the car,
the speedometer
creating stars in the dark
of its cab,
a personal night sky.

i will never let slip
the secrets you have left
on my skin;
the secret ways
in which
i'm too sick to lovedon't let me go
if you don't know
what to do without me;

if you can't
sleep at night
because you wonder
whose arms i'm in,
and break bones every time
they're not yours:
it means you should
hold on to me.

i know
it seems like
i might just jump
but i always come back to you.
i'm sorry that i'm so stuck.

but still,
love is when you answer my call,
to hear your voice
a thousand miles away.
i'm sorry we aren't
together
anymore,
i'm sorry i'm
too sick
for you to
love
again.
when someone you loved becomes a memoryi'm interested in things falling,
breaking,
and being forgotten.
i like to see
glass bleed,
it makes me realise
i'm not the only thing
running red.

when i look,
i see passing eyes
roam the lines of my arms,
italian winding roads,
and quickly rush away
into their houses.
nobody likes to watch
something
slowly crumble-

if it isn't a crash,
a tragic accident,
an innocent death
at a hundred miles per hour,
but a drawn out,
intentional decay,
a condemned building
with cracking windows-

you will always see
the whites of their eyes
as they turn away
so as to never meet
the deadness
in yours.
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
if my body could talkit's probably not a good thing
when what you want to say
to your ex boyfriend
is the same
as what your body
wants to say to you:

i don't know why
i still insist on you
when you want
nothing to do with
me;

you don't care for me
the way you did
before;

i wish everyday
that things
would change;

you are ruining me;

i don't know how to
deal with what you're
putting me through;

why can't you love me;

everything you do
hurts me
and i know it shouldn't
matter
but everything that matters
shouldn't, i guess.

what i think i mean
is i need you
to give me my soul back-
i am killing this flesh
without it.
great peace and beautyi stretch with the branches
overhead, so that i might
grow, so that i might
blossom into something
more beautiful, something
more worthwhile, something
infinitely more than myself.

there is a lot of ugliness
involved in love, and we
shield our eyes to it like
it's the blinding sun,
that blinding truth.

please listen when i say
that the air is too thin
to fill us. please listen
when i say that i can now
understand "too thin." i
want you to hear me tell
you i want to get better,
and i want you to stay
around. i am so afraid
that my body won't, but
even more when i realise
your fingers have become
memories like sound, jus
lovesick girl's hearti'm starting to feel
the intensity of the silence
linger on my back again,
your fingers, my spine.
it scares me,
how heavy a hand
can be on a body.

for this,
i pretend we are both windows,
open to the world,
yet still a layer of glass
to keep ourselves safe,
or really, each other.

it would be wrong
for me to say
i don't worry every night,
before i fight for
a few hours' sleep-
the only thing
i can never believe in-
that no matter how much
better
i become,
better will never mean best
for you.

i am malleable like clay,
the dirt and water
i find in my hands
after i extract them,
like hands full of golden teeth,
fro
the renewal of purgingi am sick.
i am curled around the toilet
like a cat in sunlight,
cradling it like my one and only,
cheek rested on the sill,
a makeshift window;
it is a terrible thought.

the bowl is a vignetted glimpse
into my body,
almost pure art
in its portrayal,
unabstracted,
of my insides.
that is what it is:
my insides.

it is a photograph
of my feelings.
i know this makes me sick
but i imagine i am a bird, still
neither locked by air nor earth,
and i feel a little
lighter.

the lines on my skin, however,
insist that i am human.
i am afraid that they will
glow
in the aftermath of friday,
so i pretend a little more,
a little mo
do you love me again?i can't even explain
how much i can't
let myself think
because when i do
i feel
and feeling
makes me remember
love
and how to do it.

i see the ocean
birth itself in my eyes
because i can't
express to you
how much i miss
kissing you
without fear
without hesitation

i haven't been able
to find that feeling
that naturalness
since you left

or what about
how much i miss
standing in line
at canobie lake park
that foresaken entity
with your arms around me
meeting like a heart
in the front of my waist

or how much i miss
lying next to you
and just breathing you in
every breath a breath of you
it was like i could
live f
renewalyou are small,
yet unchanged
an infant
in stature;
in heart,
an empire.

please,
if you can,
love me;
i am white washed on the shores,
the grains of sand clinging
to your skin until it glitters.

i will start fires,
if it means something to you;
i will scrub my hands
if my blood is your currency.

i have folded under the bends
of your effort,
your being pressing into me
just by the weight i feel
in my heart.

to hear your voice
is to hear a melody
i knew i could never know again,
that i had sworn to forget;
yet upon hearing it,
felt my body swell with its notes
and burst with memory.

you are still one thousand miles
basically i'm like vomitwhat happens when you finally find love
(or it finds you)
but it picks up its pieces
(and yours too)
and moves to georgia?

look-
you are not the only one.

people leave their hearts
behind
everywhere.
like
if you take a walk
down the street-
the pavement you're walking on,
take a look at it.
like
really look at it.

i hope you see
vague outlines in the cement,
heart shaped, yes,
with initials stamped
like sad hooves
in their middles
because basically,
that's what love feels like.

and still,
you are not the only one.

you do not deserve
the attention
to be fixed.
you are to remain
a broken doll
at best
on the she
bulldozeri am a poet -
or at least,
i was.

(i am lying.)

i tell myself
i have never wanted anything
more than you,
but i have:

i have loved with my whole heart,
every inch of my body,
every ounce of my soul;

i have taken time and care
with my eraser,
rubbing out the distance
between where my heart lives
and where my body lies in unrest.

i actually let myself believe you
for a couple of seconds,
did you know that?
i felt like you loved me.

i didn't want to get up
and i didn't want to move out of the rain,
i just wanted to sit in your car
in these clothes
forever
because that night was the last time i'll see you.

two days later
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More from *ohsostarryeyed

when bursting is imminenti feel like ten thousand stars,
fires in small jars
and a glass ready to break.

please, find me the ashes of what i could have been,
show me the moon and her disciples,
and prove to me that i am not fucking alone.
i take off my ring,
like that will soothe the panic,
like the silence and screaming chatter will quiet
just for a single breath;
just a pause in my heartbeat;
just enough to slow the anxiety.

my face is an ember,
still singing and loud and pervasive and shrill,
redder than arizona soil under the july sun.
i am hot as i shiver,
i am flooded with grief
and uneasiness
and reluctance to move from catato
self hatredpull down the shades,
pretty baby,
the night is alive
and pressing his face
against your windows:

he is back
to take you
again.
cryingi envy how children cry
misery dredged from the
pits of hell to fill
their window-wide eyes with
seawater, bellows
like empty trumpets sounding
for every conch-shell ear.
children do not cry for
beauty, they do not cry for
themselves, they cry for
love and attention and audiences
to follow their plights
and sit as ship anchors rooted
to the ocean floor.
ignore this, bthis is exactly what
is supposed to happen,
no miles-long limbs
holding back like ropes,
finding lips
and love
more proximal
to our own

but jealous hearts
inter      cede.
i am a sad bird,
hollow bones weighed down
with melancholy envy,
disappointment
and heavy air.

i am not in love,
i say, and i am right.
but that does not mean
that i don't love you.
that does not mean
that no unhappy numbers
and shapes will slip
into my mind, broken slumber
and blue sleep.
tonight i will dream
of paphian entanglements
and sweet sorrows
slipping in to contrast.

i am sorry.
i am envy incarnate,
a green eyed monster,
and tell m
europai've washed my feet in the streets of paris
and danced in croatian nightclubs.  
i've basked in prague's own sun, wet hair sun-stiffened and bright,
seen the stars in florence, asking the heavens to give in to the moon.
i've felt the city lights of london paint me in their glow
and lost my scarf to grecian winds,

and still, it is to here i return.
i am going to live and die in your country,
not my own, not my familiarity,
and stay within its soil
until you can see me
as more than just
a ghost.

this is not my home,
but this is where my heart is.
i want to call this home before i am old as mud,
to show you my heart in every
9334your shadow on my wall has faded,
along with your fingerprints over my life.

my skin is breathing memory,
a mind that sits for no moment
in silence.
my fingers -
these once traced your lips.
my shoulders -
these once held your hands.
my heart -
this is where you once lived.

i've been dragging blades
across my skin,
digging in at certain places.
trying to find and take away
every part of you in me.

and i will bleed,
from all of the places
you once loved.

i will turn them to something
like waterfalls,
and it will be beautiful.

the numbers on the clock
will no longer mock me
in remembrance of how i
have been and how far

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January 12, 2012
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[x]

i have the right not to give excuses or reasons

:iconohsostarryeyed:

i am not going to
explain myself
away.

i am no ocean tide,
ebbing and flowing
over the sands of us,
and your approval-
your pleasure
of what i am
is not needed.

you do not
need to know
why i am hurt,
why we do not speak,
or why i still love you.
you do not
need to understand
(the way the moon
does its stars)
why i feel and ache
and show this on
my skin and bone.

the fear,
however,
of keeping you away,
of creating distance
more than the miles
between home
and georgia,
relinquishes
the power i hold
between my teeth
and i burrow
like scarab beetles in the sand
into why,
why,
why.

i cannot wait
to breathe
and not feel
obliged
to apologise
for it.
21 Comments
:iconohsostarryeyed:
full title: i have the right not to give excuses or reasons for my behaviour.

written in resi during a group
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:icon0hgravity:
*0hgravity Jan 25, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
I was listening to In This Hole by Cat Power and it matched the tone of this poem so well.

there is a great sense of acceptance and resignation in this piece - like when you're in a fight with someone and they slowly become quiet and look away and stare silently.
enjoyed reading it, anyway.
Reply
:iconallforhim2:
~allforhim2 Jan 16, 2012
i cannot wait/ to breathe/ and not feel/ obliged/ to apologise/ for it.

i relate to this line so much. it's absolutely beautiful.
you have such a way with words. your voice is always so delicate and stark at the same time, like you're walking on a tight rope or something. i don't know. it's nice.
Reply
:iconohsostarryeyed:
*ohsostarryeyed Jan 16, 2012
this made me feel good to read. thank you, natalie :heart:
Reply
:iconallforhim2:
~allforhim2 Jan 18, 2012
you're so welcome!
Reply
:iconcyanidedrinker:
~cyanidedrinker Jan 15, 2012
your recent writings have made me cry (in a good way). I am in the same exact boat, so it's always nice to read a similar situations/similar thoughts in someone else's words.
Reply
:iconohsostarryeyed:
*ohsostarryeyed Jan 15, 2012
ack, i know what you mean! seeing anything you post, like even as reblogs/posts on tumblr, i'm like, you know exactly what is going on in my life right now, and vice versa D:
Reply
:iconcyanidedrinker:
~cyanidedrinker Jan 15, 2012
Love ya, babygurl. Stay strong.
Reply
:iconohsostarryeyed:
*ohsostarryeyed Jan 15, 2012
you too :heart: in a totally noncreepy way, i'd kill to meet you haha
Reply
:iconcyanidedrinker:
~cyanidedrinker Jan 15, 2012
hhahah not creepy at all! It's mutual <3
Reply
:icontiajones:
~tiajones Jan 13, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
"i am no ocean tide,
ebbing and flowing
over the sands of us,
and your approval-
your pleasure
of what i am
is not needed."

this is beautiful.
thank you so much for writing.
Reply
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