[x]

how to stagnatethe best way to stay
miserable is to hate
everything new.

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

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 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 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.

listen honey, here comes your mani hear your gaslight anthem
playing in my head
on repeat
on repeat
for the first time in months.

my stomach is knitting itself
a raw sweater,
pink and greying flesh
from the sickness of worry.

i made the mistake
of playing it back to you.

you tell me you miss me,
you love me,
these songs in your vernacular
writing your thoughts,
but the thoughts are not yours.

it was well intentioned
but too far gone,
the thought has trailed
its way along lines
of train tracks-
i cannot think of you
unless you come back
home.

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

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

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

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

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

preemptive breakup poemif anyone ever tells you your sadness isn't physical,
show them the ache in your bones,
the raw skin on your arms or wrists or hips or thighs,
the imprint of your foetal body on your mattress from the days you couldn't bear to leave.

and you see this?
this is what hurt looks like.
i want you to look closer, lean in a little until you can feel the sadness on my breath
and i want you to watch my eyes. count how often they blink and count how many of them are forcing back words i still can never say.
i don't want you to miss a second of how you make me feel.

i want to be what keeps you up at night
i want to be the reason you can't eat

there are monsters in my head.there are monsters in my head.
they scream and rattle their bars,
fingers round my bones
to shake the cage.

i cannot sleep.

no amount of blood spilled
or water thrown down
the throat the way the camera
and knife
will in the morning
can quiet them.

i wonder if the doctors will see the monsters,
or if they have learned to keep quiet
and still in the light;
to pretend they are not there
until no one is around to see them;

and regardless of their sessility,
regardless of their muteness,
the moment the darkness comes,
i see their faces
again.

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More from *ohsostarryeyed

baby boyi did a number on myself
yes i did buddy boy
yes i did baby boy

look at my red hands, oh
look at the silvery streams
i am tearing, baby boy, oh
i am ripping at red seams

do you see my bones now,
baby boy? do you see
the way i shake?
i'm a hollow-ended river,
baby, i'm a sorrow-
hungry snake.

you did a number on me
yes you did buddy boy
yes you did baby boy

want you to watch me as i
burst into static
touching every live wire
sleeping with cinders
burning in the attic

want you to feel my skin
when it rips itself asunder
wide enough and deep enough
to slip us both right
under.

you did a number on me
didn't you buddy bo

everything your silence saysi have not showered since thursday.
my hair is sticky and sprayed,
dry and dull, limp and wilting --
sad like me.

i have not seen my own hips
for three days,
i have hardly changed my clothes.

i do not want to do this.

my name is something lying forgotten
underneath the boxspring of your bed.
i am not a memory for you,
i am not a gift;

instead, i float in the crevasses
of your mind, never near enough
to the surface to be remembered.

every promise of life and love
you have given me,
every swear to never leave
i have given you --
it flounders in the ebbing seas.

i am not clean
and i am not beautiful.

my name is something

what are tearsit is monday and i am trembling
in sadness and hunger and reminiscence
and longing.
the moon is not out and the air is too cold.

it is here the line between you and him is blurred.
every hour you spend silent is another word from my pen,
pressed onto paper and equally of the cancerous loss of my
heart, and the uncomfortable absence of its stitches.

this is when i feel the ground fall from beneath my feet.
this is when i forget if i am looking (you) up or down,
if i am in love or in hate.

this is when i need you most, a solid set of arms
to steady myself as i am wrapped inside,
a body with a hot heart burning behind soft skin.

i

what made you so scared?i am selfish.

i want to see
no one touch you

i want to see
no poison kiss you

i want to see
the way my knees look
when you're kissing
the back of my neck
and down my spine

there is no love
with my hands across my face.

this is where i write my life story,

red fingers, blue thumbs
my eyes are on you still.

i am missing something
crucial, and i am scared.

the paper ships will not set
sail under the blues of my bruises, but
the further you are from me
the more i believe that
i am nothing to you.

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i wish i could just be a monster

by *ohsostarryeyed, Feb 20, 2013, 11:13:29 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Haiku & Eastern

i am some
thing less human than
a monster.

i wish i could just be a monsterby *ohsostarryeyed

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Haiku & Eastern

©2013 *ohsostarryeyed

couldnt get this out of my head whilst trying to sleep last night

~BMWYSP Feb 23, 2013 Professional Writer

I love this.

Reply

*ohsostarryeyed Feb 28, 2013

Reply

~BMWYSP Feb 28, 2013 Professional Writer

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*0hgravity Feb 20, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

reminds me of a strange album by The Wind-Up Bird called Whips.
the song titles are based off something his ex said: sorry that i've become this monster. I love you a lot.
one particular track has the message she left with that phrase repeated over and over. I thought it was immensely affecting but it may not appeal to everyone...if'n you're curious [link]

anyway. I like this piece. the hesitancy in it. the disjointed feeling and the unexpected turn. it makes one do a double take much like spotting something different within someone that at first glance was normal - if that makes any sense.

Reply

~SteffenC-itsjustme Feb 20, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I didn't enjoy the entirety of that song..but man. Her voice, it just cut into my soul. Listening to her repeat those words over and over again..it just dug deeper and deeper. Thanks for sharing it, though I'm not the one it was intended for.

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*0hgravity Feb 20, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

yeah, had the same effect on me.
no problem, thanks for giving it a listen even if you weren't the intended recipient.
I always enjoy hearing people's opinions on songs I suggest.

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~SteffenC-itsjustme Feb 21, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Glad to hear it

Have a fine day!

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