[x]

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

materialism .collabjohn's bed was crooked against the wall, with enough space between the two for his pillow to slip down every night. it is never made but usually empty, much like the rest of the room. his wallet was full of condoms, the box in the slightly opened nightstand drawer with two strays within. john's socks were paired up neatly in his dresser, and he had no closet. a baseball bat was stretched across the threadbare rug in such a way that it would trip someone unfamiliar with the layout. like a robber. things you will never find there are his iphone, ipod, and his grandfather's pocket watch from when he was in the world war.

evelyn paints a small c

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

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

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

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.

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

the awakeningit's like i gave you the poison
when it seeped through my skin

and when you told me
had no one told you different,
you would have learned what it's like
to cut yourself open,

i had no other thought
than how completely ruinous
destroyed like rome--
or maybe just a shanty--
i was:

toxic and sunken like atlantis
and like the ocean,
eroding every beautiful piece
of statue, marble, and man
i could touch:

i am ocean edna,
drowning you in me.

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the day the sun never rosewhat do you do
when your eyes are already
opened
and still,
imprinted on your eyelids
are scenes and thoughts
and typographical imagery
that are thick
like blood,
and enough
to drive you to madness?

i keep your secrets
and even though
my heart still breaks,
my ongoing refusal
to think of you poorly
does not.

at this hour,
you still have me
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with a longing in the cellar of my stomach;
it never does leave,
does it?

i wait with
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and rose flavoured tea
clutched like a crux
in my hand
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that maybe,
one day,
you can love me
again.

i miss the complete envelopment
of my b

sorryok
so i don't remember how to write
poetry because it's pretty
and that's the last thing i feel,
and i can't write stories
because they're all happening to me
though i've forgotten how to live
and yet
can't stop dying
but i can't stop breathing
either

just look for a second
this is what i'm dealing with-

i'm feeling too much
all the salt in the ocean;
i'm not pausing as i feel
my breath stuttering
like my heartbeat
in my chest,
so i wonder if i have
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palpitations
or if i just miss you
enough to put a hole in my chest,
and i wonder if i could do it myself
with a knife or if it's from
natural causes;
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incendiaryit was the city -- you know, a self-contained organism, a microcosm of reality in which we all take part. it's like a play, with our very orchestrated roles rehearsed perfectly until we can pull them off as smooth as ice.

it doesn't matter which city, because really, they're all the same -- paris, milan, barcelona...lawrence, pittsburgh, atlanta.

what matters is only that we were in the city. i was myself, playing the role of a love-struck jeweler, praying i could find just the right gem to put on my lover's finger someday, and she was herself, playing the role of sara.

sara, my love; sara, my heart; sara, the snow beneath my feet, the i

tickle me pink"i don't know what's wrong, he's just gone limp."

that's all i hear, and i guess i'm still coherent enough to take that as a sexual slight. i go to open my mouth to tell helen she's being a cunt, telling someone about our sex life, but my lips won't move.

"uh... coke maybe. ecstasy definitely. i don't know. please, just get me someone here, i don't want to lose him."

i realise she's not talking about my dick, so i'm pretty sure i didn't pass out during sex. no, i'd definitely remember that. i want to tell helen i'm sorry, but my lips won't move.

i hear footsteps, and then hands on my hair until my head is resting in a lap. helen ga

thesisi feel awful in a way.

here, let me tell you about this-
i have a boy who is like
a needle on thread,
strung on me
like a clothesline;

he is tireless
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hidden within his
carapace,
unyielding;

a different body
whistling from down
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shedding my skin
as he mends
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with handwriting
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in god-

but georgia
is not enough,
and finally,
i can see that
neither are you.

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it choked the life out of her
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she just sits in front of the television
she doesn't feel love anymore-

telling a story that has no end,
breaking her heart just to feel again-
there is a big nothing
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the destruction of destruction

by *ohsostarryeyed, Mar 3, 2013, 11:08:10 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

i 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 something
it can't control;

it reminds me of how you love
the parts of me i most hate,
&the way we can fight
as we go to bed
but before i fall asleep,
i nestle myself into
the curve of your back
&i am safe.

the destruction of destructionby *ohsostarryeyed

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

©2013 *ohsostarryeyed

you left and i was angry
you will come back and i will be sleeping
i will wake when you lie next to me

~The-last-black-rose Mar 4, 2013 Student Writer

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;

This is how he makes me feel, it was weird to read that x

Reply

*ohsostarryeyed Mar 6, 2013

<3

Reply

~poisonxmuffin Mar 3, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

so relatable, and so beautifully written.

Reply

*ohsostarryeyed Mar 6, 2013

thank you <3

Reply

~kori-fuzy Mar 3, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

This sent chills all over me and completely stole my breath...
I love this. I love love love love this.

Reply

*ohsostarryeyed Mar 6, 2013

thank you so so much!

Reply

~kori-fuzy Mar 6, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

No problem, my pleasure.

Reply

~DamagedHomewrecker Mar 3, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

absolutely beautiful and real

Reply

*ohsostarryeyed Mar 6, 2013

thank you, dearie!

Reply

~MozartsNemesis Mar 3, 2013

"it reminds me of how you love
the parts of me i most hate,"

so powerful and genuine. Nicely written.

Reply

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