on fire, and who we've become.

i called you an old flame
to a new friend
who has never heard your name out of my lips
before

an old flame

it makes you sound like a candlestick affair

simple, small
a dinner for two
glowing dimly on
the outline of a person i could love
or did you just flicker away?

i should have called you a furnace

deep in the belly of the beast
heating everything up from the inside
thawing out the winter of my bones
defrosting a human heart
we weren't sure was there
until it started beating

i should have called you a bonfire

fueling the drunken nights
the summer nights
when everything was good
but your warmth made it better
more alive

i should have called you a wildfire

taking out everything in your path
swallowing up all the cities we dreamed for ourselves
in one great gulp
raging, as one does, until everything you touch
changed

(i lived through the night
but
for better or for worse, i'm not the same).

S.

{Photo: Rita Ji Flickr}

relapse .

you've been seeping back in
spreading through my veins
a sickness

first in dreams
then in faces i let myself forget
                         
then calls, too blurry-eyed to see the screen
           yet somehow typing out your number
                                                                       muscle memory
old texts dug up from centuries past
a graveyard of memories, excavated — they should be dead
                                                                           but somehow

somehow

it's you again.

you're back.

S.

{Photo: Angela Kim Flickr}

the intricacies of breaking .

in trying to say goodbye,
                                       gracefully
i do not know where to put my hands.

                 if i went with what my body said,
i would hold yours close to mine
                                  fleshtoflesh
                  handtolips
                                (wondering, always,
                                 where did the distance first creep in)

except,

i don't think that is what a clean
                                                           break looks like.


it is easy to let go of the reality of us
there is freedom in the        
                                                                              unshackling
                                 of one person
                                                         from another

except,

i don't know where to put down this
                     idea
                                            thatfusedus
                                                           (long before we even touched)


i have a
           sinking
                     suspicion that unfinished ideas
                                                                                       grow
         into something they ought not to be

                                      and nostalgia is a dirty bitch
that eats people alive from the inside out
                                      if left unchecked

so i've been holding my breath when i hear your name

i've been
                                       detaching
                  (and it's as easy as i remember it)

i've been letting the distance expand between your body and mine

i've been filling the space with things that do not remind me of what we should have been

                                                  i'm trying to say goodbye to you
                                                 in a way where both of us survive
                                                                      whole

                                   and i think it's working
(i'll let you know when i let out the air).

S.

{Photo by: Codrina Cazacu}

The Dust On This Poem Could Choke You | by Lora Mathis

September 18, 2014

I am throwing out all of the clothes you touched me in.
I am burning every poem with your name in it.
But I am still holding onto some of the letters you wrote me.
I tell myself it’s to remember.
I tell myself it’s because I am afraid
of forgetting the early warning signs.
I tell myself I’m not sentimental.

I’m not sentimental.
I’m just afraid of throwing every burning thought
I have about you into the trash
and starting a wildfire.

I am shaking on the ground in my bedroom,
realizing that it is two years until I turn the age
you wanted to marry me at.
I am using the candles on my
twenty-first birthday cake
to burn “grow up” into my knees.
I am in the front row at a show,
realizing that if I heard this song two years ago,
I would have thought about you.

Thinking about you takes effort now.
You no longer pour out when I open my mouth.
These days, if I want to bleed you out,
I have to grab a knife.

I am in the waiting room checking off “suicidal thoughts”
on the general form. I am figuring out
which parts of my personality are mine
and which ones I created to please you.
I am in the doctor’s office, holding my head high and not
quivering when she asks me if I’m okay.
I am biting down on my lip until I taste rust when she
mentions putting me on antidepressants.
I am getting better, I swear.

I am feeling the tears well up and not letting them fall.
This is a form of self-abuse.
This is a form of reliving my youth.
This is a form of remembering what it felt like to be near you.

———

by Lora Mathis

{Photo: Emma Carson Flickr}

where i've been -

You see, we’re tired, my heart and I,

We dealt with books, we trusted men, 

And in our own blood drenched the pen.

― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, excerpt from My Heart And I

{Photo and Art: Lauren Muller/Instagram}

a little bit too much alive

I know you would say 'you owe me nothing'
   But I know you think I owe you
                                                         just a little bit
You think you own a little bit of me

              Not enough to say it
                                       Or even think it out in
                                                                onesolidthought

Enough though, to feel it in your hands      somedays
                                                        on the insides of your cheeks
                                              underneath the skin covering your ribcage that's stretched too thin
               
                                     You feel it
                             Mid-day when your back is turned but you can hear my voice
                  When I brush past and the hairs on your arm wake up
      On the cusp of sleep when your mind loosens up and dances on things you half-forgot

You feel 'I own you a little bit'
                                         'You owe me something of yourself'

But you are wrong there

I am a little bit too much alive for you
                                 I still have a vibrancy that you forgave yourself for never having fully
                                                                                                                                                    years ago
    I am still finding how far my arms                                              reach
                 and how tall I can stand when I'm standing up for something
                                                                                                                            (someone)

                                          You forget how much I belong to myself

I want to tell you      (I want you to know)
                   that even though I make you feel something
                            in places you'd long forgot existed
                                     in places you didn't know about before
                            doesn't mean I owe you anything
                                                                           at all
                                                                           of me.

S.

{Photo: via Thome Yorker Tumblr}

untruth .

i'm trying to be honest
              for a change
but you look better when i say
      your hair smelled of lemons
             and
 there was an aftershock when i kissed you
         so strong i needed to hold you
              with both hands
                   to steady the seismic tremor
that started in deep
                       and spread to all corners of myself

    and i look better when i
             tell you that i still wanted you
                            the night i took you to my unmade bed
               and let myself undress you
                    with my eyes closed

but i can't sleep with your head next to mine
                 and i've been pretending i don't know why
      but i think you know, already
                                    (you've been pretending too)

                                  it's funny —
being right after all this time
                 like some sick i-told-you-so
                           i've been playing with myself

and i see now that in this light
                          i don't look so good at all
                but your hair has never smelt of lemons
                                and you weren't there the night the ground
                                                 did shake beneath my feet
                                  and,
                                       help me god,
                             i still can't seem to tell the truth
                                              the way i need to:

you are not my sunlight                                                                  

and i will never be your clear night sky.                                                       

S.

{Photo: Margaret Durow Flickr}

haven .

there is a warm bed on the floor of a
cold room
but it is not a home
to me

i cannot feel safe
curled next to a man
who says he wears his heart outside himself—
like a badge
like a hand-stitched emblem on his shirt pocket—
but who maps out the quickest exits
as soon as he enters a room

who has already told me the ways
he will forget me —
the ways he has already forgotten me —
while i am still tangled up around him

.....

you are a burner of bridges
of roads, of highways
you warm yourself
on all the endings you've ignited —
looking holy and alive
as the flames glow you a halo

and i've been trying to find a place
to hide
because
every time i'm with you
i smell smoke.

S.

{Photo: Sayaka Minemura Flickr}

because you asked me what's on my mind and i don't know how to answer like a normal person; here is a poem.

i've been thinking lately about
                  skin

catching myself staring at the stranger
      on the café bench

wondering if
           the dimples in his cheeks would
                      feel the same as yours
           with my nose pressed into the crease

[if i could ever love him if they didn't
 if i could ever leave him if they did]

how the cab-mans callouses
    compare to yours
        held tight against my ribcage —
     that extra friction
                      sending me over the edge

if the workman's arms are also used
             to wrap themselves around someone
                               soft and breakable
         when he puts down his saws and hammers for the day.

・・・・・

i've been thinking lately about
           forgiveness

whether you can find some for me
     when this all goes to shit

[if you can start storing it up now
 and slowly letting us go
 before we have to]

and whether i can find any for myself
         for taking it this far

knowing that this is going to
         break us both —
                       differently.

S.

{Photo: Утро вторника}

unanswered —

questions for the woman i was last night 

how far have you walked for men who’ve never held your feet in their laps?

how often have you bartered with bone, only to sell yourself short?
why do you find the unavailable so alluring?
where did it begin, what went wrong, and who made you feel so worthless?
if they wanted you, wouldn’t they have chosen you?
all this time, you were begging for love silently
thinking they couldn’t hear you, but they smelt it on you
you must have known that they could taste the desperate on your skin
and what about the others that would do anything for you?
why did you make them love you until you could not stand it?
how are you both of these women, both flighty and needful?
where did you learn this, to want what does not want you?
where did you learn this, to leave those that want to stay?

by warsan shire

{Photo: Ennevia Flickr}

lessons .

things i wished i'd been taught:

        how to respond to a man that won't leave him angry
or me sad.

        no.
reverse that:

          that won't leave me sad
or him angry.
 
                     there.

i think that makes a difference.

                      there.
another thing i wish i'd been taught:

                  how to put my needs above
                      someone else's wants.

         my whole life has been filled with firecracker men
loud and fast and angry
      that burn for a second and then blow up
                          in my face
           and disappear in a mess
                            of smoke and debris.

                                               that live for the reaction.

                and i don't think i've ever been taught
                                 how to stop a fuse that's already lit.
                                          or where my body will be
                                                                                                     least likely
                                                    to get caught by the shrapnel.


                i wish they had been taught to be softer
i wish i was taught to be stone.

S.

{Photo: © quentin de briey/photography}

to the men .

the inside of my cheeks
are raw
from biting them until they bleed

i know that you're just asking me to smile but

i would rather spit blood
into the bathroom sink
and wait for the
stinging to
subside

wait until my tongue
gets used to the walls of my mouth
again

wait while a new layer of skin grows back
stronger this time

than open myself up

for you.

S.

{Photo: Matt Fry Flickr}

alchemy .

i've found you in the silence

when i'm alone or in a crowd of strangers

i've found myself missing the softness between your calloused hands
& the laughter on your teeth

& i know we were insignificant — 

strangers colliding on our way to bigger things

but i think you dropped your pen — 

something small and insignificant

& i think i picked it up

& after all this time it's turned to gold in my pocket —
heavy and significant

but it's yours not mine —

all too heavy for my two arms to carry

something bigger

than we were

so that i've found i'm now missing your blackberry sweet kisses

& the sound of your voice first thing in the morning

before either of us had opened our eyes

saying not now not now not now to the early-light
& right now right now right now to me

& i'm sure you left these moments in that
apartment next to mine

before leaving that old town for good

but i brought a button home with me
that turned into a diamond in my suitcase

& i can't seem to let it go.

S.

{Photo: Lily Little Flickr} 

pretend .

you covered me with burnt kisses —
with siren songs
waving your heart outside yourself
like a beacon
but it was just illusion —
smoke and lights and mirrors
aimed at those with simple minds
and i came running.

you tore me down
not all at once but in strips
thin as paint
one room at a time
until my body was made only of
the most basic elements —
nothing of substance
nothing to hold up to the light.

you seduced me with lips that tasted of
clementines
and words that sounded suspiciously like
my own
recited backwards.

· · ·

i only wish i had learned to speak firmly without
sounding mean
i wish i had taught myself the art of
grace
in tension
and strength
in the sea of vulnerability you swept me into.

i only wish
you were everything i imagined
and i was the person i wrote as myself.

i wish
but we don't exist outside of the walls of what-might-have-been.

[don't listen to a word i've said
i've been crying bathtubs full
of crocodile tears since you left me.
trying to find the last shred of you
i lost somewhere inside these veins].

S.

{Photos: woronowska dorota Flickr; Laura Makabresku Photography}

found .

Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know -- because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, [...] and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

{Photo: Photographics Esp Flickr}

brown eyes .

you burned the inside of my eyelids —
flashes of
           the morning sun waking up
                                                       to stripe your back through the blinds,
                    water falling across mid-summer skin,
        lashes folding up so close i can feel the breeze,
                   dimples,
                               dimples,
                   dimples.

and your eyes are not the colour of
                                          milked down chocolate
          or silt and soil
                                like you claim —

          they're cherry wood and honey
warm & light & deep & rich —
                        and they don't look away
                                     even when i can hardly breathe
                                                            under their heaviness.

and those eyes read me like a book
                       steady and linear
           one page to the next until you were done
                                                    and i had no more stories left to share.

but i read you like a poem
                        doubling back and again
                                              stuck and gasping
                     at one verse, one word, one jawline
                                         wondering,
                                                          always,
                       how many ways one could interpret
                                            you.

S.

{Photo: Angela Kim Flickr}

the art of being destroyed .

i never thought we'd get here.

when it came to you and me
i had begun to believe that all we'd ever be is
two lost causes
staring across crooked timing with inaudible 'what ifs' awake on our tongues.

two broken-compassed travellers
who could never stay on the trail long enough to collapse under
the same night sky.

but now i see
that we are two stories about the same moment
that sound nothing the same
and yet are both true
and both beautiful.

i was a shipwreck and you were the ocean
and no matter where i went
i was always going to drown
and you were always going to swallow me whole.

S.

{Photo: Memoriste Flickr}

wreckage .

when he found me i was a pile of bones and embers and broken words
a kaleidoscope mess
who said yes to things that made me sad.

i let him tear out pieces of me and
wear them
i watched him parade them around like a trophy
that he had won —
conquered.

and i found that when i went to
pull myself back into something i could recognize
i was missing some important bones
to stand on
to reach
to run.

i found my embers did not reignite
because he had stolen the ones
that still glowed
and left me the ashes.

and i found that the shards of words and promises
that once made up my soul
no longer fit together like they should
no longer held meaning —
pages of my favourite book ripped out and
tossed to the wind.

and i hated him
for a long time.

hated him for coming to me when i was weak
for taking what wasn't his
for sitting on my chest until i couldn't breathe anything but him.

but i have learned
that i still
can dance on broken bones,
that there are parts of me that will catch fire
even when i'm most numb,
that i was born with a pen at my fingertips
and i could re-write every last word that i lost
or i can leave the torn and crumpled papers where they are
and write a new part.

S.

{Photo: MillyCope Flickr}

tracks .

this house shakes when the train passes through town
and i've been sitting on my floor trying to feel it all. everything. 
waiting for something to finally give way
and send this old brick building falling
onto the nighttime traffic. the lovers, the brokenhearted, 
the people who believe in late-night apologies or ice cream runs. 

it isn't working.
my sensory neurons have all given out (it's about time)
my legs are too weak to walk to where you are
my mouth has forgotten how to say things like "i'm sorry" and "please take me back".

and i've been trying to see how this makes me feel
but all i can feel is the goddamn train.

and.

an imprint of your hands on my neck
your lips on my waist.

and yet
still.

i can't connect these marks on my skin 
with the way the blood pumps through my veins
can't make out a clear path between the places our skin met
and the place in my brain that knows how to feel and express and understand  
that knows, 
when it comes down to it, 
what it all meant.
what you meant.

and i've been thinking
that if i don't get some feeling back under my skin
i'll hitch a ride on the next train through town
and see where i go.

S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}

poison .

i never trusted doctors or technicians
or warning labels on bottles and bottles of arsenic
never trusted your smile

you're a fool to love
but not to say it
because someone somewhere is bound to believe you
and maybe it feels good to make a fool out of someone else
for once

maybe it feels good to drink down
bottles and bottles of arsenic
and not believe the doctors and technicians when they say things like
"you are going to die"

because there's a thing called double jeopardy
and i can't kill twice the fool that already died
the first day i trusted your smile

S.

{Photo: Alessandra Celauro Flickr}