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}

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}

art .

You're trapped somewhere between my longing and forgetting
A half-memory, half-god
An exhausting mix of emotions
That never tire of being felt.

I am a dwarf to the lie of you
An abandoned painting in an abandoned home in a dirt-road town
While you are Michelangelo's David.
Unforgotten through the eras.

But you don't exist in real time -
In solid proof between my fingers.
Just in half sketched drawings
And conversations recalled in so many different ways they might not have happened at all.

I think, more than having you,
I need to shrink you down into a manageable size.
Because no one ever has to think about
An abandoned painting in an abandoned home in a town 600 miles away.

S.

{Photo: Clara Román Flickr}

phantom limb .

i find loss comes the hardest when forgotten 
for a moment, for a time

and then i reach for where you ought to be
with words i ought to say and find you 

nowhere

i can't use fancy words to dress this up
i don't know how
i don't know how


i don't know how

S. 

{Photo: Viola Cangi Flickr}

globetrotter .

I'll see the whole world over before I see the day you lay yourself at my feet and say you're sorry for all the nights you kept me guessing. For all the days you didn't tell me the whole truth. For every time you watched me spell 'I love you' with my eyes, but pretended you were blind.

I'll see the whole world over before you'd think to call. Before you'd think to tell me about your new life, and job, and the girl you met at the bar who you 'guess is your girlfriend now'. Before you'd think to ask how much of you is still beating through my veins and know I'm lying when I tell you none.

I'll see the whole world over but you'll still be the seven wonders wrapped into one. You'll still be a country road on a clear night when every single star in heaven can be seen. Still two arms tight around my waist that no landmark or brown-eyed stranger can erase. 

And I can see the whole world over but I'll never find a place where you don't reach me still. You have tainted a world you've never seen with kisses I've never felt, and I'm not sure Earth is big enough for both of us. 

I promise if there's a way to Mars, I'll take it. 

S. 

{Photo: Nicole Tierney Flickr}

my ghost .

I was there when you taught yourself guitar - I listened through basic chords and tireless picking until you got it right. I would climb up after you in the giant tree behind your house - we'd kick at the moss and track the sun through the sky. I answered every time you called in the middle of the night - turning up the radio so my parents couldn't hear. We'd talk for hours, but I can't remember what about. 

I was there when you told me what you did to make it all go away. I cried into my bed that night because you failed, and I couldn't imagine if you hadn't. 

I was the one you called after you broke down. Psychosis. I brought you in a coffee you weren't supposed to have (largewithcreamandsugarplease). I sat with you in white rooms and listened to you explain yourself, but you didn't. 

I came back again, anyways. I brought you coffee again, anyways. 

I came back until one day they told me to stop coming back. You couldn't see me anymore, and I haven't seen you since.

And yet, I still hear your last words, haunting:

"Maybe you have already died. I know I have." 

S.

{Photo: Misshosna Flickr}

day fifty-three.

i've been a little lost. 

the loneliness is palpable in this city. i've brushed past him on subway 5, holding a briefcase but no expression. i've heard them on the street: whistling as the girls pass by. i've seen it in searching eyes, in forced smiles, in the cellphone that never gets put away. 

it's swallowing me. and it is dark and it is terrifying. and i can't quite stand to look it in the face because it is more than i am ready to feel. these are the things they should have prepared us for.

i am trying to find my way. 

S. 

{Photo: Margaret Durow Photography}

Breathe deeply -

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry 

{Photo:  Adriano Sodré Flickr}

Wayward noise.

You want to cry aloud for your mistakes.
But to tell the truth the world doesn't need any more of that sound.

by Mary Oliver

{Photo: Flickr 陳雪梨}  

Prompt.

Priorities 

Seven hours ago the clock stopped its rhythmic onward movements and paused awhile to admire the sun hovering over the water banks, the melody of the song birds floating above the forest pines, and the dance of the children on their daily march up the hill.

Not everyone noticed this rest of seconds. Carrying on, instead, as though the universe was not an alarming, and devastatingly lovely place. (A place so worthy of their simple attention.) Their schedules refusing to lend way to magnificence. 

And there it is: the tragedy of humankind. That one could pass by without breaking to applaud the world in its splendor; not reeling as all creation unfurls itself within our grasp. 

S. 

{Photo: Flickr T.D. Smith}

Surgery.

When he came to, so I'm told, they asked him what he last remembered.
"She had eyes shaped like almonds."

And they didn't know what to make of it. Of course.
No one ever knew quite what to make of us. 

I don't think we ever had a clue what we were doing
And I don't think either of us knew why we outgrew it when we did.

But one day we didn't fit together, and somehow we both understood there wasn't any going back.
So when I packed my things that evening, you didn't ask. 

And all this time later, I still think that's what I liked the most.
How words were never a necessity for us.
How almond eyes said more to you than what I told you that day.

And either way, you made it.
Even though we failed. 

S. 

{Photo: Flickr Elif Tanman}

Extraordinary Existence.

Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled---to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.

Mary Oliver

{Photo via: We Heart It}

Still turning.

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends 

Not with a bang but a whimper.

T.S. Eliot

{Photo via: Image Fave}