tempest .

"Women like me do not fall gracefully,
we stumble over our spines, trip over
our vowels, and collapse into your arms.

Our hearts are open books,
Russian novels containing fifty pages
on the way your voice drifts across
the telephone wires each night.
Our hearts are first drafts,
unedited verses about each and every 
person we have ever loved: the stranger
on the subway, the girl who gave us a balloon,
the boy who stole our virginity
but not our heart.

Women like me will love you from a distance
of a thousand syllables while laying in your bed,
we will destroy you in the most beautiful way possible,
and when we leave you will finally understand
why storms are named after people."

by M.K. Wilde, Katrina

{Photo: Emily's Tumblr}

abyss .

You asked me for my deepest darkest secret. A secret I'd told no other living soul. 

What I think you may not understand about secrets is that those type are not down in the depths without reason. They aren't there to whip out at cocktail parties or ballet lessons or even at 3AM in the bed of your best friend who you tell most-everything to. They are absent for a reason. 

I think when you asked for this secret you meant to ask for my vulnerability, but what you asked for is more than that, and you need to understand this. 

Because the kind you asked for is so ugly that you do not even tell it to yourself. It's something you know is there - you can feel the weight - but you cannot look it squarely in the face. That's why it's kept underneath. 

Someone somewhere once said ignorance is bliss and I believe them, because once you know the deepest darkest part of someone, you cannot forget. So I can tell you things I have told only five, two, even one other person, but don't you dare ask for more. 

You cannot handle dark and deep. This is what you need to understand.

S. 

{Photo: Elif Sanem Karakoc}

still .

I can see right past your fake thick skin
You've been writing about me again
My lips you swore off as a sin
But sweet temptation took you in. 

My skin is thin, I do admit
Your every touch still bruises it
Still, my dead heart's fire was re-lit
So as to grant me one last kiss. 

S.

{Photo: Laura Makabresku 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}

to a friend .

It's still not real, Andy.

I'm still praying to a God I'm not totally convinced in that you'll find your way home. That you'll walk in from this longwinded joke; a sideways grin overtop your apology.

I hate how longwinded you've let this joke get.

I hate how the last time I saw you I cut it short to go read a book when I should have gone down to the ocean with you. 

I hate how people use past tense to talk about your smile now. How your embraces were enough to turn a bad day into something magic. How your laugh was the centerpiece in a crowded room. 

Everyday is full of you, but it's an empty-full. You left, and yet, I'm not sure how to rid of you from everything I see and touch and hear. 

You left and we're all trying to live without the sun but it's gotten a little too cold to bear. 

Please come home now.

S. 

poetic perfection //

leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses,
you make him call before
he visits, you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.

Marty McConnell

{Photo: Julia Fot Photography}

origins .

The idea of staying never occurred to me. Not in any serious sort of way.
I was raised on an island but I was not born on one. You were. 

The idea of leaving comes to you in a romantic sort of way. 
A "maybe-someday" that you poke at when things get dull. 
It never came to you as it did me: as a necessity. As a very act of survival. 

We are two different species, I'm coming to understand. 
I killed myself loving you, and it's taken me years to realize that we do not breathe the same. 
To realize that when you say "home" you think of one place and not thousands.
To realize that I can love you in spite of this, but it will kill me. 

You have built your life in small things. 
You let an ocean you can swim become a barrier. You let mountains you can climb fence you in.
And it's taken me a while but I think I understand why, when I left, you didn't do the same. 

You were born on an island, and I was not.  

S. 

{Photo: Tamara Lichtenstein Photography}

Creation .

I am made of dirt-caked carrots from the backyard garden, 

            of scars that I can live with.

I am made of classic rock 

            on roadtrips with an old man. 

From the oceans push and pull, 

            missed curfews and long goodbyes. 

I am made of real maple syrup and Sunday comics, 

            of slammed doors and inaudible apologies.  

      

I am made from skinning-dipping in early May 
            with a boy who 'wasn’t right for me' 

                                               (he wasn’t). 

I am made of packed bags and packed houses, 

            and the restlessness that comes with staying now.  

From a phone call made across the world 

            that has bittered the taste of everything I’ve since known. 

I am made from still moments and negative space, 

            from the sound of steady breathing in a single bed for two. 

I am made of words that someone else has penned, 

            when no one knows me like a stranger. 

S.

{Photo: Melissa Lunar Flickr}

Astrocytoma .

Iridescent and belonging to all the light  

            of the constellations, 

This was how she used to be –   

            a luminescent contrast to the greytones. 

But there are chemicals taking her now 

            capturing the luster of youth and  

coating her body with a blankness:

            A canvas untouched, 

                                or since faded. 

Her mother remembers her as a flame 

            There’s nothing wrong with being still 

                        she tells herself, 

But she remembers when her girl would leap 

            with all the energy of the sun. 

There is heaviness layered behind 

            pale green eyes 

That sprung up somewhere between 

            test tubes and CAT scans and negative results. 

She can’t fix this. No one is fixing this. 

There is a fault in the framework – 

            they’ve found the problem but not the answers 

So what’s the point in all the dim rooms and 

            holding tight to words like ‘hope’ 

                        if everything perfect fucking dies? 

S. 

{Photo: Jacob Sutton Photography}

new territory .

you are a country i want to learn. a culture i want to bathe in until my fingers prune up. i want to carve your language into my walls until they've been chiseled so deep they have nothing left to do but crumble.

you don't scare me with your history. with the wars that have already been fought and lost upon your ground, leaving you scarred beneath the wreckage. i don't mind the mess.

i want to discover the secret places. the ones the ten-day tourists never find. i want to know your safe areas and the ones i'm not supposed to go to after dark has fallen.

i don't want to just visit. i want to live in you. to walk every day with your air in my lungs. to search you over without a map because i will make my own. i will rewrite it a thousand times and i still won't get it perfect, but it will be my life work to try.

i want you to be the last country i go to, and me the last traveler you allow within.

i want to find my home in you.

S. 

{Photo: Margaret Durow Photography}