I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry(4)
So you bury your pain inside them after the show.
I hope your brother turns out to be nothing like you.
Hope another year passes and you hurt even more than I do.
Used to live up the street from you but since then I moved.
My new house is clean
and the sky’s always blue.
I sing in the shower
and I walk around naked.
I love my whole body
though you once made me hate it.
I eat lots of pancakes and drown them in honey.
I’ve made lots of handshakes and made lots of money.
I smile and sigh when I crawl into bed ’Cause there’s no more scar tissue inside my head.
I heard what you’re up to I’m glad that I left.
I feel like myself again deep in my chest.
Signed:
Sincerely,
Ashley
I wish you the best.
THE QUESTION
I stand before the mirror and examine my breasts.
protruding forth from my chest and demanding kindness, free ice cream, and violence.
my speckled face, freckled pale brown like organic eggs, flushes pink.
my eyebrows unkempt
and short hair untidy at the crown.
I grip my buttocks.
dissatisfied.
I chase the paradox around my head.
The filmy, sticky grain of femininity slides across my skin.
It twinkles in every stare and as my weight shifts from hip to hip, I’m gliding as I walk.
My clenched jaw,
my small lips,
my broad shoulders
like an adolescent boy.
I worship at the altar of femininity in the women who suckle the lavender from my breath.
It poses nothing to me but a question
to which I do not have the answer.
I MET A MIND READER.
I have not seen the Sun in 7 days.
I have seen Frankfurt, Oslo,
Copenhagen,
Reykjavík,
Helsinki.
5 countries
and 1 planet.
Just Earth.
No stars.
Just clouds.
And no Sun…
Earth is bleaker in the dark.
The gray hazy dark.
The upside-down and sleepless dark.
Not the romantic kind that fills the gaps in between city lights and candlelit dinners and moonlight bouncing off of crystal glasses filled with champagne, lipstick-stained.
I sat on an old bus, packed in like crowded teeth in a young mouth, and I saw a little girl.
She frowned at me.
I began to panic.
They say children can sense dread.
This is the first child who hasn’t smiled when I cast a glance in their direction.
Has my heart,
once so full of love, finally drained itself like a yellow raisin?
Will the children begin to notice?
She looks at me quizzically and smiles.
Kicks her feet
and then shakes her head no.
As if to answer my question.
I met a mind reader. Aged 4 or 5.
I have seen light burst forth from a magic eye.
From a heart more wholesome than mine.
Astronomic miracles, in an unfathomable form.
But I still haven’t seen the Sun.
THE TOURIST
I quite like how these jeans Look hanging ’round your knees And I love your dirty sneakers When you kick them off your feet I’d really like to find The place
between your eyes Where I kiss you on the forehead And make you smile every time
I’m struggling to place My favorite freckled space Between your hair, hung
like a telephone wire Swinging
’cross your face And right now you’re inside My favorite studio on Vine
Complaining ’bout a violin’s Misrepresented whine And I can’t wait to take you home Where I can have you all alone
And overanalyze each part of you I’ve written in my phone See,
I’ve started taking down All of my favorite little sounds That waltz around you in 3 quarter notes With each word you pronounce It kills me that you’ll leave Off in a jet over the sea But I hope the air in California Will forever taste of me.
ONANISM
The corner of my childhood bed.
A stuffed bear, color: cherry red.
A toothbrush motorized inside.
A 15-mile dirt bike ride.
A pair of socks, balled up real tight.
A hot tub jet, alone at night.
Your kneecap, cased in denim jeans.
Victoria’s Secret magazine.
16 years of bubble baths,
a showerhead that can detach.
A pointed toe,
a cramping calf.
Disgusted in the aftermath.
THE PARTY
Your tongue is in my mouth in the kitchen at the party.
Why the fuck am I at the party?
My dress is too tight for you to get your hands under, but I left my panties at home tonight and I’m dripping down my thighs.
My lipstick is smeared and there are people probably staring
but fuck them anyway.
It’s been a year and a half of throwing glances in hallways, and my hair standing on every end when you appear and breathe down my neck
(so tell me, how the fuck I’m supposed to keep my cool) So we leave for one night and it turns into five mornings.