i put myself on bed rest. like a terminal patient of illness, the action is familiar. i strip out of jeans like shedding a skin i never asked for. next i remove the colorful patterning of my socks, throwing them without caring into a corner. i once imagined that my identity was found in these patterned socks, with recognition lighting voices when they where seen from underneath bathroom stalls. but like everything else foreign and invading, they go. bed rest is a sacred space. wearing a too big t-shirt like a comfort blanket, since big girls aren’t supposed to cry, i lay on my bed. i put myself on bed rest. i pull the smooth cotton of sheets over my head, and curl my legs into the messy wrinkles of my comforter. i curl myself into the most twisted shape i can, like an Eskimo conserving body heat. then with a trembling hand i push my fingernails deep into my stomach. the pulse of my thumb pounds an uneven rhyme into the cellulite and muscle, and i focus on it. i take the smallest beat and pinpoint my focus. the other hand i curl softly against my cheek, like one would touch a newborn. i am that newborn. i am so very scared of the world and so very new to all the bad. and so i put myself on bedrest. i snuggle into this cocoon of comfort, smelling the musk of home that’s forever embedded in my t-shirt. the white fabric scrapes my nose as i exhale, trying to remind myself that i am alive. i put myself on bedrest because i broke again today and my own anxiety held the baseball bat to my china-shop demise.
Category: that girl named madie
shhhhhh
i put myself on bed rest. like a terminal patient of illness, the action is familiar. i strip out of jeans like shedding a skin i never asked for. next i remove the colorful patterning of my socks, throwing them without caring into a corner. i once imagined that my identity was found in these patterned socks, with recognition lighting voices when they where seen from underneath bathroom stalls. but like everything else foreign and invading, they go. bed rest is a sacred space. wearing a too big t-shirt like a comfort blanket, since big girls aren’t supposed to cry, i lay on my bed. i put myself on bed rest. i pull the smooth cotton of sheets over my head, and curl my legs into the messy wrinkles of my comforter. i curl myself into the most twisted shape i can, like an Eskimo conserving body heat. then with a trembling hand i push my fingernails deep into my stomach. the pulse of my thumb pounds an uneven rhyme into the cellulite and muscle, and i focus on it. i take the smallest beat and pinpoint my focus. the other hand i curl softly against my cheek, like one would touch a newborn. i am that newborn. i am so very scared of the world and so very new to all the bad. and so i put myself on bedrest. i snuggle into this cocoon of comfort, smelling the musk of home that’s forever embedded in my t-shirt. the white fabric scrapes my nose as i exhale, trying to remind myself that i am alive. i put myself on bedrest because i broke again today and my own anxiety held the baseball bat to my china-shop demise.
i can’t make myself get out of bed / underneath a blanket i’ve has for ages / wearing his t-shirt but nothing else / trying to make myself do something / anything / but anxiety is such a paralyzing monster
just you
i could live without \ a sun in my sky \ because your smile \ is the only light \ i have ever needed \ to guide me back home \ to you \ and i would use up \ all my shooting star wishes \ just to change time \ so you would be the boy \ who was my first love \ at first sight \ and i would be the girl \ who you told everything \ because \ i have always been happiest \ as long as i have had just you
i wish like i could make her care about herself
the way i do
because it hurts me to see her hurt herself
“if s.p isn’t coming then I’m not either.”
-cookie’s last words
at home i don’t miss them
at school i don’t need them
and they don’t need me
she’s a red riding hood wearing a sweatshirt
have you ever wondered why
red riding hood followed the wolf?
some say that it is innocence of the dangerous unknown
but i believe she followed the wolf because
he offered her something outside of the woods could not
~you’re red riding hood in a sweatshirt
she’s a red riding hood wearing a sweatshirt
have you ever wondered why
red riding hood followed the wolf?
some say that it is innocence of the dangerous unknown
but i believe she followed the wolf because
he offered her something outside of the woods could not
~you’re red riding hood in a sweatshirt
she’s a red riding hood wearing a sweatshirt
have you ever wondered why
red riding hood followed the wolf?
some say that it is innocence of the dangerous unknown
but i believe she followed the wolf because
he offered her something outside of the woods could not
~you’re red riding hood in a sweatshirt
nightmares
i wake up with a breathy gasp
my fingers clawing at the still air
fighting something from a dream
because what they don’t tell you
is that nightmares are dreams too
beauty or brains
i am so sick in living in a dichotomy
enforced with the stereotypes that we live with
because if a girl is beautiful
she is under estimated
and an object seeking ownership for worth
for somehow she is not seen as a person
as if the mascara glues her eyes shut to global issues
thick medical textbook pages and marine diagrams
because beautiful girls don’t have brains
and brainy girls aren’t beautiful
i get sick in the stomach to think
that if i raise my hand in class,
put in the work to make my report card outstanding
and question boundaries placed by people who met satisfaction saturate their curiosity
i will be seen as a girl with brains
rather than a beautiful girl who finds herself challenging stereotypes she has found wrong and working her hardest to fight her way up to the top
house in a hurricane
i’ve pounded nails into my shutters
stuffed rags in the gaps underneath the door
and locked everything in tight
so now all there is left to do is pray
that my foundation was built strong enough to withstand the impact
boys
i believe that there is poetry inside of boys
but it is not the same poetry that is inside of girls
because boy poetry is pink hair, black t-shirt, tilted head jaw-line photo,
bubblegum ice cream, sometime broken promises, trucker hat back-wards,
avaitar sunglasses, twitching finger poetry
and so when i find myself writing poetry about boys
i don’t write it the same way i write about girls
so for those of you who seek for equality
i ask what does that have to do with art?
boy poetry is different from girl poetry
because girls are different from boys
and i think that it is not an entirely bad thing
salt
sprinkle over window seals and door cracks
said to keep the evil out
and when i chose it as our safe word
i was saying to you
“let’s chase away the bitter parts of each other”
i think we’re just danilion seeds darling
where did we go wrong? i ask myself this as your texts appear with a contact name i am not sure i mean anymore. i ask myself this as you smile a smile that isn’t real but it is the only smile i am getting from you right now. i ask myself this as secrets swirl in the air above different people’s ears and i wonder where we did wrong. what i did wrong. we’re gotten through an argument so large that i have had two other friendships shattered by it. but got through it. i want to tell you the odds. i want to say that at age twelve two girls left me because one refused to choose and the other refused to listen. i want to say that at age fourteen i had two girls i thought were my everything but suddenly i was forced to live without them. and i was fine. i want so badly to tell you of the time i felt myself shatter from the marrow of my bones to the atoms inside my brain cells. and as i lay on the couch and felt my fingers shakily hold the phone in my grasp my fingers didn’t hesitate to type your name. but by god all i want is to tell you that you should report him and that your pina colada boy just fell for a hurricane of a girl. (you’re an after-thunder storm rainbow combined with a blizzard) you deny it. deny that you are pushing me away but those secrets you tell them, you used to tell me, i think it is because i have come on too strong. i’ve become more older sister than friend perhaps. but whatever it is, i just know that my words aren’t coming anymore. i simply think that we are both danylion seeds that found ourselves tucked together through the spring months but darling it is summer now and we must chose to stay or to f l y a w a y
i think of the people who have books published
and air plane tickets resting on their side table
and i ask myself what i am doing with this life
~ we are only allowed one………and i may be wasting mine
tonight i find myself pacing the floor and murmuring snatches of song lyrics. a tight feeling as found home in my lower belly and my fingers tense and flex. these are the kinds of nights that sleep doesn’t come and my alarm doesn’t wake me because i am already up. these are the kinds of nights i cut my hair short and bake muffins while spinning around. these are the nights i have come to know as inescapable because the cause i have to pinpoint. they are the irregular yet common theme that strings all my weeks together. on these nights words that have flitted through my head all day finally find a home on paper. on these nights even the therapy of the old keyboard that i learned to type on against my fingers is not enough. because of these nights, i find myself turned inside out as a hurricane lays waste to every firm structure in sight. people i confide in are suddenly blown away. i think the worst part is that i am not sad. i am not happy. i simply brush my fingertip over a freckle on my radius and smell the lavender oil i brushed through my hair. on these nights i think i forget how to feel and even as the hot water numbness of my shower weares off i fin myself searching myself for emotions but coming up empty. from ocean to desert and back again in a night.
i’m sick of thinking “in a month”
or pushing my plans and dreams further up the calendar
because i am so deathly afraid i will wake up
in a city that doesn’t know my name
living with a man who didn’t try to know my wildness
but simply put it inside of a cage
with friends who can’t smell the poetry on my breath
and living my days without finding beauty in fingers
and windows
~ i have started a rebellion against myself today as i pack a salad and buy running shorts
things that haven’t healed
- the parallel holes in my ears from where i got them pierced when i was eight
- the branch i tore from a limb of my blueberry bush i got in the car to leave that life is the past (it is as dried and dead as the winters that have passed without me being home)
- my mother’s back from where she tore it working at age twenty-nine
- the scar on my knee cap from where i fell down a rabbit hole (imaginary) and had to claw my way back up
- the scars on my knuckle from a slip of the fingers while trying to carve a birthday present for my first love (i will still bleed for him)
- so many friendships documented in my journal with tear-stained pages
- the scraped two-inch portion of my dresser where in anger i threw a hairbrush the day i heard i had been assigned to a soccer team (they didn’t bully me but they didn’t love me either)
- my heart after you decided to take half
- and me. a person who wakes up everyday believing that stars are my cousins and that people are infintely good and bad is infinitely bad and there is no grey in this life (i don’t know if it is innocence or a coping mechanisim)
i just need my best friend back
fear
when i was eleven years old i felt afraid of a boy for the first time. my older brother had grabbed a pen of mine and threw it on the floor of our rental kitchen. his anger seemed to drive a piece of this plastic pink shrapnel to graze my leg drawing blood. as he towered three inches above my height i felt afraid. i promised myself that day i would become braver. i would never let another boy make me afraid. after he threw the pen down my pregnant mother bent down on the floor and gathered the pieces in her palm. she used a piece of grey duck tape to fasten them back together and gave me the pen at dinner that night. i have rarely seen my mother get as angry as she did at my brother that day. the day i confessed that i was afraid. she told me fear was normal and inescapable. but someone who is close to me shouldn’t make me feel the bad kind. i have always believed there are two types of fear. the good fear is the before-date fear, the moment in the air before you hit the water off of a rope swing, and the before the curtain goes up jitters. that is the fear that i have often. but the bad kind of fear is the raised hand, shouting voice, curl yourself into a ball fear. and i told myself long ago that the person who made me feel it next would pay. when my brother said sorry for breaking my pen, i forgave him. i smiled and the next time he invited me to play his favorite video game, i agreed. deep deep inside i had secretly thought that perhaps this bad fear would not come again. would not make me feel chaos ripping into my insides. for those who say that love is the most powerful, let me tell you of fear. fear stops controls and molds. fear reduces men into cowards. fear takes a hold of a woman whenever it is dark and she is wearing a skirt. i am not here to debate the fairness of this or to argue that fear is more powerful than love even. they are at constant war and odds. i am here to say that the bad kind of fear has come again. three years later i find myself gripping my bedsheets in clenched fists and angrily blaming the person who introduced me to him. the person who is in the middle of this mess. a selfish part of me argues that it is her fault and if only she had listened when i told her that he was no good. no good for her. i felt the bad fear again. let me tell you of a boy who is ugly not by his outside but by his inside. the inside that causes him to shout words that shatter the walls of encasing happiness that has cocooned me safely into this place. this bad fear has chained itself inside of me now, telling me i will be better off leaving in a year and never returning to school. this is the bad fear that caused me to have a panic attack while murmuring that he wouldn’t hurt me….would he? i know for certain that he is living a life balanced at the edge of a knife blade and that he has made me feel more bad fear than anyone else. now let me tell you of the girl. the girl who i called my best friend. i knew she was hurting and so months i tucked my own hurt away. i didn’t tell her about my rising ocd and how i am figuring out how to put a therapist on speed dial. i have not told her that there is this great black monster inside of me that i nor the internet can name. i have not told her of the fear he made me feel over and over and over again. when did i give him permission? she says she won’t chose sides and i know that written inside of the lines there is this message: “he is before you.” and so when i said i wanted distance i wanted her to argue. to not accepting the fate that she has been given and to argue. to fight and try to change destiny. she accepts. i never do. and so when i asked her if she was free wednesday i was asking her to come to a place that none of my other friends have ever been. and when i canceled our day together i said i was busy and the lie felt wrong as i typed it. but the simple truth is that she will always chose him over me and i will always try to fight when she has given up long ago. i call it distance but others call it an ending. i can’t be with her when he makes me feel the bad fear. i can’t make myself un selfless when i tell her not to chose. but by god i want her to because then it won’t be my fault we are over again.
i have one sang two times in the last three years
and i once said i would never let my throat go with lyrics
~I’ve broken promises too
flaws
we were labeled as the flawed
the imperfect sand the outcast
but mine are freckles and yours are scars
~you chose what you are
i wasn’t myself for months
and no one noticed
just like an abandon house
looks the same to everyone who never cared about it
in the first place
~ if my weeds were humans they would be the worst kind
i let us fall apart
this month has been laying heavy on me like the fog outside of my morning every window. i almost question if 2019 will be another year of scouring the unfamiliar places of this town i now call home, looking for something i can’t give a definition to. in this month i find that a girl i called my best friend is no longer. sometimes i feel as if maybe i am perhaps to blame. we did the big stuff first. letting our pasts stain and perfume the air of the bright aqua bedroom where we laid on the floor listening to brittney spears. we talked about brothers and boyfriends and whispered about some scars that crisscrossed our hearts. as i felt a feeling of untapped anger towards her i questioned what it could be. why i felt as if we were better off apart than together. in this stormy conflict, my fingers didn’t seem to hesitate as a text message slid off with the simple press of a blue arrow. i don’t regret that first text. i only regret everything afterward. in the heat of our argument, i demanded my favorite color. she guessed blue. a bitter chuckle seemed to sour the air as i told her i liked all colors. i then demanded by birthday. she was two months and eight days wrong. i asked her how we could call each other best friends when she didn’t know of the days i starved myself or even the day i was born. i demanded answers from her. and she had none to give. now as i have just send our parting text, allowing poetic sadness to mingle with the anger of the seven months i spent laughing at her messages. she passionately screamed for me to give a reason. just one reason why we couldn’t be friends anymore. i didn’t say a word, because she didn’t deserve anymore out of me. to put it cruelly she had been a waste of my words. a desert i had poured everything into, wanting it to become an ocean. i tried to tell her in poetry the difference between us but she snarled at me like a jungle beast. i can’t find anything else but poetry inside of my soul right now to describe how she took three of my friends with her when she left. or the fact that she had been building up a bird cage for me all along but i was just too naive to notice. i told her that she was confining. she challenged me as to how and found bitter pleasure in the fact my mouth refused to work. quite frankly i wanted to tell her that how could an ocean count every wave? i could not count or form words to explain the endless iron bands she bad slowly started to wrap around my soul. i think that deep inside of i thought we could work. i hoped that we could. a desert and an ocean. after all, i had sand inside of me too. yet at our bitter and not poetic ending, i find myself laughing at how i could ever compare us as similar. how i could find enough mating sites in our dna to question our differences and cover them with oily similarities. so yes. she has made me into the villian. she had wept tears and told others the big secrets i told her first. and i am honest when i say i let us go. i felt us falling but i did nothing to stop our descebt. and i think a small part of me was hoping thta she cared enough to try and stop us. but these hopes were in vain just like the regetful text messaes i sent telling her all the things about me no on should be bable to know and wield.
star lovers
we started out as exquisite ions
living in a warped time frame where forever
seemed like hours and infinity was a constellation
we never could travel to in our light years together
and your fingers colored my luminescent skin
leaving it painted all the colors of the galaxies
and i whispered poetic fragments into the curved crescent moon of your ear
while asking you universal questions.
and some people may not realize that the sun is a star
but oh i did because you have forever been my sun
and i am orbital being of flawed comet tails and nebula gas
who thought that maybe the wide expanse of filled nothingness
could unite just for one life time
composed of a thousand forever forming a grand infinity
where you and i could coexist in the same wondrous place
without the nebula inside of me fragmenting
exploding all the colors you gave me across the indigo sky
changing my form into that of a supernova
that slipped through the hairline crack of an orbit
centered around you
but i think that everyone has seemed to forget
is that i was never solid matter or mass
never something that could be confined into the bounds of a purely crafted infinity
no
i am such a flawed undefinable thing
that even in an orbit centered around you
i was bound to strain against invisible chains
until i found myself in a mirror universe
where light years could not be numbered without ten zeros
and living a world where you and i
simply didn’t exist
~ all that is left of us is dead stars
lunch notes
my sister writes me lunch notes and tucks them into the smallest pocket of my aqua backpack
and sometimes i get teased when a smile blooms on my face
as my fingers tenderly opened the irregularly folded paper
and my eyes alight on each letter written with her favorite kind of pencil
“you are beautiful,”
a letter she wrote the night before a boy called me fat
“no one is perfect,”
she wrote along side a stick figure drawing of me
and i opened it when a “c” was entered into my grades
so today when someone asked me if i believed in magic
i said yes without hesitation
because if anyone knows magic
it is my little sister with magic inside of her veins
and fortune telling inside of her pen
i laugh dryly while composing a text to you
my voice creaking like the chairs we used to sit in
eating popcorn and having sock competitions
and i find myself not plotting out a revenge plan
to make you hurt how you hurt me
to make you lose all the friends you turned against me
but i have come to realize that loosing me
will hurt more than anything i could ever do
because i am not just a name on your contact list in your phone
i’m a memory whenever you see pizza
or hear a dad joke
and so i feel no need for revenge by knowing
you won’t ever stop regretting how you let me go
and i have come to terms by realizing all the “friends” you turned against me
were never my friends at all
but simply people who chose you over me
and in the grand scheme of things this is not a betrayal
for their loyalty and care was never with me at all
but rather with you all along
~ a ending that doesn’t hurt
but i don’t want to say goodbye
~i thought we had a life time of memories left to discover
sometimes things are too broken to fix
and i think that i am too broken
to be friends with you
~you asked who broke first: our friendship or me
i think we’ve been falling for a while now
but only i’ve noticed
because while you had a parachute
i have a pair of clipped wings
that you don’t remember cutting
when you decided to leave
i couldn’t stop you
so i gave you a goodbye gift
of a photo album of our cries and memories
and let my pride fall away
to hold the door open for you
~i wasn’t worth staying for
i made a mistake by assuming
you were an air current pushing me up
when in reality
you were the watch trapping me in
~i am grieving only for the fact that my wings creak from disuse
like mother like daughter
my mom curls my hair in the bathroom
and her voice cracks and goes high
as she tells me of her childhood and a mother
who wasn’t there
and an older sister who drove away one day
and her boyfriends
~and i cry along with her
glass girl.
her translucent skin looks solid
a great façade she’s built
yet underneath her glowing sheen
her crystal heart is lacking half
and i wish i could say the remaining part
was whole and not marred
but it’s learned to put up walls from lessons
she learned because of him
and it’s more ice than glass now
but yet a smile is forever carved
into the skin of her face
and you could never tell that this glass girl
is as fragile as can be
today was full of bacon and my big brother
store bought ice cream is melting
dove chocolate and sorbet
and we eat three or four apiece
while laughing at the seagulls vain attempts
to take something that they never can
~i think you were a seagull
my skin is golden and smells sweet
like sugary sunshine
and i cut my hair shorter than its ever been before
~perhaps i am a golden girl
my slumbering defiance
has woken up and angered
at the war ground of my belly
between my bones
that i have tried so hard to crush
so i don’t have to be hungry anymore
~it’s awake and suddenly i’m feeling the pain of what i’ve done to my body
i just need to hunch in
hold it all in
grief
i took a pair of elementary scissors
and sawed the ends of my hair until they were
two inches shorter
and i glared at my reflection
because i should be happy
~ I am a bird who can’t fight against gravity
sea air makes me want to do rash things
like cut my hair to my ear lobes
and dance in a bikini at night
i don’t know what to say to you anymore
because i want so badly to squeal about this cute boy i met
and try to admit that though he’s oceans away
i already count down the minutes until we talk again
but you have started to pull away
and stretch out this twine that connects us
even when we are states apart
and i can’t help but feel all my happy emotions
should be leaked out of me before i talk to you
because you need me to comfort you
and not ramble
and i know i said i needed me time
but you need time with me
virtigo encases me like an itchy wool sweater
and my belly is in turmoil
as i find myself stumbling on unfamiliar ground
fearfully questioning if i can do it
and if i am enough
if i have enough left to trust him
and not be afriad
~ tonight i am cowardly
amnesia.
how did i get here
so far away from you
with new pictures and numbers on my phone
with names that i don’t know
~i don’t know if I want to remember
they say don’t judge a book by its cover
while i am judged by my skin
and i find irony in the fact
that i judge it too
~the story of a poetess with too many freckles
they call me mundane
~ educated bullies
i want to smell like vanilla
voicemail.
you left another voicemail
but i won’t bother to reply
because i’ve reached the point where
i won’t be a opinion for you anymore
~i want to be a need
i’ve got so much stuff on my plate right now
that you wonder why i can’t eat it all
tiger
my auburn mess of fur curls at the tips
and my stripes lay soft in lightning bolts
against my pale underbelly
the whole world fell in love with me
but i was too busy looking at you
and so when the sun set
it opened my eyes more than it hurt me
(you were my sunshine, love)
i’ve always been jealous of the special people
who get songs and poetry written about them
because here i am
a poet of a girl
who can’t find the beginnings of the words
to describe me
i could be happy as long i had you
cheap peppermints
poetry
and fresh honey
please stop pretending that he will ever look our way
~ my brain this afternoon
fearless girl.
~for cancer fighters and suvivors-also in memory of the many fearless girls i’ve met~
the fearless girl was born in a house with green shutters
and a boy who played basketball across the street
(she wasn’t born different)
and one day this fearless girl felt a pain
and the pain led to more pain
until she was loosing
h e r s e l f
and this girl felt the monster that showed up on her pet scan
settle into the home of her stomach
and let out a happy sigh
this fearless girl lived with a monster in her stomach
and this monster was determined
to make her waste away until she was so thin
that even the slightest breeze could make her
b l o w a w a y
(she had to die for cancer to live)
and suddenly this fearless girl found herself
unable to see her fingers anymore
because her body was now 90% cancer
1% poetry
and 9% clear iv fluid
(is that 1% worth fighting for?)
and for the first few months a smile
dared to live on her freckled cheeks
but it too withered away along with this girl
without sunlight or fresh air to welcome
into her lungs
(she was always a fearless rose of a girl who needed photosynthesis to live happy)
and after a while this girl took a pair of the sharp medical scissors
and she let auburn curls form designs on her room tiles
as she clenched them in her fist and told herself
she could be not ok right now
this fearless girl felt like her body was a war ground
littered with empty atoms and burning chemicals
and she was not allowed to leave the white space of her bed
which was slowly sucking all the color
right out of this fearless girl
and she didn’t know if her 1% poetry would be enough anymore
because her belly was full of cancer
and her veins full of fluid and chemo
and she wasn’t a girl from a house with green shutters
or a out patient visiting the hospital because of stomach pains
or even a scared poetess
she was a girl who had 1% poetry inside of her
and a monster making home in her stomach
and this girl who was once called fearless
felt her it all slipping away
and she started to wish that she could be as small
as the cancer-free part of her seemed
and sink slowly into the clear liquid
that was in her iv bag.
because she wasn’t anything more than fearless
and some days it seemed like she wasn’t even that
she was only a girl who lived across the street from the boy who played basketball
and a girl who couldn’t find the words to write poetry anymore
(she once said a life without poetry wasn’t one worth living)
and one day she tried to see the stars outside of her hospital window
as this scared rose let it’s last scarred petal fall
and it was sick of trying to live in a world
without sunlight
(you have always been my sunlight, fearless girl.)
and this girl i like to call fearless
this poor rose who couldn’t adapt
the little girl who once learned basketball
so she could play with the boy across the street
and this sick almost-woman with 0.5% poetry inside of her
l e t g o
(the monster read the words inscribed in the lining of her stomach; the 0.5% of poetry that this girl left as her final parting to the thing that killed her.)
that this girl left as her final parting)
this winter brings anxious thoughts from the cavernous depths of me
as i count on one hand the number of christmas’s i’ve spent here
and let nostalgia waffle in the air
as i think of the parties i used to attend
there were full of jingle bells and grape soda
~it’s just not the same anymore
i don’t know my size anymore.
through the days and weeks and months where i didn’t eat and let the monster of hunger make home in my belly, i knew my size. my horrible, big, ugly size. the bold number taunted me as slipped on my jeans in the morning, and wiggled quickly out of them at night. i knew my size because that number haunted me in every minute and moment. i flinched to think that of things that added up to that number, like 2 and 4. and when that monster called hunger in my belly stirred, i clenched my fists and whispered the number fiercely. i was that number. that number summed up my worth. and the monster called hunger paced in the cage of my ribs growling in a demand for food. but i was ruthless. and during this time hunger and i made an uneasy truce. i told myself i wasn’t hungry. and the monster was musseled. this sort of self control came hard because in the deepest part of me there was a little bit of light. and this light always told me that i didn’t need to be hungry anymore. after all, there was food. i could eat it…………..could i? trapped in a world of my own devising, food tasted like sawdust as it slid unwanted down my throat. and my size haunted me then. and when this time of starving ended and i started trying to be full again, i lost my number. it fled from my mind being chased by this new positivity i was trying. and suddenly the storm that this number had contained oh so carefully inside of my skin erupted. my number was something that had kept me centered and trapped inside the freckled expanse of my skin. but now that it was gone i was a sandstorm of pale skin and heat. i was an unstoppable storm of rage. and then one day i grabbed a size off the rack and felt the jeans settle on my hips. and the size tag that touched the tip of my spine grabbed control of me again. and i felt ok. i had a size now. a size that gave me a worth. and every day i ponder on the strangeness of a girl who hates number but somehow finds herself more in control of herself when she has one attached to the denim around her waist. but i’ve always been that kind of unorthodox girl. but then i finally found my size and i felt my life the earth’s shifting plates, settle smoothly back in. i had a size. there is strangeness to me being so afraid of my life without a number to center it around. there is also some lingering addiction from my obsession over numbers that led me to trust the scale with my very life. (which it almost ruined) but what i find is most unsettling is the fact that my size now is a shifting thing. a changing digit which upsets my life at will. and i find myself ordering shirts that are too big, with sleeves that effortlessly fall past my fingertips. words are strange like that to me now. my life was influenced by numbers for so long that i find myself having to memorize letters all over again. the easiest lessons such as how many letters are in the alphabet, seem strange. numbers have found a way to settle themselves at the very core of me, and some days i find myself fighting against my life being centered around them. i rebel against the number pressed firmly to the tip of my spine and with desperation wiggle out of the trapping denim. but the next day i always slip back in and go to school. i can’t rebel against the numbers because i always fall apart, i always lose focus. and i am so lost because my number is shifting that i find myself wearing too big shirts, too tight jeans and feeling my jacket tighten over my shoulders. my shirts may not go by number, but i find myself confused by just looking at the letter. i have never liked “s” and “m” is for the name that it is mine though it seems so strange. so i picked “l.” there are no bad memories with l. L stands for love and lipids and lonely and lucky and line. and while these seem both familiar and foreign, i find myself lost. numbers and letters confuse me now. i don’t know my size and i don’t know me. i am so used to depending upon a number to tell me worth, that i don’t dare find out who i am without one.
a joke tingles on my tongue
and mixes with the flavor of my grapefruit soda
and i start to look for you in the crowd
against my better judgement
~ you’re a habit
a pizza is drawn on my hand with sharpie
and the lull of conversation twirls around me
as my fingers flirt lazily with the keys on my laptop
irregularly coming to rest on a letter that forms a sentence
~last thursday’s observations
i listened to my sad playlist in the bath
and tried to shove him and her out of my head
but this time i don’t think hot baths
lemonade
and even writing can help me
~ first boy i have lost sleep over
i am always trying to outdo her
~ why can’t i be your number one?
when i tried to make sure you were ok
i found myself fighting your battle
because it was always your intention
to leave the things in your life you didn’t
appreciate or like
behind
~ you leaving answered all my questions
golden girl.
i was a born a golden girl
a word seeker
with an appetite that would never be filled
and from a young age i learned how to pick the words up off the page
and dribble them slowly into my mouth
savoring the taste of adjectives and end marks
and i was never word full.
once i tried to make my own words
because i felt the part of a thief
taking words that were never mine
and letting them form stories that i could never tell
but no matter how much i tried
my own golden words wouldn’t form
leaving me a wannabe writer
with marker stains on her fingers.
gradually i stopped trying to make my own words
and just took pictures and letters from other people
who put them down in the page
not knowing a not-really word thief
could pull them right off
in long, black twisted lines
that twined around her arms and fingers
making her seem less of a golden girl.
golden girl (?)
wannabe writer
and a not-really word thief
my brother was not like me at all
because he was a blue boy who knew what words to say
and twisted them to form perfect spider webs
that always caught the unassuming fly (me)
and i always was left jealous that he could
use words that were his own
and every time i fell
until one day he grew sick of making webs as a blue boy
and packed all his words in a suitcase
along with a picture or two
and he waved his car keys in farewell
as this blue boy left as a blue man.
when i was older i didn’t feel like a golden girl
i felt like a wannabe everything,
because my word appetite was growing stronger
and numbers displayed on a thin black square
were suddenly burning through and inffecting
the words i had stolen from novels and magazines alike
(numbers are like that)
and suddenly i made myself not word hungry anymore
because i wanted to be a wispy golden girl
with a waist that poetic words could twine about
(poetic words are the most delicate, like snowflakes, like the blue boy’s man’s spider web.)
my stolen word were dry
the ink i’d stolen with them as dried up as soon as it left the page
and they caught ablaze that lit up the sky of eyes
and made a ring of gold around my pupil
like i was a golden girl
(i wasn’t)
but soon the sky was choked with ash
and even the embers that were the skeleton of these stolen words
refused to burn to be saved
because they were never mine to have.
and i was left a wordless girl
a wannabe everything
a word-thief behind bars.
so the wordless girl that i was
lost the sweet taste of words
(they taste like lemonade, honey, blackberries and ocean water)
and so she didn’t care that she was word-starving
she didn’t care if she was a wannabe everything
and a word thief in an iron cage
she only cared if poetic words could fit around her waist
and brush over her skin
so for a moment she wouldn’t feel like
the inky expanse of her heart
hadn’t been ripped and stitched together again
using numbers.
one day this girl
picked up a book that used to be her favorite
and dared to crack up the first page
which she knew by heart
because she had smiled when the 12pt words in this page
had slid down her throat
because they were the closest thing to her own words
(if she had any)
that she had ever found
but she found that the page was blank
only a creamy white rectangle
(other people could see the words)
and it was then this wordless broken girl
let some of the salt water she had collected
from tasting words all her life
run down her cheeks from the grey site of destruction
and the ring of yellow
(a scar left from her once-burning words)
that were her eyes.
a wannabe golden girl girl with poetic waist
a wordless girl
and a withering away word thief
and so i
girl who used to be golden
the word thief in jail
a wasteland of word skeletons
a girl who is word starving for a poetic waist
i
shattered
and the plastered skin that i had somehow adopted broke
and my (real) metallic golden skin glinted
and my true voice left my throatin a raw almost-plea
because all the words that i had been suppressing
by leaving myself word starved
into my veins and was pumped by my heart
where brittle numbers had stitched both ventricles together again
(the blue boy man will always have half)
and for the first time
since the golden girl had been born a word seeker
she found what she had been looking for.
a golden girl (with the most poetic not-skinny waist)
a fledgling writer (and poetess)
a word thief no-more
a word seeker who found her words.
ghost.
i wrote a letter to a ghost of my past
but i won’t send it to the address
that she wrote in her best handwriting
on the back of my hand
the day i got in my car
and watched her disappear out the back window
(the writing faded slowly until it looked like a blurred bruise)
wisps of memories still stir invisible currents in my mind
as i think i hear her laugh
and offer me out usual snack of nutella and apples
or get the special berry syrup for our water
and a small selfish part of me
still wishes i was that little girl who laughed in her backyard
and scarred her knees in the blackberry patch
behind the tree house we claimed as our own
and snorted while playing twister to violin music
~ because things were so simple then, before her betrayal made leaving the lesser heartbreak
a house doesn’t equal a home
~the lesson i learned on may 17th, 2016 when i left my home to move into a house
every time in my life when i’ve seen a period
i’ve tried to turn it into a comma
~ i’m a little girl before I’m a writer
i fell in love with you
when you got excited over stars
~ never change darling
i’m a girl from a place that no longer knows my name
there’s is said to be
a red string of fate that connects us
to the person who we are meant to be with
forever
and if that is true
than my fingers are raw and bleeding
from trying to follow the thread
hoping that it leads to you
~are you on the other end?
there’s a missing spot at the table
and there seems to be a gap between dishes
because your sweet potato crumble should be there
~ first thanksgiving without you
i found a gold necklace i was given the day
i turned 13
and it makes me sad to realize
that i haven’t taken such good care of it
and so now the chain is knotted
where it is too small
and chokes me
~ you were my necklace, dear
take me to february eye doctor appointments
clumpy cherry cheese cake
and head aches that don’t hurt
~ I miss last year
i can’t walk into the library anymore
or lay on the cushions at our spot at lunch
because your laugh echos on repeat
and i am always catching a glimpse of your brown leather jacket
turning a corner
leaving me behind
i am missing all the books i haven’t read
because the black 12pt font seems to swim in front of my eyes
while oxygen burns tracks through my heart into my lungs
~ i am starving for words to replace the ones you stole
fear seems stamped on my eyes whenever i look at you
because no matter how many times you tell me
that you are not him
i don’t believe you
~ he’s gone but the scars aren’t
a laugh doesn’t want to leave the cavity of my throat
and my stomach clenches in an acidic fist
~ when you say my name
twizzler candy is on the carpet of our classroom
and there is a debate on the color of nail polish
held by all boys
so with glue from a project making my fingers sticky
i laugh like a free girl
~ i feel like home when i walk through the lobby
anger has become a constant threat of mine
as it paces in the cage of my ribs
just waiting for the moment when someone says the right words
and i can’t stop from releasing it
~ recapturing it is hard
pieces of you have twined with me
and now i can’t tell the two of us a p a r t
~unwilling yen yang
he used to say to me
“rapunzel rapunzel let down your long hair”
and i always did
but now years later
i find myself touching the brunt ends of my shorn hair
and letting my fingertips wander over the scar on my neck
from the scissors that were meant to trap me inside of a tower
and i still mourn the fact that they were held
by a boy who was my witch and first friend
who wanted to keep me safe from the world
the only way he knew how
~ those scissors freed me more than my “prince charming” ever did
the leaves are brown
and they clutter around the roots of trees
and the sun isn’t shining very much anymore
and neither am i
~ winter has never been my friend
am i the same girl?
as thanksgiving creeps around the corner
in the in between space between pages of a book
i feel familiar fear coil in my belly
as i wonder if i am the same girl as i was last year
and what i will do if i’m not
~ i am not as fearless as you think, a.
worthless words.
i think in all my life
the worst thing that someone has ever told me
was that my words were worthless
~i bet he doesn’t even remember it now
friday night me.
i darkened my eye lids with dark pink eyeshadow
and ran my favorite minty lip balm over my lips
and i told myself that just for tonight
i would let the mirror tell me if i was pretty or not
~ i wasn’t
when i see you again.
when i see you again i am going to give you the biggest hug. before you left me i couldn’t because in the nest of wires were you lay, there was no room for my arms to entangle you tightly. when i see you again i am going to talk for three hours about everything i have wanted to tell you since then. before you left me i could only choke out about the boy i was friends with and how the lake water at the place you called home, had swirled around my bare toes. when i see you again i am going to tell you how my world was all grey for weeks. before you left me i saw a yellow finch, ate vanilla ice cream and helped pick bright orange mini roses. the color left when you did. when i see you again i am going to ask you all the questions that have been piling up like snowdrifts inside of me. before you left me i thought we would have so much more time for me to ask you about your college and first love. when i see you again i am going to ask why you always read the novels from walmart, and if they were any good. before you left me i didn’t have a chance to ask and now i am left staring at your pale purple bookmark embedded midway through a book. you’ll never get to finish that book. when i see you again i am going to ask you to teach me how to make my favorite peppermint cream pie and how to fry okra just right. before you left me i thought we would have another christmas with the two of us in your kitchen smashing peppermints and you instructing me on chopping furry okra. when i see you again i am going to tell you all the friends of yours i got to meet. before you left i didn’t know you near as well as i did now. that makes me sad. when i see you again i am going to make sure that you show me how to hold my knitting needles right. before you left i didn’t treasure cold metal and fuzzy yarn against my palm. now i feel like it ties us together. when i see you again i am going to tell you how amazing you are. before you left i could never say the words. when i see you again i am going to give you my journal filled with tear stained pages, full of all the times i’ve been asked about my grandmothers. and me having to say that i only have one left now. but most importantly, when i see you again, i am going to say i love you, i love you, i love you. because bfore you left me, i don’t think i ever said it enough.
my hair fell in spirals on grey tiled floor
and the snip of scissors clicked by my ear
so when i looked in the mirror again
the lush desert dunes of my face
and pooled sea of my eyes
seemed foreign
~ remembering
i’ve not cried in so long
that yesterday when i felt my eyes swimming
i found it a strange sensation
~the girl who never cries, cried
ocean eyes.
she warned me that i always fell
for boys with ocean eyes
and in her finest handwriting she wrote
a guide on how to avoid them
~but i met your stare from across the room and now i’m drowning
site of destruction.
ash as long since settle
in the circular space around my pupil
and magma boils at my core
glinting off the metallic sheen of my hair
~ i erupted so long ago no one remembers
the difference between the two of us
is that if words were the falling leaves
you are the gardener who rakes them neatly
and i am the child running with my arms open
just trying to catch a few
~ you are not a word sharer
fake friends.
you picked my pretty feathers off
so i could no longer fly
and then with glue you put them over your own
and no one noticed how different i was
because they didn’t notice me at all
~they only knew me by my feathers
i’m listening to music from a thousand summers ago
and i can’t help wonder if
i’ll ever see the people who helped build my smile
and taught me how to laugh
ever again
~ love forever
tame ones.
they have long since lost their hunger
and forgotten the sweet taste of adventure
so they build up walls and make weapons
to try and take the wild ones
~ refuse to be tamed my wild child
cold air has fizzed my curls
and i drink apple juice
with meat loaf
~ it’s hard to believe today is monday
i know i probably can pick myself up again
and claw myself back up
from where i’ve fallen from
but i don’t want to miss another seventeen months
of my life fighting to stay above waves
and clenching my fists to survive
because what i’m fighting
no else can see
~i never let myself forget that it is an invisible demon
i can’t staple my seams together anymore
with the pretense that my insides are ok
because there has to be a reason
for why i’m reliving this nightmare
~ what malfunctioned in me this time?
there are two holes in my pj shirt
and i’m wearing socks to bed
which i hate
but i can’t make myself reach down
and slip them off
because i was looking through our old messages
and i remember how you used to make me feel
and that has me paralyzed with the feeling
that i denied myself happiness
and let you get away
~you’ll always be my biggest regret
panic.
there is a familiar lump of panic
that curls itself into a tight little ball
in my chest and throat
when i look down at my dinner plate
and see a cheese burger
i can’t physically finish
~ it was my favorite restaurant too
i would give up all my remaining sunsets for you
~i will find my you one day
loose jeans.
today i wake up to find
that my favorite jeans can’t stay up on my hips
and i know that they’ve been getting looser
for the past few weeks
but i’ve been denying that the few meals i didn’t eat
couldn’t have caused them to be baggy
around my thighs
and loose total shape around my hips
~ deep inside i know it wasn’t just a few meals
dear middle school me.
it seems a little bit silly that i never think of sixth grade as middle school. sixth grade seems like a whole different place in time all together. in sixth grade my dad lost his job. in sixth grade i started only to be able to see him on the weekends. in sixth grade i lost my best friend. in sixth grade i first looked with loathing at my reflection in the mirror. in sixth grade we didn’t know if my future little sibling would survive. in sixth grade we sold my home. in sixth grade we moved into a rental house. in sixth grade my dad got a job states away.in sixth grade I grew up. but if i could go back i would have some advice. listen better madie grace, because in sixth grade you write your first poem. you win third place in your schools poetry contest. so listen. listen to your teacher as she explains. you learn a lot that year. don’t be sad about your brother. he still loves you. quit worrying about his problems, because you can’t fix them for him. don’t feel alone. your mom needs your help right now. work more around the house. complain less. read less. i know little madie grace that reading was our haven then, but what were we escaping? the missing sound of our dads car door every evening? the absence of our brothers laugh intertwined with ours? read less. those words you soaked in and embedded beneath your skin, could have waited. books are constant. but the problems you could have helped with, were not. oh, and sixth grade me, let out that pain. run to that favorite tree of yours (chester) and let the torment of tears that had been swimming in the blue of your eyes for weeks. dig your fingers in the moist black earth in elli’s garden and let apple juice dribble down your chin. swing more of the hammock. let all your pain and tears come out in a tidal wave of poetry. seventh grade me. stop it. stop with skipping breakfast, and counting on other people’s love to fill up the hole where you’re used to be. stop ignoring the feelings that are building up in your chest. stop letting other girls make you feel inferior. stop letting all your secrets escape in between the cracks of your crooked teeth. stop pinning away after him. he’s rude. he wouldn’t treat you the way you deserve to be treated. appreciate your friends more. because you will find yourself in ninth grade laughing over a text that brought back s flood of memories. you are a good judge character. don’t doubt that. don’t be ashamed of a label of mental illness that has been stuck as a subtitle underneath your name. no one else can see it. only you. and only you can manage how it affects you. don’t pin your happiness on a person. because then if that person lets you down, they drag your happiness away too. your happiness all shouldn’t depend on a person. don’t hesitate to hit that send button on Courage by Superchick. that song changed the way your moms eyes look at you. in a good way. it gave you saturday pumpkin bread and nights being rocked to the rain. oh, and dont forget the magical feeling of finding your first pair of jeans that fit perfectly.i have so much more advice and stuff to say, but i think you probably know it all already. eighth grade me. bump up your chin. they’re just toxic. don’t let their acid eat away at you. quit comparing yourself to that popular girl. stop. she has the red hair that you were born with. the clothes you wished you owned and could wear. and the guy you’ve always liked. but at what price? she buys fake hair clip ins, and is failing most of her classes. stop. stop judging and thinking of perfection. she doesn’t have it. instead she has a binder that says “cool kids never sleep” and a makeup palette in her bag to hide her dark circles. stop skipping meals and worrying mom so much that she buys vanilla protein drinks. and that she takes you the store and goes through isles saying “will you eat this?” as a shopping list. be less selfish. be more you. i know that your anxiety is tripled and every day you come home bent over with the weight. but you were born with broad shoulders for a reason my sweet. oh, and don’t take her betrayal so hard. don’t be angry at E for abandoning you for the popular. if middle school was a galaxy, she will always be a sun. i wish i could say more, but it would take weeks to go over middle school. and weeks more to tell of tears, fruit cups and boys. so middle school me, i leave you here. i leave all the heart ache and loss at the end of this post. what’s done is done.
i expect too much of people
i let myself get hurt too easily
i don’t like bananas
i am a different person for everyone
i always sing along to my favorite song on the radio
egg rolls are one of my favorite foods so my breath typically smells like cabbage
mustard is my worst enemy
i hate phone calls (a worst fear/phobia of mine)
i tend to invest too much
i have yet to learn how to let go
i still cuddle up in a care bear blanket when i am sad
i am addicted to hot cocoa
~ a few of my flaws
oh my darling don’t you know
that beautiful people have problems too?
the shore of your tan skin
against the blue of sea
contained inside your eyes
~ an addiction of mine
mangled bird.
she has come to the ultimate conclusion
of why her feet feel heavy on the sidewalk
and the reasoning behind her adoration for the sky’s colors
and every rain storm
~ a bird never likes a cage but a mangled one might adapt
i’ll say i need a break
but my souls ablaze with the truth
that words are an ocean
and writing is my life boat
~ i can’t stop
grief.
dear child you can’t escape your grief
and distractions only work for so long
~stop waiting to become numb
my monsters.
anxiety is just a little thing
that can fit into every crack of me
depression just floats endless in the air
a cold, and aggressive thing
insomnia is loud and playful
and doesn’t seem bad at first
perfection is all gold and bright
with decay at its center
~ four against one is not fair, but monsters never play by the rules anyway
ok.
there is no ok
if we expect ok to to be perfection
like a perfect family
friend group
and talent
~ i am not ok……..but that’s ok
a banana popsicle taste is lingering on my tongue
and my fevers at 101
~you expected me to say i was fine
i’m done crying for tonight
and my eyes are red and raw
~ i’m such a fragile girl
i said too many things
brought up too many memories
and i find myself the one to blame
for my hurt
~i am never strong enough when i need to be
i said too many things
brought up too many memories
and i find myself the one to blame
for my hurt
~i am never strong enough when i need to be
fragamented girls.
we have titanium at our cores
with the inside of our heads brittle
from the constant wars and pain that has shattered us
in only a place we let a few people see
and i wish we could tell about the scars
that cross our souls
and the salty rivers that come from our eyes
as a form of raw poetry
but we both were taught a long time ago
that always seem to block the wrong people out
~ maybe we have a shared piece of shrapnel?
i’m always the one who moves away
or leaves people behind
but here you are tearing out a piece of my heart
and taking it with you
~i’m not used to being left behind
i love when i eat cinnamon bread
with pumpkin spice cream cheese
with a 99 F temp
and think about the people
who i miss every weekend
you’re not allowed back into my life anymore
and i hate how one side of me still whispers
“but we loved him”
~ a boy once broke my heart and trust all at once
be brave. be silly. be your own kind of magic. be kind. be present. be open to change. be free. be you
~ be beautiful
why am i not enough?
am i too loud or quiet?
am i ugly if my thighs touch……or don’t?
do i share too much or too little?
should i smile more or less?
am i too clingy? or absent?
~some questions i ask myself daily
i’ve always been your second option
and now i am not too naive to see it
you.
are such a starry eyed
loved person
i’m doing me.
i’m eating spicy chicken chili
drinking more water
stumbling from laughing with friends
making pinky promises
singing along to all the songs of the radio again.
i let go of you when
i stopped being a good person
because you weren’t one
and i didn’t want you to feel
ashamed
~i sacrificed so much for you
toxic girl.
i think of you
whenever i eat yellow starbursts
because they are your favorite
and i still find myself thinking of the times
you were nice and gave me a compliment
but times got so bad you didn’t even try
to coat your poison with honey
~ i gave love your family didn’t, but it never was enough for you
the drums are pounding in time
to my heart
and the band’s vocalist is crooning words
that are better poetry than mine ever could be
~ comparison kills creativity
i feel like i’ve felt this feeling before
and then i lost it
~ you asked me why i was so afraid to be happy
dear subway cashier girl.
it’s been almost a year since i saw you. and i’ve only seen you once. it was a day in early December.my friend and therapist’s words were swimming in my head like comforting fish, and for the first time in a while, i felt happy. my dad stopped for em to grab something to eat before decorating for a dance that a friend of mine was hosting. you were at the register, and i will never forgot your eyes. they were much a deep and sad brown. the kind people could get lost in. and they were without a spark. your wrist had a small typed tattoo that said “i am art.” but i don’t think you believed it. and what i think is strange is that i can’t visit a subway without thinking of you. because when i left your subway, i promised i would never lose my spark. because then i could help girls like you, find yours again.
i left my house yesterday
and i went home
~ lakehouse is embedded in my bones
fall me has come at last.
i am sitting in a brown leather seat
wearing a green military jacket
with cherry coke on my breath
and a laugh spilling out of mouth.
and i have snicker bars in my backpack
and plans of helping a friend to get ready
for a Halloween dance on Friday.
~ summer baby fall gurl
i’ve finally reached the point in my life
where i am wearing a pair of too big socks
and chacos
with shorts i went running in
and a t-shirt with holes.
and the road is open in the car head lights
and my green military jacket
is loose around my shoulders.
then i buy a lottery ticket
and realize that money can’t buy happiness
because here i happy
with midterms in the morning
and smelling of watered down hot cocoa.
~ i don’t regret not winning that lottery
dear little girl.
i’ve seen you at the library before, and each time you walk in the sliding doors, i see the magic that alights your pupils. you smile, with your mouth missing a few teeth, and eagerly run to put your books in the book drop. then from there, you disappear into the runs of paperback books with velvet soft rounded corners. i envy you. the shelves tower over your head like the most perfect towers of knowledge. covers in violet and shimmery silver taunt you as bold letters march across covers to spell the titles. i envy you because the magic of the library is not as strong in me as it is you. i love the jerky rattle of the sliding doors, and the air that is perfumed with ink and yellowed paper. i know the places of my favorite novels by heart, and can tell you teh story behind every brown stain. i can tell you which books i loved and which books made my soul splinter and me rethink everything that i have ever learned in this life. the magic of the library is typed in imperfect black letters across my heart and soul. but i still envy you. for i have grown out of the stories of peter pan that pepper the shelves which i have to bend down to see now. i still adore the lost boys and the idea of a island where you never have to grow up. but i do not live there. so the looks i get when i wander into the section of the library with cartoon unicorns of the cover of books, is not to be desired. so when it is thirty minutes until the library closes, and most everyone is gone. when street lights illuminate the black and white parking lot, and the yellowed lamps at the library station gleam on flowery pens, i creep in. i walk quietly and quickly past the librian station, and creep towards the books with a familarity that makes me bones ache. these are the books i held with my small child hand and read underneath the pink quilt on my bed. these are the books that alite a passion for words inside of me. these are the books that were my first true friends, and my source of comfort for so long. and these books little girl, you can read. and i feel like a stranger to them in the daylight. when the library is crowded with young mothers and little boys with blue blankets. when the library is letting out girls with pigtails through the doors. then these books seem strange to me. foriegn. so i creep in at night when almost everyone is gone, and i slowly walk towards the shelf where i know they are. and little girl, i find the shelf empty. i look and see all my favorite books gone. and then i think of you little girl, reading the words with a spark in your eyes. and it does make me sad. sad that i can only hold my comfort blanket of books unashamed at night. sad that i have almost forgotten about my first friends that live on this shelf. but then i am not sad, because i think of the thousands of children whom i share this with. this magical feeling of familarity staring at the same book, cover, and title. then i am not sad. i am full of passion. and so little girl, take care of my books. take care of my first friends. they will never fail you. never. and when you leave this library and this place, you will see these titles again. on a new shelf. but the books will be the same. and even if you change and grow up, the books will never do that. and one day you will be like me little girl, and i image that we both will see our names underneath magical titles on shelves. because the magical feeling that we share, is the feeling of being a writer and a reader. and i wouldn’t change it for the world.
my freckled shoulder is covered with chill bumps
as it peeks like a pale sliver of moonlight
from the dark expanse of my sweater
dear october me.
you need to take fewer pictures. realize that memories don’t need to live in hard drives, or in the photo app on your phone. you don’t need to capture every funny memory with your friends, because if you try hard enough, they’ll be your friends forever. stop worrying about that girl in your p.e. class, who makes everything seem effortless. don’t overthink the way your hair is fixed on a plain tuesday, because if you have to spend thirty minutes on your hair to impress them, you don’t need them. don’t eat less so your jean size goes down, or shove your feet into your converse which pinch your toes. study your best and don’t think a grade is all you are. a “c” on your french test doesn’t say you are unworthy. it just says maybe less romance novels and more verb endings. please don’t take anything for granted. don’t put off something just because your hair isn’t perfect and your breath smells faintly of peanut butter. start running again to clear your head, and roll your eyes at the people who stare. you’re gorgeous the way you are. spend more time in the kitchen, because all of your favorite foods are in season right now. get drunk on chilled apple cider and pumpkin bread. put up your citrus perfume and exchange it for cinnamon and cloves. don’t give up all the dreams you have just waiting inside your brain, and don’t be afraid to be alone. because you never will be for long. follow your heart wherever it might lead you. october me, it’s finally fall. this is your season. you m ay be a summer baby, but you are a fall girl. so rake leaf piles and ride your bike at 6:35 pm. eat snicker bars on the porch swing and crinkle brown leaves in your dry palms. buy all the lipbalm, because you know that your lips get dry and cracked this season. dig around in yoru closet sand find the knitting needles you threw in lazily. it is about scarf season, and you want a fuzzy maroon colored one. buy the packets of all your favorite mints (watermelon and spearmint) and give them out to your friends. give hugs freely and encourage your friends to go ask that boy or girl out. fall is a time for snuggles and pillowforts. have all the sleepovers you’re allowed, because it is about time you break out the titanic and anne of green gables again. let your hair go without being fixed on the weekends, and spend hours under the pink quilt on your bed. oh and october me, be fearless. you’re an autumn girl and it is time to do what autumn girls do best: fall.
today i find myself
wearing my favorite dark grey sweater
that is not too long for my wrists anymore
and thinking about the girl i was
the last time i wore it
~last february that girl hated herself
we always had so much to say
a year or two a ago.
so much that our words ran together
and our foreheads frowned
but over time we have both learned silence
and now our words are nonexistent
i have come to the conclusion
that my friends found me.
that in a world full of people
i was a magnet for the people who make me laugh
who snort unapologetically
give me a “boop” on my nose
that most often misses and lands on my ear
~ i love being a magnet
sparks fill my soul when i write
but i burn when i am written about
~ poetess is in a poem
geodes.
we are both raw and honest.
our flaws haven’t been polished to look like perfections
and all our cracks have yet to be filled in
and we talk over the phone
with our voices cracking and salt water wetting our lips
~ best friend now, geodes forever
some nights you will feel like a galaxy
and then some nights
you will feel so impeccably small
like an atom untethered in the cosmos
~ i wish so badly that i could be the first one forever
i drink hot cocoa and it scalds my tongue
and my wrists smell like lavender essential oil
~ how can one be so broken and lost, but still find pleasure in the little things?
i drink hot cocoa and it scalds my tongue
and my wrists smell like lavender essential oil
~ how can one be so broken and lost, but still find pleasure in the little things?
i will never wear shoes while wading
or tell you the end before your done
and i can promise you that i am not the person that you want
if you want to find an unflawed girl
~ you’ll be searching for forever
they say that it is just a bad day
and i tell myself it is just a bad week
and you would think i would know better
when i say that it is just a bad two months
to understand that bad only goes so far
and i surpassed it five days ago
~ there is no better here
not everyone suffers loudly.
i hold the storm inside my skin
refusing to let loose the painful torment of tears
and half breaths from sobs
~ if pain were a storm i would be a category 5 hurricane
we never said it
but i think we both knew
that my brain played titanic music
and my lips curved up with a shy
yet sly smile
whenever i was with you
~ we are both too fragile and too wild for a label
just a girl.
last night i found myself
in a world that was all fire and smoke
and i was forced to face the flames
i felt the sting on my cheeks like warm tears
and the burning smoke filled my chest
like anger and hate
and i was forced to realize that i
am just a girl
~i am no phoenix
hunny is that day yet?
is the day where you are scribbling down words
from a book on your shelf
and you see them as something more?
is it the day when you relize that words
are not just times new roman font
and they are not just telling a story
is that day?
the day when you rellieze that slowly
these words have knotted themselves around your heart
and that ink now runs in your veins?
hunny,
is it the day when you come out of the pages of your books
and look at the world through new eyes
as words and ideas tumble through your head?
~are you a writer yet, hunny?
i wanna eat strawberry popcicles
and feel the sticky juice on my wrists
and drink lemonade in the car