ehpoetry

[ehpoetry]

There aren’t enough words in the world to account for the feelings we feel. I’ve been thinking a lot about feelings I can’t explain to other people but I feel them so strongly that I’m almost upset there isn’t an all-encompassing word to use for them. Using “nostalgia” doesn’t feel fair; almost as if i’m doing a disservice to the experience by describing it so plainly. It’s like the art piece I looked at yesterday: the tiny fish inside an empty tic tac case. The light shone through it in a way that reminded me of my childhood doctor’s office with the slat blinds and mobiles hanging from the ceiling; it’s always raining in my memories of the doctors. It’s the same feeling I get when I remember sitting on my aunt’s porch on 2nd street in an oversized t-shirt. I brought the first boy I ever loved to that house, and I can’t help but feel like I shouldn’t have shown him that piece of my heart.

#this makes no sense #it has no end #but i am so incredibly sad #and i hate it #free write

[ehpoetry]

A Shitty Poem

a shitty poem about being in love and how coffee reminds me of your eyes and how cooking reminds me how much you fucking loved it and how seeing myself in the mirror reminds me of the girl you had sex with who wasn't me 

a shitty poem about anxiety and how it corners you and how it doesn't feel like flowers taking root in your skin or finding someone who loves you through it and how it really feels like a forest fire in your heart that won't stop killing all the trees

a shitty poem about being stuck and how i'm told that it'll get better soon and to stop overthinking and to stop letting it consume me and how none of that works because being stuck is more like being stuck in the dark with your thoughts projected on the wall none of them pretty.

a shitty poem about life because life's nothing but shitty poems with a few pretty watercolors stuck in between

[ehpoetry]

Forgive us, father, for we have sinned. We have left our children’s’ souls In the middle of the road to die. The world in turmoil A soul across the ocean Prays, selfishly, for a better life In a hurricane-ravaged country That had only just got on their feet After the devastating earth quake. A soul Crying in the street After watching his brother Get shot by an unmerciful cop Another black youth Added to a growing list Of souls lost. Forgive us father, for we have sinned. Souls lost, wandering, hoping, And yet we go to sleep In warm rooms Under warm blankets Feeling the warmth of the love Of a country that can give us these things. We count our blessings We pray for others We sleep comfortably. Forgive us, father, for we have sinned.

[ehpoetry]

When you carve initials into a tree trunk they remain there forever allowing disease and vermin to attack the tree from the outside in similarly you carved your initials into my heart and it’s attacking me from the inside out.

GF as in Go Fuck yourself as in a mistake two years in the making that finally ended in a “I guess i’ll talk to you soon.” as in “i love you” but only after sex “i love you” only after getting something you wanted “i don’t see a future with you” after you found something better.

The thing about trees is that they continue to grow and the initials you carved are covered by ivy and self love. I continue to grow while your initials stay at eye level where you first carved them.

The point is i’ll have initials all over my body when my roots finally take their last breath. I’ll have my brother’s initials and my best friend’s crossed-out to make way for her new last name. They’ll continue to update carving over and over so they mark and they love and they remain. Yours will fade and though every tree keeps reminders of their past you will not ever be as prominent as the day you first carved yours there

GF as in Go Fuck yourself as in i’ll Go Find someone else.

#nosebleedclub #nbc

[ehpoetry]

I don’t know how to write a normal love letter No cursive or doodled hearts or smiles embedded within twelve different metaphors about how deep your love flows in my veins. My anxiety writes my love letters for me when I’m puking for the fourth time this week staring up from the bathroom floor after losing everything I ate for dinner. Written in sleepless nights, the sparkles in the stars not as romantic as the sparkles in my purple gel pen that would’ve suited this letter so much better than the blood leaking from the chewed ends of my finger tips. My anxiety pens this poem when I’m staring at a handful of plain Cheerios begging my body to stomach just this maybe for an hour maybe, God willing, for the whole damn day. You’ve received this letter one too many times, in twenty different languages that my anxiety reminds me I am fluent in but I’m hoping you’ll keep it. Pin it to the cork board look at it when you miss me. I love you, I love you, I love you.

[ehpoetry]

Places I’ve Fallen In Love

I. Here. Where the ocean meets the shoreline. Where the footprints sink back into the sand. The purest form of nature. From the ocean you became, to the ocean you will return. Memories of babies in bathing suits, family dinners on the deck, the smell of saltwater lingering in the air, the feel of grains of sand making a home in the tangled hair of sun-tanned pre-teens. Returning every other summer to reunite with the piece of my heart that rests on the Carolina shore. I found myself here in the sea breeze and cracked shells that litter the shorelines. I fell in love here.

II. Here. Underneath the 264th blanket fort of a lifetime supply of blanket fort crafting. Secrets covered up with the blanket we made together in the fifth grade passed back and forth in plain sight but kept within the walls of our cozy slumber party sanctuary. Pizza rolls—slightly crispy, we never quite figured out the perfect baking time—piled on the biggest plate found in the cupboard. Giggling until midnight and whispering about the rest of our lives until we both drifted off to sleep. I found a forever friend here in the awkwardness of pre-teen friendships and adolescent sleepovers. I fell in love here.

III. Here. On a couch you’ve had since you moved from Connecticut. A post-prom haze of awkward giggles and smoking weed. Two sips of Captain and I was done for the night. Pockets of silence littered the spaces in between falling asleep and just talking. Six am and we’re still here switching between soft ‘are you okay?’s and shy glances. I found my first love here on a couch destined for a garage sale or a freshman dorm room; between the frayed cushions and spaces where the stuffing pushed out. I fell in love here.

[ehpoetry]

What You Would Find If You Dumped Out My Life

26 movie stubs a broken bobby pin earrings with the backs missing loose change receipts from last week’s Chinese food a 10 am voicemail telling you I miss you a ripped up polaroid of my old best friend broken glass shards cracked lungs still gasping for air a 3 am text: I love you more than anything a 3 am reply: okay drunkie crumpled up poems that didn’t make the cut ten pairs of shoes a floral sundress a fifth of vodka a teddy bear in a yellow shirt an “I love you” a “goodbye”

#prompt #26 movie stubs #nosebleedclub

[ehpoetry]

Public Pool Rules

i. NO STREET CLOTHES
 as in the clothes he took off you
 the first time you had sex
 in the back of his beat up BMW. ii. NO RUNNING 
as in avoiding the feelings that overtook you the night your best friend took her own life after you missed her phone call at 3 am iii. WATER AND ALCOHOL DON’T MIX as in even though you watered down your whiskey you still felt it trail down your throat and burn the inside of your stomach as you stared across the room iv. NO MATERIAL THAT CAN SHATTER as in your heart after your sister slammed the back door and left for six years without so much as a note or a “sorry, I have to go.”

#free write #public pool rules

[ehpoetry]

My mother always told me that it was easier to be a stone than a hurricane and that I was much too loud for my own good ladies should be seen and not heard and that boys wouldn’t like it that I cursed like a sailor.

My father always told me that it was better to be a hurricane than a stone and that he would forever have the flood marks I left on the walls from the hurricane that had passed through his home and his heart.

I have always been a hurricane. Too much, too loud, too there. Forcing my way through the windows and the walls shattering glass and ripping screen doors from their hinges

but I’d rather give the coroner my body covered in scars from cut glass and splintered wood than a pristine white mannequin covered by a white sheet and a thin plastic covering that nothing had ever pierced through

i want to feel i want to feel the shattering of glass that mimicked my first broken heart and the splintered wood underneath my fingernails like the night I was so anxious that I chewed my fingernails until they were bloody and the skin around them was pink and raw

because i don’t want to talk about it i want to experience it i want to live it and breathe it and have it painted across my chest when the coroner lifts the sheet

i want to be a hurricane

#be a hurricane #nosebleedclub #be a hurricane and not a stone #prompt

[ehpoetry]

Your Mother Saw a Ghost at the Supermarket

  It was the ghost of a baby she had long since laid in the ground gone too young, too soon breaking the rule that forbids a parent to bury a child that forbids taking a life if it has not yet been lived. She saw him as an infant, gurgling, talking in a language only she could understand, reaching for the raspberries from a cart pushed by a shadow she knew to be her own. She paused, ready to call his cell-phone to tell him she had just seen a baby that so reminded her of him, only to remember that the number was disconnected and it would never again be attached to the voice that she knew.

  Rushing to the produce aisle she caught her breath and mumbled a soft “I’m fine” to the stranger who asked her if she was alright but also to herself as she stared with intensity at the peaches as if she could find the lost summers of sunscreen and sticky fingers mingling with the soft skins of the peaches that so reminded her of the soft skin of her son when he was just a baby if she looked hard enough.

   She rang up her items in a half-frazzled way anxiously waiting for her receipt to print out so she could escape the aisles of memories that held her son so securely in place. She wanted to stay forever and stare at his favorite sugary cereal and remember how upset he used to get when she bypassed it to grab the plain Cheerios.

  As the automatic door slid open she looked back once, towards the raspberries, and saw that the gurgling baby had paused as he reached for the fruit to smile at her.

#prompt #nosebleed club prompt #nbc #hayden

[ehpoetry]

i. it got so quiet that i had to roll down the windows so i could let some noise in. sunglasses and loud music hid the feelings i wanted so badly to tell you, but was too shy to ever admit. it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, but there was something between us that was so different, so foreign, that i didn’t know where my feelings for you ended and your feelings for me began. 

ii. shy girls in two pieces trying desperately to pull fabric over the inches of their skin that never saw the light, let alone the boys in their freshman gym class. loud boys in lane one who made fun of the quiet girls and the chubbier girls whose swimsuits didn’t flatter them as much as the suits on the skinnier girls in lane three.

iii. it wasn’t so much a secret, but at the same time it was. everyone knew you were apart of it, but no one knew what it was. knowing glances exchanged across hallways and silent signals given from one side of the room to the other. maybe not so much a society as a small group of people looking for a place to belong.

iv. you knew you were losing him before he was gone. it’s a silence behind the unanswered phone calls, the 3 am voicemails, the desperate pleas to let you know what he’s feeling. he moved on before you even said goodbye.

v. it’s been there as long as you can remember. a silence where there is supposed to be noise, like a muted tv screen that shows nothing but static. you know the familiar, scratchy sound that accompanies the snowy background, you can feel it, but the sound never reaches the speakers. 

Discussion 4/15/16

1. First Drive 2. High School Swimming Pool 3. Secret Society 4. Losing someone forever 5. Something lurks

#nbc #this sucks but i'm really trying to get rid of this damn writers block #disc

[ehpoetry]

stuffed animals at the local salvation army

you can understand why that sweater was given away the one covered in puffballs and christmas lights that actually turned on and why the pair of paisley overalls is hanging next to the bedazzled prom dress with a rip in the bottom but three rows over and two rows back sits a pristine white leopard stuffed animal right there nestled between a well-worn mickey mouse and a puppy with one eye missing you wonder why its fur is vacant of a rouge coffee stain or the crusty barbecue remnants that have been there since the memorial day picnic last May a small child has not dragged this through the mud an elementary schooler has not dragged this to school but had a mother dragged this through her own broken heart a simple donation after an ultrasound void of a heartbeat an unused stuffed toy for an unused nursery for an unborn baby had a girlfriend dragged this to the post office only to find out a few days later her boyfriend was not returning home from Iraq a return address for a returned package for a heart that would never return would the child who dragged this pristine white leopard off the shelf ever understand why it had ended up there in the first place

#4.7.2016 #prompt #nosebleedclub

[ehpoetry]

did they know that nothing is forever when they carved their initials into the bathroom stall at a long-forgotten rest stop in the middle of rural Indiana? are they still a plus? a together forever? a we-love-each-other-so-much? or is the silence that sits between names the silence of a forgotten relationship? an unwritten end date floating in the here and now in the memory of a time when everything was. Nothing more nothing less; it was. Now, is it still? Is the fire between initials in the “= 4EVR” in sloppy teenage writing still burning, brighter than ever? I want to say I believe I want to say that everything good remains good but sometimes it doesn’t and the fire burns out leaving the “MS + KT = 4EVER” a meaningless graffiti to be analyzed by a peeing stranger.

#4.6.2016 #free write

[ehpoetry]

Heartbeat for Sale

Found at the thrift store a ninety-nine cent goldmine. A heartbeat still softly beating woven into the sleeves of a sweater worn to bed every night after you left.

Found at your favorite coffee shop the one on the corner where every barista knew your name. A heartbeat faintly heard between the clinks of coffee cups hitting the saucers they were served on.

Found on the steps of your childhood home. A heartbeat imbedded in the dry wall intertwined with the laughs of a toddler running circles around the living room followed closely behind by a mother.

Found in the halls of your high school where we first met. A heartbeat pounding along with the footsteps of students late for fifth period heard in the ears of the freshman kissing a girl for the first time in the empty auditorium.

Found in the empty rooms of the vacant apartment that we used to share. A heartbeat for sale no longer the sound I fell asleep to no longer the pulse that pumped through my own veins.

#12.23.2015 #prompt