rosy-cheeked-girl

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

marionettes

what means youth to you? that we are bright bright burning our lips red and chapped our eyes lifeless our teeth white our cheeks rosy from the wind in our faces? do you know how often we are told the future is ours— no, worse, that we are the future? i don’t mean to refuse some birthright but in a world in want of individuality must i be defined by a collective only? what means youth to you? is it the sound of the time ticking down down down the world in need the world on fire the world through all of it watching us? isn’t it?

#poem #poetry #marionettes #youth #the future #children are the future #this one's about me #in want of individuality #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

the exact opposite of excelsior

anyway, i’m tired. and since everyone’s doors closed for good my refrain has become: and for what? if everything had a reason you’d think i’d be able to find at least one. one reason to keep typing away, chipping at this pile of commitments though my fingertips are bruised. something about being anywhere other than here. maybe productivity has a thing against me, maybe i’ve spent one day too long procrastinating and karma or my missed opportunities are holding grudges now, i don’t know. but god, don’t you see i wish i did? i just want to claw my way out but my fingertips are already burned, they’re already bleeding. the ruin isn’t coming, it’s already eaten me inside out. the ruin isn’t coming, it’s already here.

#poem #poetry #the exact opposite of excelsior #anywhere other than here #prompted #tired #productivity #ruin #the ruin isn't coming #it's already here #helplessness #trapped #informal #this one's about me #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

never elysium

lost in the lights / or the draw of adventure— if i were a born hero i’d already be / gone. but i am here in the living room / nose pressed against the windowpane / do you think i wanted to end up / this way? what is more timeless than temptation? / what is more fluid than ecstasy, ambition?

i wake up to early afternoon and i / know in my fool’s gold soul of souls that this is it. / this is what / i have waited for. i have waited for the dawn breaking down into the / promised pieces of day. / night and its stars shattering anew, chorusing: / come what may, come what may, come what may.

#poem #poetry #never elysium #prompted #prompt: this is it #experimental style #caesura #the draw of adventure #extended metaphor #wanderlust #come what may #heroes #imagery #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

gambler’s fallacy

the folding chairs were left out for months after the family reunion. so we all had dinner together. so we talked about the same things and rehashed our usual arguments. sure. listen, the chairs are collecting dust, can you clean them up and put them

away? i’m tired of the house being a mess, i don’t care if the closet is full or if you’re hearing their voices even though the funeral was two thursdays ago. i don’t want to hear it. dust the bookshelves while you’re at it, will you? no point in arguing, i’m going back to sleep. be quieter

puttering around first thing in the morning, honestly, can’t you sing loudly when no one else is home? you’d shower much faster if you didn’t make it into some broadway production, jesus christ. i don’t know what you mean when you say i’m always falling for the gambler’s

fallacy and frankly you know i couldn’t care less. why won’t you just take your wins when you can? why don’t you just beat me at blackjack and go? why can’t you ever follow instructions without immediately talking back to me? the house is a sty. use your eyes. it better be clean when i wake up.

#poem #poetry #gambler's fallacy #train of thought #unanswered questions #direct address #monologue #take your wins when you can #minutiae #spilled ink #spilled thoughts #i'm back :)

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

undying

i always knew i was dying, i only just figured out how to say it. forgive me. forgive me. forgive me. don’t you know the poets die? don’t you know i will spend my whole life on my knees begging for forgiveness because there will always be someone who holds me against me? who will walk away no matter what i say?

i always knew i’d end up here, i only just realized it was me i was referring to when i said “you” and me i was referring to when i said “me.” don’t you know i was born to gasp words into existence, enraptured, suffocating from the inside out, a study in self-destruction? don’t forgive me. don’t tell me i never said a word about my fate, the red-lettered respite just out of reach. don’t tell me the poets die. don’t tell me i do not need forgiveness to rise again.

i always knew i could do anything if believed it to be so, i only just realized that sometimes truths are truths and lies are lies. sometimes you have been fooling yourself. i am dying in the here and now. i am dying in the in-between. forgive me for saying it as it is. the forgiveness is in the saying.

can you forgive me for wanting to be forgiven?

#poem #poetry #undying #undone #undone iii #forgiveness #the poets die #truths and lies #self destruction #self contradiction #fate #forgive me #on my knees #musings #enraptured #in between #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

garden gate left ajar

if i had love enough—if i really did choke on the idea of a love so vast—if i myself was that love—if i lost myself in the drowning of a thing because i am the garden hose and the watering can and the glass shower door then perhaps i will bury my hair / from the haircut i gave myself in the dark in the plot meant for a mother’s hydrangeas the thought will occur that i am—i can be—i must be—i am the enforcer of my own stillness the teacher of my own complicated tongue my own final epiphany / curled in on itself how language is in itself a litany— burning me in bottomless anticipation— buried will i grow—

#poem #poetry #garden gate left ajar #on love #extended metaphor #imagery #language #on language #experimental style #introspection #epiphany #garden metaphor #love enough #vastness #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

condensation of avoidable tragedy

let us for a moment go back to the usual deconstruction the decades-old armoire left on the sidewalk to be ruined by rain

and it will be slippery out there on my usual perch where my hand rests on the banister and the peeling black paint matches my chipping nail polish

isn’t it precarious isn’t it exhilarating living on the edge of sorts i suppose i could be some kind of tardigrade the old armoire cemented in memory mahogany

i could plunge down and hit the sidewalk now split-second scream following as i fall beside me the armoire which did not last to be my childhood closet could be my coffin instead

#poem #poetry #condensation of avoidable tragedy #imagery #extended metaphor #the usual deconstruction #living on the edge #rain #armoire #fire escape #thrill seeking #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

love is blind (is blind)

an individual as a mosaic in purest form, head thrown back & jaw held wide as the sunshine pours from an open window into waiting lips.

simplify the fraction one last time: love that rests in wait on the kitchen windowsill, where the blinds are never closed, over

found introspection between clasped hands, a silver whisper which cannot, hard as it tries, wriggle its way into the end of the sentence,

the opening/closing lines of the story. it is possible someone is looking at the scene incorrectly. that someone is blind, that it is blood not sunshine

that it is ichor not light which has begun to reside— or rather to stain—the tiled floor, the fingertips, the ceiling which begins to warp at the start of summertime.

#poem #poetry #love is blind (is blind) #love is blind #sunlight #imagery #ichor #golden #introspection #passive voice #extended metaphor #summertime #mosaic #on love #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

and my mirror was a stained glass window

i am still weaving an intangible net, if you will, with which to capture profundity. maybe in its visualization it will not be so much a butterfly net as a cube net—the way the facets of too-high expectations of the self (look at me, not saying self-deprecation, pasting a label reading determination over old & yellowed self-doubt.) can be flattened out into mosaics, paintbrush and liquid glue taken to lay oneself at the feet of incoming sunlight.

look at me, still trying to spin the unspinnable into threads of gold. can someone so unfolded be golden too? can we become the light again, can we hold our own against the coming of the day? as a cube i will sit out on the fire escape just when it begins to rain. in the essence of profundity, of course, is wonder.

#poem #poetry #and my mirror was a stained glass window #prompt: fire escape #prompted #imagery #extended metaphor #profundity #wonder #golden #sunlight #cube net #math metaphors #too-high expectations #on light #on the self #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

broken pencil tips

no more pencil shavings. no more tearstains. no more deep grooves in the legs of the desk that you cannot possibly pinpoint the origin of. no more rings from the bottom of the third-favorite coffee mug. no more quiet whimpering sounds. i sweep the pencil shavings from the desk into my hands again and again but the pencil is still dull—the tip snaps— but the desk is so worn and beaten i cannot think full rehabilitation is a possibility. no more feeling sad but not knowing why. or maybe i will go on and on just like this, sitting here sharpening pencils, entrenched in a coffee-stain sinkhole, letting myself drown.

#poem #poetry #broken pencil tips #prompt: pencil shavings #prompt: feeling sad but not knowing why #prompted #imagery #extended metaphor #repetition #spiralling #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

aftertaste

let the behind-the eyelids imagery remain on my tongue, long dissolved, the taste of which while indescribable can be traced around the edges by the word bittersweet. the word nostalgia. the aftertaste of the aftertaste of the cough syrup reserved only for childhood. the chewable vitamins. the coating of gummy worms. let the nostalgia of cherry-but-wrong coat the roof of your mouth, here and now and then. the duality of letting a memory lie and letting a memory go; of reminiscence and of forgetting; the spun sugar of it all. the molasses of memory. sweet yet tinged with bitterness. stop coughing but think about too-red medicine and lingering artificiality, once more a dual remembrance.

#poem #poetry #aftertaste #prompt: artificial flavoring #prompted #nostalgia #reflection #duality #reminiscence #cough syrup #extended metaphor #childhood #imagery #memories #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

on the application of inductive reasoning to transitivity

it’s perfectly reasonable not to believe them when they say tomorrow will be better. better than today. perfectly reasonable to be so stuck in your downward spiral of everything you have yet to do, congealing into that all-too-familiar lump in your throat. you barely even choke on your hesitation anymore, on your own insecurity, not for a lack of it or even a dwindling supply but simply from a tolerance built up over time. that’s perfectly reasonable, you know. what they will tell you is that tomorrow will be better, better than today, but what they mean is transitivity can be established from a single reference point. the existence of one better day implies the existence of others. there have been better days, so there will be better days. they will say: tomorrow will be better than today. you will think—perfectly reasonably—that maybe it won’t be. this time, though you will know that the better days might seem out of reach they will never quite be out of sight.

#poem #poetry #on the application of inductive reasoning to transitivity #better days #tomorrow will be better #looking ahead #transitivity #transitive property #inductive reasoning #extended metaphor #insecurity #hope #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

who’s to say?

am i in love yet? who’s to say? who’s to say i haven’t been in love this whole time, in love with love, in love with the idea of love, with the idea of being in love, et cetera. who’s to say i am not made of love and therefore i was born to shiver with an ache or a chill or a sigh when i ask myself whether i am yet in love. who’s to say i know what love is like? i will answer, for lack of a better ending or any sort of sure thing to turn to. me. i will answer. me and only me. but i will leave you to guess what i said. (who’s to say?)

#poem #poetry #who's to say? #on love #meta #circuitous #musings #unanswered questions #idealism #in love with love #insecurity #this one's about me #introspection #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

in search of winter’s wonder

if you’ve grown up in the city like me the moniker “winter wonderland” doesn’t quite make sense for the longest time. the snowplows are loud and snarling and once fallen, snow is quickly dirtied and shoveled and trod into slush, an inconvenience at best. it’s an indoor life, winter notwithstanding.

but it’s easy enough to grow up asking yourself where the “wonder” part comes in. that’s before. that’s before you wake up in the middle of the night and you see that it’s snowed. and on the sidewalks the snowdrifts almost glow in the streetlamp light, dim and haunted and somehow breathtaking, too. you have grown up in the city but in this midwinter fractal of a moment, everything is dead quiet. your breath fogs the window and then all at once: your chest balloons with inexplicable contentment. with a sort of unexpected peace. with—if you dare to think it, maybe it will at last fall into place— wonder.

#poem #poetry #in search of winter's wonder #winter wonderland #winter #wonder #prompted #snow #imagery #this one's about me #city living #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

encapsulated

i’ll fall asleep in your arms to the sound of your near-even breaths and think of the ocean. i’ll watch the sunset night after night and think of how light catches in your hair, sticky and sprawling like spiderwebbed rainbows. an entire world can be kept in one color. encapsulated. you hear me talking in my sleep but you never tell me what you hear me say. am i calling your name? are you calling mine? in flickering firelight your eyes are flimsy as shadows, timeless as death, and i, holding you close, will twirl your hair around my finger— auburn. a world in a color. auburn. you and i like two colliding oceans, breathing slowed, eyes closing as the sky fades to black.

#poem #poetry #encapsulated #imagery #on love #alliteration #falling asleep #auburn #sunset #peace #you know. just a happy love poem for once #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

semper

i want.

i want.

i want.

#poem #poetry #semper #on wanting #i just. #on love #this one's about me #repetition #this is my new magnum opus #spilled ink #spilled thoughts

[rosy-cheeked-girl]

to whom it may concern

if you’re out there, if you’re out there, here’s more proof that all my love poems are about me, too: the wanting to be held and the see me for who i am and the endless spite and yearning in equal amounts? those are all me. the twisting of words into themselves, the rhythm found in free verse, the time lost in imagined liminal scenarios? those are me, too. my daydreams are still mine even if they are not real. my piecemeal poetry still sounds in my voice, still rings true even if it is so easy to be read as false, as made-up, as manufactured and thus somehow lacking. if you do not hear me within every word i write then you aren’t listening. if you go looking for me but only where you want to that’s not on me. you can find me in any damn love poem. try me. look closer, if you’re out there. the proof’s there and more. are you listening?

#poem #poetry #to whom it may concern #on love #this one's about me #but then again #they're all about me #are you listening? #if you're out there #proof #within my words #spilled ink #spilled thoughts