in the light of the morning
i can convince myself that all is well.
but each night after midnight
i have the same dream:
that you come back to me
and take me in your arms again
and tell me that you regret
leaving me like you did
i think my subconscious is telling me this:
i am the one who regrets
not you.
and:
if i had known the last time we met
would be the last time we met
i would have told you how i felt exactly
and kissed you one last time with all i had
but i know the difference
the dream of you
(the one i am in love with)
is always sorry
and always loves me back
the real you
(the one i am in love with)
does not think of me at all
30 notes
·
View notes
the rain comes down in a fine mist
and clears the smoke from the hills
smog moves out of the city and onto its next target
and the peak of the mountain is finally visible from the woods
from where i could once only see
twenty feet ahead
my field of vision has finally cleared
but still nothing is there
13 notes
·
View notes
when i was a kid you made a flower crown for me
out of daisies you tore up from the grass out by the soccer field.
my hands were too shaky to tie the knots
so i watched you braid them together
wrap the stems around
when i was sixteen i crashed my car in the middle of the night
turning at a red light straight into a ditch
the cops came and flooded the whole pavement blue and red
and when they asked me what happened i knew i couldn’t tell them
about the daisies growing in the middle lane
when i was nineteen i dropped out of college and when i
walked out of the admissions office for the last time there were
daisies growing in the cracks of the pavement.
and i wished i hadn’t lived my life around all the stipulations
and things i thought i knew when i was a child
10 notes
·
View notes
it’s seventy degrees in october. a shaft of sunlight falls
through the windshield of my car and i remember
being blinded by the same sun at eight years old
from the back of the car as you came to check on me.
or when you offered to cut the food on my plate for me
or took me away from the noise of the kitchen to teach
me how to play video games.
there are some days where i wake up and wonder
why you weren’t at my graduation or
why you haven’t come around for the last couple
christmases.
close enough to remember you fondly but far enough
for me to forget, just for a second;
hanging in that in-between
thinking that i should invite you over for lemonade
and catch up on everything you’ve been up to
before remembering that it’s been five years and
i should really go visit your grave.
10 notes
·
View notes
the rumble of the engine keeps me warm
and i am still trying to believe in god but if there is one
then god put me behind the slowest BMW in the whole
of the county, driving with their brake lights on and stopping
at every fallen leaf on the street
i’m cursing the double yellow lines and the
hand over my eyes, the faces in my rearview mirror
and the cold autumn dawn forcing me to choose between
the squeak of the heating vents or the radio
exhaust rumbles out of the engine like my car is
puffing hard on a cigarette and she coughs
before moving forward again and i think
it might be worth being cold if i could just hear
your voice in the static on the news channel
7 notes
·
View notes
fog settles over the evergreen valley
i walk through the woods to the old red barn.
i spot a ghost through the morning mist
changing its form to look like an outline of you.
i follow it around the foothills of the highlands
and up to the crest of the peak where the power lines begin.
sun permeates the thick of the valley smog
and it evaporates, leaving me cold and alone.
funny how even after all these years
it still looks just like you did at nineteen.
22 notes
·
View notes
sometimes i wonder what would happen if i took
the redeye bullet train and showed up at your door.
would we be transported back to high school,
prom night where you came with matching
corsages? would you forgive all those texts i missed
or all those times i tried to call you in the middle
of the night? when i dream i dream about you -
we’re walking in the halls of our old school,
nothing ever went wrong and i never lost you
in the first place.
you wrote me letters before you moved out and sometimes
i lay on my bed and read them all,
pretending like we’re back home and seventeen
and looking at the stars together. my old car and
your old job and our old town and i feel like
i’m walking through monuments and
churchyards when i pass by all those old
memories of you.
17 notes
·
View notes
out of anger i might just
shoot the messenger who comes with
a love confession and rose petal,
neither addressed to me
out of sorrow i might just
shoot the moon with a
silver-tipped arrow and watch it
fall short and rest on the ground at my feet
out of love i might just
shoot through my skull to hit
the part of my brain that itches in the
middle of the night
out of loneliness i might just
shoot at nothing and hit nothing, ever
and let all the targets rest
untouched in the night
16 notes
·
View notes
orange october comes knocking in the middle of the night -
i wake up and all the leaves have fallen to the ground.
suddenly the sky feels like red velvet and the air smells like
smoke. my heart grows heavier as days traipse from autumn
to winter, the morning light growing dim the closer savings
day comes. i bid the moon goodnight and wake alone, in the
middle of the forest. i run with the morning mist for a while
until it evaporates, along with every memory i’ve had of the
summer sun.
33 notes
·
View notes
at the dinner table in the evening
i look up at the ceiling light
and wonder if there is a god.
the mold i fleshed out of an avocado just behind the pit
the abandoned paints on the counter
the plane ticket hidden in my desk.
in the daytime, i have no time to think.
the sky above me is clear and cloudless,
the lake reflecting stars that are not there.
during the night, i am nothing -
i tell the girl in the mirror that she is beautiful
but she looks away, does not speak back.
so it is there, in the dusk, between being happy and afraid
that i dare to ask the bigger questions.
the dishes by the sink
the grapefruit i carried up to my room but did not eat
the fragile spiderweb at the window.
4 notes
·
View notes
after work i walk to the river;
in the heat of july afternoons, nowhere but there can i find freedom.
the willows brush against one another and it sounds like
someone calling my name - i turn to them but
find no solace in their whispers. i dip one finger in the river
at the top, where the water runs clear,
and it parts to flow around me, just for a moment.
i am immovable, but only for as long as i am attached to the land.
i think, there, hidden out of sight by the rocks and tall grass
and the steep valley down to the water’s edge
inside the little hole in the thicket of trees
i learnt how the witch falls in love with the witch-hunter.
8 notes
·
View notes
i see you when i close my eyes
there, on the rooftop, against the rain
and there, in the yellow light all dreams take place in.
i always used to listen to the same song when it thundered - you became so heavily intertwined in its measures that my chest starts feeling heavy as soon as the song begins. before i even remember why. before i even remember you.
and now, during the long storm warnings and even in the stretches of summer showers, i see your arms against the sky, reaching out as if you could touch both sides of the world before coming back down again.
now she lives with regrets and you don’t live with regrets. and people always ask me to clarify what i mean by that, because it sounds like a good thing. and i have to say no, he has regrets. he has a whole lot of regrets, he’d better have them. it’s the living that he’s not doing. he’s not living, but he does have regrets. see?
so, when it rains, i listen to that same song and think about going to the rooftop and taking off my shoes, just to see how it felt.
would i go back home and take a long shower to rinse off everything i’d done? or would the wind finally grab ahold of me like it’s been wanting to do for so long?
and how do you go on living, afterwards? in the blank space? in the rain? how do you graduate, and celebrate all the birthdays he could have had?
it’s something that i’ve always wanted to ask her. but then the sun breaks again, and - it’s like, if you don’t have a reason to be sad, it gets a little harder to explain and a lot easier to hide.
someday that rain is gonna get me too. cause i keep trying to forget you, but every time i go to sleep i dream about seeing you again. and every time i wake up i understand you a little more, and like myself a little less.
9 notes
·
View notes
when i think of you
i see crows. and all the late nights
we spent dreaming up ravens and
feathers and exchanging texts
in the backseat of each other’s
cars. and every time i see a crow
i think about your eyes and the way
they’d move from my face to
the wall to something outside and
then back again, darting
everywhere like you were searching
for something else but settling
again on me.
i guess i always
blamed myself for the shedding of
feathers because god i fed you
the crumbs from my bread and you
brought me shiny things but
i could have given you so much more and
i wasn’t there like i should have been.
and i say something like “crows are
my favorite bird” and someone tells
me that they remember faces and
hold grudges for their whole lives,
that they recognize you even as
you grow old. and i think about all
the wrong i did and how much i
loved you and i wonder if i collected
all the shiny things? will you see me
and want to pluck at my skin? i’ve
missed you so much but your nest
is so high that i can’t seem to reach
you.
let me back in, let me
see you. i will not take your feathers,
do not look at me and turn away. i hear
them now, cawing, and it
sounds like your voice, breaking.
114 notes
·
View notes
i am six
and celebrating the death of a star.
it falls from where i used to know heaven was
and i think i could reach out and catch it
if i were a god
or maybe just on a plane.
did it have last words - a hospital bed with
morphine or a quiet thank-you to the sky
before it collapsed?
does it hit like a truck, hurtling
towards the earth or is it the eternity
they say we all experience in the thirteen seconds
between life and death?
imagine falling to gently
implode on the ground and watching a
little girl wave and cheer from her bedroom window
and make a wish with her parents that when
she grows up she’ll be a writer and that she
and her family will be happy and healthy. god, imagine
dying and your final purpose is to grant a small
child a wish.
16 notes
·
View notes
papers filled with half-written poems turn into tiny birds and float out of my open window into may’s morning breeze. days turn into weeks that peel away into months and then seasons, and still i have not sought out a pen or keyboard. i focus on words that are not my own, but everything i write comes out half-sour and a little too bitter. i’ve read somewhere that you can balance most acids out with a pinch of brown sugar, but here it only makes the ink run grainy and words turn soft. i think i’ve published eighteen poems at least but it turns out i’ve just been saving them as drafts this whole time. somehow, i don’t care to rectify that. i didn’t like any of them anyway. i wish the paper birds would return so i could finish what i’ve started, but they would wind up in a pile on my desk and i would keep saying “next week” until years passed and the crinkles that mark their little wings would have long straightened themselves out, and then where would we be? i won’t have any poems and they won’t have any bit of bird left in them. still, maybe someone will pick them out from the gutter or at the very least a boney sewer rat will have a new comforter. he will sleep soundly while i stare at the wall and let the ink in my pens dry out for good.
10 notes
·
View notes
i am thirteen and coming to terms with the idea that i may never fall in love.
the shadows on my ceiling chase me into high school, where i toe the line between independent and lonely.
i slip between the words on pages of romance novels and wonder why the idea of love has always made me turn away. i am a child that believes in fairytales and a bird trying to fly but instead learning that her wings are shaped a little different.
on sunny days it gets the better of me and i remember how i used to write letters to my soulmate so that they might know my younger self. it pains me to think that no one will ever read them, but maybe i don’t mind picking them up when i’ve forgotten what they say and relearning myself all over again. if i can’t fall in love with someone else then maybe i won’t mind loving myself instead.
23 notes
·
View notes
we learned russian together in the tenth grade.
she used to sit with me in between classes and we would have tiny conversations with each other in a language no one else could understand. it was small at first, a private place to answer “not good” to “how are you,” a quiet, “tired” or “food?”. when we learned how to write, she was better at it than i was. she used to take my pencil and click the lead a few times, carefully etching the unfamiliar characters onto my paper for me, letting me trace her lines.
we went to a party together one time and in the middle of it, just like that, she looked over at me and asked, “want to go home?” in broken russian so that no one else could understand. we left together. she always knew.
we went to the market near her house and read nutrition labels written in the language to see what ingredients we could decipher. we left with loads of snacks we could barely pronounce, but they tasted like success.
i taught myself how to say “i love you” three years later. i repeated it over and over again like a mantra, unable to sleep at night for the shape of the words echoing inside my head. i love you, i love you. it took the shape of her gentle hand ghosting over my cheek, the curves of her voice coming out of my mouth. i love you. something i had learned far too late to ever tell her.
the last thing she told me was “see you tomorrow” and then she didn’t and i never spoke russian to her again. i look at myself in the mirror and say “i love you” but i can only ever see her staring back at me.
25 notes
·
View notes