Maps Are Dumb.

I press my finger flat against the map,
momentarily tempted to push straight through
but it wouldn't do any good.
The length of two knuckles- there are small scars
littering this hand, compounding papercuts and
childhood mistakes-
two knuckles and over two hundred miles.
I can't think of anything else lately,
I'm being eaten by a beast
and these miles are teeth.
Distance is my boulder,
and I am always struggling
uphill.



---
Fun Fact-
I am a terrible navigator.
Not-so-fun-fact-
less than half my soulfriends (and regular friends!) are living in my home state.
I have a bad habit of making friends with people when I travel someplace... which certainly doesn't help!

slow dawning

i remember the moment when i knew
we would be friends,
laying awake before bed-
the best description i can manage is
that i felt our friendship
solidifying-
tightening
around my heart,
blooming among my ribs
and various vital organs.
i smiled,
went to sleep,
and dreamt of warm nothings.


---
this past summer, i saw a friend who i hadn't seen/ spoken to in a few years, and i was nervous because i tend to overthink things and what if we're too different to really be friends now? but it was alright, and i'm really happy about it still!
also,
this is how i feel most of my friendships, so that's a cool thing that actually happens.

Handle With Care

Eggshells, the bones of
small creatures, trust,
hearts; things that can easily
crack and or break,
fall apart, fade away.
Fragility lives and breathes
in every moment, on the
edge of every breath
and at the start
of every step,
no matter what you do.
Ironically, it is the strong
who are able to carry through.





--
Working on the same theme as 'Fragility'
 

Fragility

Cup yours hands carefully
around the wings, beating
like hushed laughter against the
skin of your palms. Leave
some gaps; nothing large enough
to set it free, but to let some
air in to breathe. This feeling
of wonder and fear and joy
and caution- it’s right, it’s proper,
it’s what you should be feeling. Now
that you have learned something-
set it free.







 

Moment

I like to walk away as if I'm never really leaving,
because I manage to always act
while almost never really thinking.
I like to pretend living is easier this way, loving
the moment and how I will always stay
where I am if
where I am is
anywhere I can be.

I like it when I'm never still, because then I can believe
that everything is fine; as long as I keep moving
the future will be the last thing on my mind.






It's funny, because I literally cannot think far enough ahead. And then I'm stuck in the middle of something, and I realize that there was a flaw in my non-plan and then I just shrug and take the next step out.
Soooo hilarious.

Pioneers

What if we could make our homes here,
blanket forts stretched between
the aisles. You could claim whichever
section you wished,
as long as I could have cooking
or the 'featured reads'
(those I would claim as my own,
and set my pillow beside them
as mock territorial boundaries).
At night we could attach booklights
to the shelves and put on shadow plays,
to spite or ease the hush that
swallows all sounds. And in the morning
we would wake in the children's section,
our individual forts forgotten
in favor of cultural exchange and
comfort, with the sun
brightening the dull colors of night
and highlighting dust motes in sharp relief.
With the farmers market outside every Thursday,
we would never have the leave.






So I've been spending quite a bit of time in the library, and... The New Albany library is more peaceful than the one near my house.

Longing

Longing is like rubber bands and
tight fisted hands grabbing my sleeves,
a small voice whispering, "Please
come back, I want you now, don't leave!"
Longing is a stretchy sort of feeling,
like taffy or laughing to keep yourself
from screaming at the ceiling.
It can be quiet, too,
creeping up behind you like a minute,
or a glass you go to drink from
only to discover that there's nothing in it.
Longing is the broken promise
of what tomorrow was supposed to bring,
and it is a mostly futile thing.







This poem has gone through so many mutations... I'm just kind of surprised that I found it.

Subaudible

I have found a tranquil sea
when I am in chaos- easy
to find, lovely to welcome
the peace it brings.
When a room is quiet, and
the air conditioning shuts off-
the disorienting
sense of super-silence,
like being buried in the snow.
When you sit on the front porch
and see that the hush of
early morning is quite alive:
crickets, birds, wind,
early commuters. Drink it in,
this busy stillness.
Beneath everything, there is
a quieter place- and I
have found one in me.








This might get fixed later? Ugh. I don't really know how to put it together. Anyways!
Story that brought this on-
At work one night, a few of my coworkers were talking about weed. "Do you smoke weed?" one of them asked me. I told them that I didn't, and they looked at me strangely. "Have you ever smoked weed?" Once again, I replied in the negative, and he stared harder. After I asked him why it seemed so strange, he replied, "Well, you just sort of seem the type. I mean! Not like that, but... Well, calm and... centered! Or something."
Then he got teased a little bit by everyone else, but he kind of got me thinking. It's funny that he thought that I was high most of the time, but I've always had this space of calmness inside of me.
Just something interesting to me.

Imagining

Driving with the windows down-
sweat sticking where
the wind can't reach.
Hands in the air
current and
head in the clouds,
imagining how it'd feel
to have wings.






Something that I've always imagined.

Shoes

Sometimes, silence is a fool.
How is it possible
to not know a friend? When
you fill in their blanks in your head.
The comfortable rest without words,
a blank page to color
a hero where a friend should be.
Over time, he simply grew
too large to fit in his own shoes.
I look down to where they lay
between us, and they are more like coffins
every day. So here I put down
to rest the hero in my mind-
soon I hope to meet an old friend
again, and fill in his empty lines.







This came out of some strange thought about that saying where the metaphorical shoes are too big, followed by my mind connecting metaphorically too-large shoes to coffins. Just roll with it, okay?
Also, don't put anyone on a pedestal. I think that's basically the moral of this story.

Untangled

Fingers laced together, stretched across
the knees crossed in front of my chest
(defensive posture, I have heard).
Everything is knotted.
Intestines, vocal chords,
trains of thought-
jumbled, snarled, twisted. He waits
while I comb out the tangles, us breathing
and drinking our tea. Sighs.
Finally, “I’m afraid-“
(pause, breathe, switch legs.)
“-that I will never
feel that way again.”
Momentary weightlessness, disorientation,
paralyzing apprehension. Then-
blessed relief; the abrupt alleviation of worry.
Oh, when freedom is a broken silence!
Fingers ease apart, and
my body follows.






Yup. I think in this instance, the problem was less of what I thought it was and more of how I was unwilling to really think/ talk about it.

Canyon

She is a canyon,
beautiful in the setting sun.
Cut by wind and water, eroded
over time; worn down,
tired, lovely.
Her delicate wrists are worrying-
boulders balanced on thin
ridges, miraculous and
terrifying. Her brown eyes
carry ages with them; it is like
looking into a chasm,
into a deep unknown darkness
that nothing fills.
I wish for her to be a meadow
or a stream, mountains
or hills at least. But she
is a canyon,
enchanting and alarming;
and it is killing me.







Formed right as I was falling asleep. As in I was actually in a semi-dreaming state, and then this came into my head, and I woke myself up and wrote down what I could remember. It was obviously better in my dream, but this is the gist.

Sunshine

Sunshine, fair weather friend
and ally when tensions
are high. We both know that I
only have to step outside
and breathe, where you
are there to comfort me.







Small and necesary. I always felt that I have to keep a balance in my writing, like if I let myself write too many negative things then I'll just explode. Which is a perfectly reasonable theory, in my opinion.
Anyways.
I love the sun.

Human

Hopelessness is threatening to crush me,
the weight of defeat and everything
pressing and tumbling and crumbling-
I am soft soil against an angry sea,
whose raging waves are tearing me
apart. I want to be a rock, a solid boulder,
a cliff that turns cold shoulders
to the fury of that storm.
But then I recall that I am human,
made of warm blood and fragile bones.
I am sitting in a building, mostly alone.
For a moment, I let myself fall
into that deep despair.
I choke on it, break under it,
breath again, and calmly
begin the repair.
It is human to err.





Found this in my Anatomy notebook. Afraid to go back to college now.

(3 haikus)

I won't miss the rats,
the roaches, or the heat; but
maybe I'll miss you.

--

We console ourselves
with the countdown, marking off
days as they crawl by.

--

If I had to wait
any longer to see you,
I think I'd explode.






These weren't formed with the idea of making a series, but they fit together well enough so there ya go.

Apprehension

Is there a word for this, the sense
of feeling a loss
before it is taken away?
The smell of citrus blossoms,
the sight of cactus and mountains;
the things that are here now, but will soon
be left behind. Apprehension, foreboding, déjà vu,
loneliness in a crowd of people?
And then the knowing
that there will always
be this feeling,
no matter where, because there is
so much to love about the world
that it can’t all fit in one place.
If only it could.






It's a win-win/ lose-lose sort of situation, but I'll try to make the best of things. They don't have Bob Evans or Steak & Shake, Ohio doesn't have Jamba Juice or good, cheap fro-yo (that I know of?). Why can I only think of food examples?

Concrete

I am too concrete to bend,
to twist my tongue
and make my fingers dance
in red shoes; watching
in envy from the sidelines.
while dust motes and gold light
fill up the room, they talk
about feathers and dark tunnels.
I can only see the bloom
of flowers on the windowsill, smell
their perfume, and they talk
about bricks in their bones
and trees in their hands.
I give up and breathe deep
and grip the concrete.








I admire the writers that can take something that can connect two things that seem totally irrelevant in my mind, and then make them relevant and beautiful. It's even more inspiring, because I find it so difficult to do. It's like connecting a soda machine to the ocean, or a june bug to a piggy bank. What?

Love

I am reading a book about
love and things, it's
beautiful. There's
a girl who does not love
things, though she is full of
potential love (almost exploding
with it) and I think maybe,
I am the opposite.
The sunset; broken mug;
book so old it has been
taped together multiple times,
multiple places; these
are all things I love. Yet when
I look inside, I only see hope.
My love does not live
within me- it is around me.






I'm almost nearly done with Everything is Illuminated, and I've been reading it quite a bit. Whenever someone asks what I'm reading, and what it's about, I just fail to explain.
This is actually not a good poem at all, and I'm going to blame that on the lack of motivation & creativity.

Found

I almost said "found each other", but
the words fell short
and stayed in my mouth;
I had to stop and think
because all I could see
was a clip of two hands reaching
out across a distance and searching
for contact.
Do people find each other?
Do we wander through life
discovering the existence of
friends and loved ones, like
famous explorers coming back
with expanded maps?
Or are we half asleep,
fumbling in the dark
for who knows what?






I've always been interesting in how some phrases work, and the imagery attached to them.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MEG!

Recognized

our souls recognized each other from
above things and we looked on
from a distance,
never too close- then,
like comets coming
into orbit, finally
made contact- that
brilliant shine of
familiarity at last
flashing in our skies.
all we needed was to look
into each other’s eyes
and say, “hello,”
and it felt like home.




There are times when I can just look at someone and know that we could be friends. Not as rare as instantly hating someone, but me actually getting the courage to talk to them is.