Emotional Roller-Coaster

I am remembering the roller-coaster, the buildup 
of gravity in my bones- [chik].[chik].
[chik].[chik]. 
and on and on until 
silence 
and the 
drop 
and the 
scream. 
It’s been so long since I've seen 
the world rush by- but I can feel it now,
and when I ache to tell you about 
the roller-coaster I’ve been riding on, 
the physical memory seems 
so much better, by comparison.



-------

I have a lot of feelings.
I am tempted to bake a cake.

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.

amber and tiger's eye

We were sitting around the table, a deja vu
set in flesh (plus or minus a few)-
we returned to one small moment, where
everyone's eyes were blue
except his. So odd, so ironic, so
lovely
in a way
that I cannot think to conjugate.
I cannot recall if he refused
to acknowledge what we all knew-
that brown eyes
can be nice,
too.



---
[true story. i think there were seven of us? eight if becca had been there, but mark was the only one with brown eyes and everyone else had blue eyes and i just think that's pretty great.]

delta

Sometimes I think that we are stones
dropped into the [pond]river-ocean
of this world, left to erode in
the current as our ripples spread and
fade.
Sometimes I can sit and feel
the water, whatever it happens to be.
We are always drowning,
but rocks do not need to breathe.




---
(I am absurdly happy with this poem.)

soothsaying sucrose

periwinkle pink plaid cherry chocolate pie
cookie dough quiltwork
gashes in my thighs
marmalade magenta sugar reigns supreme
cyan candy cruellers
heart attacks with cream





---
I'm not entirely sure.

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.

"inch by inch, life's a cinch"

The cycle begins again, it seems as if this is all I've known- the scare of strange streets gradually losing their unfamiliar sheen and becoming something more acquainted, closed doorways and corner shops giving their silent nods in greeting as I pass. This season will soon be coming to a close, though, and my time here will end. On everbody's lips is the same question, and I have it now on my own- where will I go? Washington state, I ponder, or should I try to stay in this city that is still slightly new? I have yet to truly learn even a niche, which I would dearly love to do (it's a lovely place, I think)- but who knows! Not I, for sure, and maybe that should be disconcerting but I am currently inclined to let the current carry me where it will, and without too many intentions I will say, "To hell with the consequences, I will have to learn to love another small space of this enormous world."

Antipathy

it's the smell of a room once you leave it, that makes me hesitate
in the doorway or open a window. I could never wish pain
on anyone, you taught me that in your roundabout way
(I don't think you were aware
of your lessons, the tears streaking my sister's face)-
I could never wish glass in your heel
or a car coming too fast out of a turn. This isn't kindness
on my part- pain hurts me. But I am leaving soon, and
I would not be there to see the rosebush scratch your eyes,
I wouldn't hear the crunch of bone (maybe
not a car accident, maybe a bad fall)
and the phone call
that would inevitably come
would not inspire any sympathy pains-
normally hearing about a dislocated knee
will make my own ache, but
there are always
exceptions.

[wow!]

[ I just retired a little over 50 poems from this blog... and tomorrow I'll be pruning some more. Whoo! Alright, that was all. ]

where have my words gone

I.
when we walked beneath a bridge at night, both afraid but not willing to admit it, made jokes and laughed with extra volume; how it felt to press my forehead to your spine, falling asleep in my older sister's bed because she was never there and you always were, just for that summer; fishes crafted of iridescent ribbon, tethered to their mobile as they swam small swirls into the air.

II.
what can i teach or learn or sing, writing from memories?

III.
touching down felt like breaking the surface, like we had been living our lives underwater and this was the air, this was the land and this is where the plane took me back to breathe. everything was open: the sky, the mountains, the cactus and their arms. everything was faded, bleached, fresh with dust and too much sun. they appeared in the sunsets, in the wind that whipped the palms trees, in the miniature dust devils, and in the fragrant citrus branches; i took deep breathes, i harbored them in my lungs, and held them in my arms- then i let them go.

IV.
i wish i had kept some, just a few to take back with me. there is no desert here, we do not live in an oven, and we are not surrounded by hostile plants. my lungs are only full of air, my arms are empty and so is my mind. empty empty empty.





_{[I don't know, I really don't know, I'm just going to keep writing and hopefully someday I'll look at what I'm writing and know what's going on again, I don't care if it's stupid or ugly or pointless, I just miss writing so much and I don't really have anything to write about except things that make me sad but if I don't write about them then it makes them ten times harder to figure out and I just want to figure them out! that's all I want to do!]}

[hiatus?]

[I'm going to be honest here- I've been looking back at my old poetry, and I haven't improved as much as I'd hoped. In fact, quite a number of my old poems are just as good/ better than some of the recent ones I've been churning out. Maybe this is another rut, maybe I need to challenge myself to try different things, but either way there won't be anything new here for a while. Feel free to read through the archives, they're forever long at this point. ♥ ♥ ♥]

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.