Tag: poems on tumblr

Miss Scarlett In The Ballroom With The Lead Pipe

I washed the sheets four times (once
for every year you dreamt beside me)
before your smell
no longer lingered. 

I deleted all of your
voice messages on my phone, but
they still replay 
in my dreams some nights, and
I will always know your texts by heart. 

I put all your clothes I gathered over the years, tangible
bits and pieces of you, into a garbage bag
and donated them, but 
I still wake up on cold mornings wishing I had 
that black jacket of yours. 

I tore apart 
every picture of us, and still 
it took me too long to be able to 
convince myself there was no missing
half in all those photos of just me. 

I have flipped it so many times, and yet
I cannot get the imprint of 
you out of my memory
foam mattress. The outline of your body
etched in chalk on a crime scene.

He’s Over There

She’s sitting in her rocking chair,
her daughter at her feet.
Her hands braid the child’s hair,
who, with her voice so sweet

Asks her mother with a start
to tell the story, please
of the first boy to steal her heart
and make her weak at the knees.

She smiles and looks across the room,
remembering her young and handsome groom,
and points to him sitting in his chair,
“That’s him, my love. That’s him, right there.” 

Weightless

You surprise me as you begin
to regularly inhabit my dreams
with that smile of yours I’ve only seen
in obituary photographs.
That voice I never heard
is strong and clear in my
subconscious.
You speak to me like the sun,
because the angel you are has no more
burden.
You remind me every night of why
you left;
And I awake every morning knowing I will
never forget. 

You Can’t Find This In The Dictionary

the sun entered your eyes
when they met hers
and the way you held her in photographs
defines love in a way my words cannot. 
i can see what love is, 
but my heart is closed and cold, chiseled
from unforgiving stone, and I will never
understand the warmth. 

I cannot see the way you look at me
or if the moon resides in your eyes. 
I do not like photographs; the way they
distort the perfect
pictures in our minds. 
So I may never know the definition of us. 

Henry

I will never hear you say
why you did it;
but I like to think it was not out of fear
of the future or
cowardice, sadness, or unbearable weight on your slim shoulders,
but rather because you saw
what others felt
and you felt it, too;
and as you sat at the ledge looking down,
it was not out of weakness that you flew,
but out of bravery to know that your message
may not be heard,
out of hope that as you fell into eternal slumber
somebody would wake up
and feel the suffering,
too. 

Hurricane

I try to push them
out
in
so many ways. 
I bleed them
out,
I cry them
out,
I vomit them
out,
but still, they multiply,
growing
in my gut, spreading their black veins
through my body, poisoning
my brain.

It’s too crowded in here
for all of them.
They take me, and
I live
in them so much that
there is nothing.
I am
paralyzed
by the whatifsshouldhavescouldhavebeensifonlys
that my words
on the page are incoherent.

My voice
is silent.
I am
an empty shell,
rocking like the sea.
But
I am
finding that the best way to
silence
them is to
make them feel beautiful,
so I turn
them into poems. 

Berlin Wall

She’s closed herself off
behind her walls
because if she kicks them down, they’ll
fall for you
all

     over

          again;

and you will sit amid the rubble,
admiring the way
the sky greys just before the storm begins
in her heart. 

It Makes Music

I write to      release
the emotions and feelings I’m
            too scared
to express.
To see my thoughts
                 on paper. Sometimes
I write to

            remember
and sometimes to

            forget.

I write because it’s the only way to make
my feelings concrete

                                                solid

                        cohesive, understandable.

            When I write, my
thoughts become art
                                   instead of a jumble in my head. 

For those who jumped, and for those who didn’t jump but wish they had

When you jumped, I cried because
I wished I’d been holding your hand as you fell.
When you were gone, I screamed at the sky to
take me, too.
When I was alone, I was wedged
in a corner of darkness, and I had locked myself in.
I’d wished you’d carried me with you, because
I was just as trapped, just as lost; the books weighed me down, too, you know.
I was filled with just as much hate and hopelessness and
cynicism, just as thirsty for nothingness. 

Now, when I laugh with my whole
heart, I wish you were here laughing, too.
When I sit in the sun and feel the Earth kiss my nose,
I wish you were beside me because
I am learning sometimes
it takes a while sitting in the sun to feel its warmth,
and sometimes when we finally
stumble out
of the darkness, it takes a while for our eyes to
adjust to the light.
But when we can finally get a glimpse of it, it is spectacular.
I wish you were here to see it.