Tag: poems on tumblr

Apology to Myself

i’m sorry i’m sorry i’m sorry

the words throw themselves off
my lips to become the ground
you walk on.

i’m sorry i wasn’t the one
you wanted to squeeze
into your daily planner in
slanted, sloppy script.

i’m sorry i fell so hard
so fast because i am
scraped up and
don’t know what to do.
i made you my
emergency contact.

i’m sorry i confused
us for love because
it hurts to see you laugh
while I am trying
to ignore the fact that
i am still on fire.

i’m sorry all I can seem to remember
are your eyes and lips and
laughter instead of the words
that hit me like
lit cigarette butts or
the humid silences or the hours
i spent worrying about someone
whose only mark on
my heart is a burn.

Biotechnology

I am swimming in a sea
of crippling uncertainty,
and it is my life’s greatest fear
that paralyzed, I’ll drown in here.
I’m struggling to stay afloat
while anxious tears constrict my throat.
Afraid there’s nothing I can do,
a merciless god I’m praying to.

No matter how I push and kick,
the sea ignores me and
I sink.

Impossible Equation

in physics class
i learned
the further you fall,
the harder the landing:
F=ma.

i fell
for you at
90 miles per hour
without a parachute.

if the force of your lips
saying you do not love me
is like a thousand hammers
pounding at my heart,
what is the mass of
the empty shell
that remains?

Scars & Bruises

let me kiss your
black and blues.
let me run my fingers over
your scars and
read them like Braille,
so I can feel where
you’ve been
and what you carry
with you.

let me stare in awe at
the auroras of broken blood vessels
that read me stories each night.
I know the way your
cheeks bloom with roses
when I tell you they are
beautiful.
I know the way your
eyes shyly run away from
mine, but
every piece of art on
your body is a story I want to know
by heart.

Mother

every day we walk on
your back.
we stick needles in
your spine and fill
your lungs with our smoke.
we look you in the eye while
we close our hands around your neck. 

every day you
love us, cleaning our spills
to cradle us again.
we are fleas, but
you love us even when we bite. 

you keep trying to grow.
we keep trying to
cut you down.   

Happy Birthday, Daddy

i don’t have the ocean
in my eyes
or fire in my hair.
i was given
her dark traits, and
though they paint my face, 
my heart is safe
because you have taught me
it is not my sacrifice 
to this world. 

i do not need 
a phenotype to know
you are a part of me. 
every time i’ve hidden 
my mind from the world,
you’ve reminded me
sometimes it is okay
to scream. 
every time i’ve wanted to fly, 
you’ve stood behind me
and watched me go– 
you believed i would soar 
long before i knew i had wings.
let it be evident
through all i create, that you have
watered me well.