Tag: poetry on tumblr

i shouldn’t have let him
close the door.
everyone knows nothing
good happens to young girls
behind closed doors
and yet i wasn’t thinking
about freedom when i heard
the lock click. i was all dolled up
for the camera.

i heard your voice in my head,
saying you wouldn’t let
him touch me.
but the door closed and
you couldn’t see
where his hands were sliding.
i was
just another day at work.
just another photoshoot.
just another.

i wonder if
he knows my body
has become a shrine to
the emptiness
he thrust within me.
i wonder if he cares
that i’ve flinched under
every pair of hands
since.

i wonder if he remembers
my name.

i wonder if he remembers // a.s.m

we are chiseled
from clouds to be
strong yet fragile. we must
weep, but we must
comfort those who are
weeping also. our lives
cannot be any
messier than the kitchen counter
before having guests over.
we must always make
a good impression.
we will be everything
so you don’t have to be,
and we will still be weak
in your eyes.

woman // a.s.m

‘i love you’ is just a verbal expression of an emotion. it is not a promise that they will not hurt you. it is not a promise that they will love you forever. it is not a promise that they will never leave. it is not a promise of anything.

i love you is not a promise // a.s.m

i’d never in my life so much as dipped my pinky in a glass of wine, but my god, i was drunk on you. i was the kind of drunk where you can’t string together a sentence for the life of you and yet you reach for the vodka anyway. you were my first gasp of air after holding my breath for three years. i consumed you hungrily; you let me depend on you.

tequila // a.s.m

you’d heard the phrase “to love is to suffer” so you weren’t exactly surprised when the first time you saw his eyes you had stained the sheets red. but you had been so ready to cradle him in your arms and feel his beating heart that you ignored it. 

twenty two years later you’re looking through his desk drawers while he’s out; not quite sure what you’re looking for, but knowing there must be a reason his eyes have looked so golden lately. there must be a reason he’s out so damn much.

when you hear the news, all you can think of is his heart, once so small and fragile. that heart that used to beat within your own body is now beating arrhythmically to the sound of train tracks on his arms. and you remember ‘to love is to suffer,’ yet you had never thought it would consume you so much. 

you never knew that loving him would mean he would suffer, too. that often you’d hug him so hard, you’d leave a bruise. or that you’d love him so much, sometimes you’d try to save him from being himself.

to love is to suffer (Heroin, Pt. III) // a.s.m

I. i wish you’d stop apologizing for me. i’m sick of feeling like i was born an apology. 

II. i know you’d never intentionally hurt me. but you have, you do, and you will.

III. i know you have the rare gift of seeing the angels inside of us, and that your first instinct is to hold those angels close and shelter them. but you need to let us go. you need to give us room to be individuals who experience pain and make mistakes. 

IV. i know i have, do, and will hurt you, too. i’m sorry. 

V. i learned a while ago that the less i told you i loved you, the less you’d yell at me. so i stopped saying it. 

VI. i love you.

VII. sometimes i hear your stubbornness in my own voice and fear i will grow to sound just like you. it took me a while to find my own voice, but it’s here, and i’m learning to be loud. 

VIII. i used to put my headphones on, hang my neck off the edge of my bed, let the tears roll up my head and wish i had a different mother. i don’t anymore.

IX. thank you for all that you’ve done. thank you for nursing us with chunks of your heart. for continuing to feed us even when you felt like there was none of you left. thank you for loving me even when you didn’t want to. thank you for emptying yourself so we could crawl inside. thank you for never giving up. thank you for somehow finding the light within us and reflecting it back at us when all we felt was darkness. thank you for molding me into who i am today.

a letter to my mother // a.s.m