Tag: chicago

Poem: Four thoughts (Chicago dandelions)

distantcaveLeave a comment

Poem: Four thoughts (Chicago dandelions)

Rose petals with lime in my hot coffee
Author’s alterations, metasomatism beneath my bedsheets
Making changes to my will because I will outlive my instruments & garments
I’m the most proper fit, and I laugh to myself
Because nobody else thinks it to be true
Playing in the garden all night long

If you’re made of arachidonic acid, you’re still not essential to me
Accelerated depreciation is like using plastic
So casual for you
The cavity where I reside is not accepting visitation
Though you can leave the fleurs and baguettes at the doorstep
Can I be a princess for once, please?
Can someone naturally want to take care of me?

Poem: Four thoughts (Chicago dandelions) [continued]

My abdomen is covered in spears
I don’t know where they came from
He found it addicting, and I chose not to feel bad, because I settled for a freedom that involved both him and me
I’m stored in the nacelle, and you’re a half-decent engineer
Who works so much he loses sight of
The real thing
When it’s engaging in self-piercing
Damaging increments
Fingernails painted dusty pink

I feel a permanent wholesome vacancy
A vacant office
A vacant smile
A vacant estate
A vacant room
A vacant seat on a bus
A vacant throne
A disengaged observer
Sometimes I wish you would just look at me
Stare at me so I would feel like I was really living, here.

Poem: Four thoughts (Chicago dandelions) [continued]

An abandoned factory
An abandoned field
An abandoned vehicle
An abandoned baby
I was left to fall into a state of disuse
And then I had to pick myself up
Here we are, I’m staring at Chicago on the plane’s seat live screen map, and I want to cry, because it’s screaming out at me

“You need to get rid of everything so that I can consume you in full”
Nobody can love you so much to the point that you can’t leave
This is everything and all that you want
To the point where a low-quality live map brings tears to my turning-dark-green eyes
Straightforward without reserve, my advocacy for my well-being
Openhearted and honest with my eternal sin
That I’m falling more and more in love with

I want what’s favorable
I accept what makes me want to sink, not just mine, but all of the ships
Things highly unpleasant to me are advantageous to the attitude I want to cultivate
Impartial to how we couldn’t quite relate

Poem: Four thoughts (Chicago dandelions) [continued]

I’ve got dandelions in my hair
The right guy won’t blow my wishes out
A commendatory view of my well-calculated decision and unruly spirit

I appreciate it all
The astronomical pitfalls
Everything is beautiful to me
If it wasn’t, I would not have stayed around here

Poem: Four thoughts (Chicago dandelions) [continued]

Sweet and angelic of you, a stranger said
Looked at me with the admiration the last few lacked
In a Duty Free store

I learned to be safe in my own skin
Complimentary to my own skeleton
Dandelions in my hair
The right guy won’t blow my wishes out

She was always four thoughts ahead of everyone else

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Poem: Love it any less

distantcaveLeave a comment

Poem: Love it any less

He tells me
Not to get too excited
As we sit alongside the deep-blue riverbed
But me – I’ve been counting down the days
I saw my chamomile flowers bloom, then close, and fall apart in the duration of one week
As I hadn’t changed the water
I was distracted by the sparkle
Of the morning’s horizon
As it painted me in shades of pink I couldn’t quite capture on film

California outlawed flavoured vape products
I know, I’m mourning it heavily
Now I find myself smoking non-menthol cigarettes in my parking lot
Like my father did, in his
Amber tones of his skin shining like
Diamonds you pick back up from the jewelry store
That line your blue-tinted watch with a brand painted in cursive ink
Like your mother’s Russian handwriting
Soft in all of the
Roughest places

My afternoon gaze is
Thick with gloom and hope, both at the same time
I’m wrapped in my navy ‘Windy City’ sweater that I bought at a Walgreens
Where it took four cashiers to properly ring up my alcoholic drink, too
Because the cashiers were mostly underage
But we were on the same page
Laughing about how liquor makes the turbulent flight go smoothly
And how I’ll wrap myself in bridal magazines and read the new Forbes “thirty under thirty” list
Knowing I won’t make it on there in less than three years
Cutoffs are so harsh, isn’t it maddening
Life is so funny sometimes, at the right times
I’ll fade to November grey like a collapsing sky
I’ll lay my head down and never, ever wonder why
I’ll endure the gradual passage of time

He adjusted his collar
And we laughed about who is taller
Because me, my small frame, I take up so little of space
Though I feel like if I spread my fingertips, they’ll reach the mountains
Surrounded by cherry stems and cascading fountains
Waterfalls along the trail where my senior terrier walks on her own self-created path
My glimmer of hope in this brittle, dark night
Made for a hollow tin of little coloured cards stolen from the paint store
Where we wrote our biggest dreams on
Gathering the courage to set them on fire
And not intending to burn down the park grounds down with our miniature vision boards

I found a poem I published for a boy three years ago
On his birthday
It was called ‘I wrote you a poem’
My mother laughed at how cute that was
I did too
I think back to those years and how he never came through
And somehow that didn’t make me love him any less
Probably even more so

I have to get better with taking derivatives
Along with the vitamins in my medicine cabinet
I finally bought a parking permit for university so I could stop
Getting tickets
Even though the traffic cop is such a sweetheart
He asks about my navy ‘Windy City’ sweater
Things like “so when are you going to finally end up there?”

The piece of rose-tinted, painted card-stock
That I’d never set on flames
I keep it in my wallet
To know that
I’ll get there

I’ll get there
Until I’m at the drugstore again with the cashiers
That are of-age, by that time
And I’m buying wine

And Chicago will treat me like it’s been mine this whole time
And I won’t love it any less
Probably even more so

© Elle Silvestrov

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Poem: 3 in the morning (God loves you)

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Poem: 3 in the morning (God loves you)

Sometimes at night
I think of you
(I’m lying – I always think of you)
There’s nothing else I’d rather do
It’s the bittersweet sting of being hopelessly enamored with you

The more you want it, the farther away it becomes
You stay up late and say you’ll sleep next to the sun
He says he’s running late, but he never does come
That’s the sad truth about not being the only one
I twirl my hair
I spin around
I choke so hard I fall to the ground
And if you calculated my efforts, I’d pay by the pound
I’m lost in abysmal and undulating surround sound

He put black padding on the walls to keep the voices quiet
Asked me what my favourite wine was and said that he’d buy it
Passed me angel dust, but I said I won’t try it
This time I’m not lying
It hurts more to keep trying
Don’t blame it on timing
If I am dust, you are worn out leather from a cow that loved to live and breathe fresh air
You ran your fingers through my soft, blonde hair
I knew you were unaware
You had me right there
You had me

Boys have short attention spans, so I’m working on making my poems shorter
As if a somber gaze doesn’t scratch at the envelope
As if the disposable cardboard coaster I kept from the bar we went to last year isn’t practically at its wit end
But I stare at it at night and I like to pretend
That you and I will never end
(You spin me round and round, you scream, you bend)
I only liked when you were drinking
Because you never stopped talking
And I could listen to your words for endless summer days

I’m watching my step
I’m too sharp for this town
I reached the vault of heaven, but you pushed me back down
And every time I walk away from you, I turn right back around
You’re the most beautiful thing that I have ever found

And if you want me, please tell me
That’s all that I ask
Because I don’t know how much longer
I can contain this chaotic energy, it’s only a setback
It pays for my grave
Collects debt at the tollbooth
Serves me a clean slate I can’t afford and makes it taste like dry vermouth
A botanical celestial atmosphere where there was you and I appeared and you said come here, baby girl, my doe-eyed dear
Please, my angel, don’t you ever disappear

I say never
Won’t do it
I’ll always be here

But you’re so distant from me that my words sound unclear
And the walls are blurry and they’re bleeding red
And I bought pink satin sheets for my queen-sized bed
And I wait every night for you to come fall sleep
But if your love cuts my skin, it doesn’t go very deep
If your flaws were secrets, they’d be mine to keep
And I replay your laugh in my mind on fucking repeat

I know only one thing that’ll make me complete
But if it’s me against her, I’m too weak to compete
I am a glacier dissolving in sunburns and aggressive summer heat
But I still thank God because he arranged for us to meet
I know it as much as I love the window seat
But I see you and her, so I make a spreadsheet
Of all the ways this is going to kill me
Please stop, only you can heal me
I need you like candy
I crave all of you
I know that my hopes are too good to be true
So I lay on the concrete, I only see in ocean-blue

I scream at God for letting me fall in love with you
It’s 3 in the morning
There’s nothing else to do

© Elle Silvestrov

I only liked when you were drinking
Because you never stopped talking
And I could listen to your words for endless summer days

Poem: 3 in the morning (God loves you)

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Poem: Heroin dream (tears)

distantcaveLeave a comment

You’re even sweeter than when I met you
What a bloody surprise
You’ve become my moonbeam
My perfect sunrise

You tell me secrets & I keep them
‘Cause I’m loyal like that
I’ve always got your back
Be right there on my bike at the drop of a hat
Haven’t you always wanted a girl like that?

I’m a skeptic of your likeness
You got me carried away
I’m dressing all fancy
Do you like me this way?
Will all the nice jewels get you to stay?
Crisp marmalade
Sunshine in the east
You made me unafraid
You made me so afraid, of what’s to come
And when I daydream before falling asleep
You’re the only one

And you’re reading this right now
Don’t even know it’s about you
Part of that makes me smile, part of that turns me blue
We’re careless on Tuesdays, that’s just what we do
Hit a gram or two
You trace my necklace with your fingertips
Kiss my little shoulder softly with your lips
Got me hung up on this

The drugs won’t work pretty soon, and we’ll fade out
You look so blank like you don’t know what I’m talking about
And then what happens when our families figure it out?

I was spoiled when I first met you, that I got to see your gorgeous face
And we were moving so fast – a dangerous, volatile pace
I wish you well forever
Always in your sweater
Rock me to sleep in this heroin dream

You’re even sweeter than when I met you
You’ve become my moonbeam
My perfect sunrise
And when I think about it
All I do is cry

And when I think about it
All I do is cry