Love poem: Charcoal-stained t-shirts on porcelain skin

Love poem: Charcoal-stained t-shirts on porcelain skin

To a home I don’t want to come back to
I have been feeling this stifling feeling of wanting to get away, to get away
But I don’t run away from my responsibilities
Something to be proud of
Dad, did you see that, all of these times, from wherever you have been relocated to
If there is a Lord, they are a God—genderless, liquid, solid, vaporous substance
Never parasitic
Always appreciative
Who you are, where you came from
They don’t see that in you
The people in your surroundings, the ones that make such
Wild accusations, to my peril it used to be
Until I found a form of insanity
That blanketed me in a comfort I truly feel is finally real

I must sound crazy to you
All of this I’m so aware of that I think it’s started to crack my skin apart
In tiny little precious spiderwebs
I collect
In a drawer beneath my queen-size bed
I collect all of my tiny, little, precious memories

Love poem: Charcoal-stained t-shirts on porcelain skin (continued)

Have come to realize that being blanketed in softness
Makes life feel finer than operating in a self-isolated cave
But I feel deprived of a human spirit
Perhaps it’s too much for me to think about, yet I still do
It’s not overthinking if I’m hit with the infinite branches of how deeply in love I am with you

Never want what I can’t have
I make my palette worthwhile if I’m going to move at all
It has to be at a target
As of late, it’s been moving at a frightening speed
Take my physics equations and calculate
How I could throw the baseball in such a way that it would land in my teammate’s glove
Belief in others
A steadfast, full-depth, incisive belief in others
Some of which I’ve had to let go personally
But never universally
Everybody deserves to feel half of the things I feel when I’m next to you

Love poem: Charcoal-stained t-shirts on porcelain skin (continued)

Typing this on a plane—carefully arranged composure
Your black Vans
How you don’t crash out when faced with shoelaces
They always end up bound in knots when I go to untie them
Can’t really figure out what’s wrong with me
You fixed it immediately
Fortunately for me, nobody can fix another human being
Finally evaded the line of thinking that the opposite could come true for me

If I am shattered glass, I just want somebody who comes
Prepared
Unafraid
Careful but not conscious
My eyes have started producing tears as of late—the dryness has resolved
I think about how I feel and immediately regain my composure
Charcoal-stained t-shirts from the clearance section
You said they looked good in relation to my skin
If I didn’t know it yet, my goodness, I’d have figured it out right then

Love poem: Charcoal-stained t-shirts on porcelain skin (continued)

Prepared
Unafraid
I know I can handle this
Haven’t felt it in so long
It’s been years since
I have felt
Like crying from joy when seeing a human being that is in my life
Not a musician,
Not a family member that will forever mean the world to me
Just a boy
Wearing black Vans
Shoelaces that perfectly untie
I wish I could watch our entire story on rewind

I won’t get lost this time
Priorities won’t shift
I’ll dance in my bedroom and my lifted pickup truck while I drive
Hug my children (the dogs)
Take care of things I’ve never dealt with for my mother
I’ll be alright
I won’t get lost in time
Wish I could watch our story on rewind
Go back to the very first night
I’d say, hi
Everything would turn out the same in the end
Me, on this plane
Wiping tears away, and you know it’s because I’m writing
Have no clue
Think I’m processing my stress
I’m not stressed about you
I’m miserable to be so happily in love with someone who

I could have been better to.

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Love poem: Grocery store

Love poem: Grocery store

West Dale
Palms boulevard
Clover avenue
I go to the grocery store
And I run right into you
Ask me how things are back home
Do your days ever feel terribly long
I say, I have to go
Think I know the place where I belong

Hollywood, Los Angeles at dusk
Her perfume smelled like camellias that bloom in November
They look just like roses, so naturally I’m obsessed
Swing the door open to a settled fire,
Capture in my hands: tiny, soft embers
Collapsing into moonlight, but
Cradled like dust
I’ll be strong for both of us
If I must

Love poem: Grocery store [continued]

You have to feed your nostalgia sometimes
It’s really the only way that you’ll survive
It’s how you keep the dreams alive
It’s the only way they’ll see you on the other side

West Dale
Palms boulevard
Clover avenue
When I go to the grocery store
I always look for you

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Love poem: Miss Dior (your perfume)

Arachnids are crawling all over me.
They’re starting to really itch my knees
But, honey, the way you throw your head back
When you laugh
At the way I dance
To these songs that I’m showing you right now, in this light,
You are sunshine,
Pure sunshine.

I’ll learn how to pick a lock just for you
If that’s seriously what you want me to do
I’ll find an online manual,
I don’t even care where
I’m afraid of the things I would do for you
But I keep it very composed, calm and close
And the way you look with your mauve lip gloss
Sunshine
Bright lights
Yellow dahlias
So mine

You look way too beautiful to be sleeping in a bed
That’s
Lying flat on the floor
I mean,
I’m pretty sure
I hate when I find songs that make me perfectly think of you,
I end up playing them into the night.

I don’t even know what this fragrance is
But, oh my, am I all over you
There is rosewater flowing out of the tap
And a white pickup truck in my driveway
Oh my, what am I to do?
Oh my, what am I to do with you?
So fragrant, so lush
Like fruit
How soon can I marry you?

I had a surprisingly good dream for once.
Seems like the night terrors are temporarily at bay
All it was was that I was having a conversation with someone who was looking straight at me and
Laughing
In the loveliest of ways.
He just wanted to hear what I had to say next
Somehow I felt so comfortable sitting there in my seat
I kept making jokes
I kept stumbling over my words
What’s new there?
But I was so happy, for once, I think
And I woke up, and I told my mother that I had had such a splendid dream
But it was only a simple conversation.
The kind that the normal people have seen.

I have
On repeat
Every day,
Like a habit
Muted faces
Mutilation
Picket fences
Fresh paint
Every day
Like a perfect habit
Dirty pickup truck
That I wash every Saturday
And I see the plane flying
And I don’t wanna be on it
Because I’m comfortable being right here
Because of your perfume

Intoxicating
Trembling
Can’t quite describe
The ending
All that I
Remember
Is the smell of
Your
Perfume

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Love poem: Passenger door // grocery store

Love poem: Passenger door // grocery store

Fresh lint from the dryer
My niece is crying
Because a boy pulled a baby-pink ribbon straight from her hair
& I told her, don’t worry
He didn’t take anything real from you
The most genuine things are
More intangible than they seem

So now I’m at the laundromat
Watching my lavender and velvet blanket dry
Something too delicate of material to end up in this white, vacant space
But I have already been charged
For a thousand liar’s crimes
Not my own, but it’s easy to take the blame
When the minds of the reckoners aren’t something you can change

Love poem: Passenger door // grocery store [continued]

I used to dream about being held
By someone so powerful
That they could both start and end bar fights for me
Think I was in my early twenties
So my wildest visions
Would make little sense to someone truly thinking of settling down
You have to act your age
In this kind of upscale town

Then you handed me a receipt
Me, counting your naturally full lashes
How strong they must be and if only
Mine were too
To resist my pulling them out
When I both do and don’t have free time
Which my mother would say is a crime
But laugh with me thereafter
Because true love doesn’t see you in black or in white
Genuine love both does and does not fight

Love poem: Passenger door // grocery store [continued]

Your voice was alarming
Because it began softening
Every tense fibre locked and chained to itself within my body
I warm my shivering shoulders with how hotly
My breath is on evenings
Like this one, in which I could not care less about who or what surrounds you and me
They are just bodies
And you are warm nectar
That only the most tender of creatures know how to find

I showed up on time
Your shift is almost over
But I am too shy
So, I take my bags
Spill a few things, say it’s alright
“You don’t have to help me”
(Oh man, but I want you to)
Pretend I have plans when you ask what I’m doing
(I am such a poor liar,
the truth practically stained on my teeth)

I want you to go sit in the driver’s seat
Open the passenger door for me

Come home and help me with the groceries

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Love poem: From the garden

Love poem; From the garden

You with your
Fast car
I’m holding my
Seatbelt
Wondering how careless you could be with your daughter
And after you were gone,
I figured out why you were so unbothered
Mechanic by daylight
Television by bedtime
I’d do anything to cut one of the garden peaches for you again

All I know is that I hope you’re digging your way through the gloom of the deep cement clouds
To see what I’m up to
How I’ve been living
I found me a boy
That treats me like a princess
I pretend to be doing well
But who am I kidding
Your never-stifled laughter is
Something I’ll forever be needing

Love poem: From the garden [continued]

I put my wrinkled dollar bills on the counter
To pay for a blueberry icee
The cashier tells me
That I string words together so nicely
I wonder at what age
Did I become so inviting?
I just know you weren’t there to see it
I was a canine addicted to biting

And I’d do anything to
Cut one of the garden pears for you again
See your bright expression
In that very moment, right then
I was an imperfect daughter
To a highly flawed father

And I wish I could go back to those days
Like, all of the time
And I wish I could ask you for advice
Like, all of the time
And I wish I could come home late to you angry
Like, all of the time
And I wish I could feel the thrill of 100 miles per hour
Like, all of the time
Without crying