Not a love poem: Swan lake memories

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Not a love poem: Swan lake memories

Butterflies flying into me, crashing lightly
You told me my skin was soft, and though I knew it to be true,
I felt in part indebted to you.
Like I couldn’t carve out a space
Large enough to climb into
Show you why your dreams are just make-believe

Not my responsibility to teach anybody anything
Because who do I think I am
Easily tan, have Swan Lake memorized & I do pirouettes in my dining room
I still remember the dress I planned to wear
Continues to hang on the shelf
I don’t look in that specific direction

A poem that is not a love poem because it doesn't have a happy ending, or an ending at all.

Not a love poem: Swan lake memories (continued)

Exhausted from doing nothing at all
About how your bad habits look even worse when I look into a microscope
Focusing on school
Highlighting my study materials
No, not you – there, waiting for me,
Opening the door
Letting me cry
Telling me you liked how I felt safe.

I want to hate the trees you like, but there are so many in every place I’ve visited in the last year, and I feel weak when I want to photograph them because they’re so beautiful, and memory plays in time-lapse frames to make me feel sick and dismal with its reminders.

I feel weak anyway
I know the neuroscience of loss, but who I wanted to be I forgot
You make me weak, you made me vulnerable
I loved it and I hated it
I retained it
Delicate like a fine-point pen drawing insects on your arm that isn’t covered in tattoos
I wish I could hate you

Not a love poem: Swan lake memories (continued)

I’ll move like a moth, I think you forgot
The area code that leads to a postcode
That leads to a telephone wire on an absolutely fragrant fire
In the middle of the city, and the chaos causes lawsuits
We like it because we’re in trouble
Playing tag in the backyard of your grandparents’ house
I miss the smell of hydrangeas
That changed colours
When they felt like it, like I do

I feel weak in places I didn’t know were part of me
When I see a tree
That makes me think, he must be there
Sitting pleasantly
Wasting his life without me

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Love poem: This is why

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Love poem: This is why

You are, shorter than my father
So maybe our babies
Could be small enough to fit in our pockets
Even when they want to leave the nest
(We won’t let them)

I am, not frail – but delicate
Have cuts all over my legs from traversing the wild hills that scrape the fields you envy when you drive past the street I’m claiming as my own for the evening
I’m alone in my own portal, and I’m trying to show this dog an earthly Heaven
Things don’t go as planned
Born in September, so plans for me are fun to make
And I wildly bake
In the crisp and fallen ashes of a crocodile fire
Lit by a herd of wild animals
That nobody else says were there

Love poem: This is why (continued)

I don’t, behave
On Wednesdays
A childlike ambience to my default state of
Cradling myself in bed and only coming out to feed
I am, unsure of who in my surroundings is fond of me
It’s something I push to the back of my tired brain
Don’t think about it, don’t analyze
This concept has yet to make sense
I do like when I wear a lilac top and these black shorts
To swim through fields of wheat mixed in with golden, sombre flowers
Holding my baby darling like a waterfall
She doesn’t, behave
On Mondays nor Tuesdays

And I
Love
Spilled oat milk
As it reaches my carpet & seeps in between the fabric
I lay on the ground
Thinking of how
He lied to me when he said he thought of me while writing those songs
It was just for the sake of conversation
When you find out someone’s romantic, so you play the role
That’s not how I want life to go

Love poem: This is why (continued)

I want nonchalance with a secret tendency to dramatize
That complements my inherent practicality and
Choice to turn this car around on the freeway by moving over the cement blocks that divide the different directional paths
Will I scare you like that?
Do I have to?

I have, two weeks to myself
Though filled with doctor appointments & studying for an exam that will
Determine where I go in life from here
To me, that’s thrilling
And you, are spilling

Oat milk in my kitchen, and it’s dripping
Making its way to the carpet
So I’m laughing
Because you’re obnoxious
But deeply honest

And this is why you and I are where ends meet

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Poem: In real time (vast chasm)

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Poem: In real time (vast chasm)

Arched back, my universe
A mint sage green to invigorate me since I’m so,
Tired of the way things have been going
Parts of me I loved, not really showing
Vintage glamour too much of an effort; I’m sinking down
I know that I swim very well, so it’s not sensible to drown
But I have this one thought I want to get rid of
That maybe it’s peaceful down there
I know I can bring to this valley some flowers
But what if the prettiest ones are underground
I’m scared of this one thought I pretend not to have
That maybe I can take something and finally find out
I’m scared of this one thought I have

I simultaneously do and don’t want to be
Wondering if people in other vehicles on the freeway can see me crying.
The depth of the city
Pale bloom mid-toned grey, avalanche of a highway
Miles per hour in the hundreds – this is my place
It’s my crisp green apple
So why am I disconsolate in lowercase
Feeding into a winter sunrise that falls on me like a torrential downpour

Poem, continued: In real time (vast chasm)

Your brown eyes, they see something in me
Oh, I believe it
But I know I need to see something too
I’m scared of this one thought I have
That perhaps this book is becoming too long
I have all these notebooks
I’ve never written in
I have all these contacts
That I just delete
The sun hits me hard and the skies wake me up, but the noise is like tar and I do love the black
But the panic attacks
The heirloom pink that fades so fast
When I eventually fall asleep
Time and space not linked, so casually on the brink
Of falling in

Poem, continued: In real time (vast chasm)

Don’t want to be someone
That is too tired to make their own cup of
Coffee
Don’t feel I need someone
Halfway think I don’t deserve it
It feels so unconventional but on-purpose
Like a car that refuses to accept gasoline

I have a fence
That grows taller around me
I spin in circles
But not to break free
If someone saw this
They’d conclude I was insane
But I am clearing cobwebs
From my own brain

Poem, continued: In real time (vast chasm)

Arched back, my universe
Anabolism and violent television shows that I don’t watch
Avoiding mass speculation and trembling violations
My white chair that faces two separate vases of flowers
I love it here
And I can’t bare to hate anything at all

Except being
Unable
To make
A cup of coffee
In real time

I am surprised
That I
Can write

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Love poem: Why I stay far away from you

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Love poem: Why I stay far away from you

Lavender highlighter pens and derivatives of peptides
You, sitting across the aristocratic table from me
Bruised in a way that only you could contain
I need a gold medallion for your table manners, white & yellow daisy in a jar
Baby blue periwinkle Bambi dress, dress up for you
Hush, I’m trying to study
But it feels so lovely
The natural light bringing out the specks in your irises

You don’t, really talk too much.
You think you do, but you don’t
Just enough
Tip of my tongue
In flames falling all over the sidewalks for you
I miss you like white stains on my teeth
Think of you wearing turtleneck sweaters in the mountains high up
Cylindrical daydreams feel too soft, too hazy to be absorbed readily
Sad thing is they only stay dreams
Have to keep you far away from me
Cos if you were to come close
Oh, my baby blue, oh I’d love to really let go
I’d love to just let you know.

Love Poem: Why I stay far away from you (continued)

You know I love you so much, I swim like goldfish freed from a little paper cup or a balloon
Held by a child, shaken like a madman
I want you on the highways, the overlapping freeways that make me lose my mind every time
In Texas, in Calabasas, the swing-set of a family home
And how I wish I could just plead
For you to be the man I falsely believe I know you can be
How I know what you need
I’d love to just let you know.

Ultimately, I love you and accept you just as you are
I wouldn’t change a thing
So I have to separate myself
You and me in the same room, that’s violence
That’s you laughing at how I have no concept of what monopoly is nor how to play any type of card game
It’s you making fun of me for the cute things I say and do
It’s you making me fall in love with myself even more in a way only tenderness could do
And this is why I have to stay far away from you.

Love Poem: Why I stay far away from you (continued)

I was seated in the Victorian chair, studying my amino acids
Brought me the worst cup of coffee I ever did have
I drank it all – okay, maybe half, I kept looking at you
Focusing on your manuscript and I was smiling
Jagged edges
Confetti for a party that was never thrown
Like a mountain goat, I could climb diagonally towards you
Swim to you in thunderstorms
Tear you apart by looking at you – not once, but twice
I’m in love with how you look at me and how you don’t look at me and then you

Look up at me
And I’m studying the amino acids
Can’t get you out of my head, you’re the worst

A ghost can’t be in a coma
But a well-dressed boy is a blessing and a curse

You’re like a pill
I can’t
Take

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Poem: Choking on grapes

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Poem: Choking on Grapes

It was on purpose
It wasn’t a mistake
I got
Frostbite
From choking on splinters
Peeling them like grapes

Thin as a needle
You make it seem easy
The ploughing is destroying the peyote
And I have created a party for you, the reason for my demise
I’ve been so intrigued ever since you rolled down the window for me to feel the breeze

You will always have the medicine with you
Wherever you go

Poem: Choking on Grapes, continued

In Texas, I felt free because the gas was cheap, and I had salt in my
Teeth
Washing my brand-new blue jeans
Wheat fields and a can of cola, riding in the bed of a truck looking over my shoulder
Tired of having nobody to say anything to
I feel alone and even though I’m used to it
I still have to shrug it off, it seems
A fig tree standing for no one

Pharmacology is lovely & my favourite toothpaste is by Arm & Hammer
I drive to the nearby Rite Aid, where I get a lottery ticket for my mother
Mixing up my favourite numbers
I never win, but she swears I’m so lucky
I couldn’t spell it out right if you had the guts to call me
The ravens in the sky figured out how to fly
In ways that make girls and boys want to order cameras that run on film
See a kid skateboard home and it’s like it’s 2008
And my hair is blonde
A lavender bush smiling for no one

Poem: Choking on grapes, continued

Cut in half an apricot
Can run for miles; dimes are all I got
My backpack is lilac, because I want the items I own to be beautiful
To represent a part of me that feels eternal
Colour schemes and fever dreams
I get lost
Upside down
Tangled in between two separate swings
Lose and find my favourite things

It must have been on purpose
It was no mistake
Soft cotton
Precious limestone
Overflowing bookcase that survives California earthquakes
Girls are selling their poetry on Instagram and I’m

Still broke
Choking on splinters
Peeling them like grapes

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