If you couldn’t tell If you couldn’t tell If you couldn’t tell
I’m spinning around like I’m in the dryer at a laundromat The ladies and gentlemen walk by They don’t check up on me like that Now I don’t even remember how To get you to react It seems like my silence Is doing enough for the pact
Poem: Noise (continued)
Now how come you can’t tell How come you can’t tell
That one of my favourite artists dropped an album All I really thought about was you Listening to each track on the record Thinking of you punching your fist through the wall That we had just painted And me, jaw on the floor Incredibly amazed at What I had created
Poem: Noise (continued)
If you couldn’t tell Now how come you couldn’t tell
I’d go sit at your desk, like a little doll Spin around in circles in your armchair Feeling faint And small You liked calling me that Made you feel something too I think it should be the other way, But I feel so indebted to you
Poem: Noise (continued)
Now how come I couldn’t tell How come I couldn’t see Everything that we did Had really nothing to do with me Now how come I couldn’t tell How come I couldn’t feel Everything that we did None of it was very real
You know up and down what real love is My god, have you felt and known that before You see it traveling through your own veins Sparkling bright on the kitchen floor
I decided to Write myself a love letter Because who really knows Me any better?
What do I keep hurting myself for Nobody’s looking in the mirror but you I keep on dreaming what life has in store But spin in circles until my knees fade to a distant blue It’s so chaotic living like this Never licking icing off the birthday cake Consumes me like frostbite by the lake The peak of my landscape of moth wings And when I take the time to Unpack my belongings I suddenly realize My god, I’m in love with everything So why do I Keep feeling like this Like I’m the only one Like I’m the only one Like I’m the only one
Love poem: Moth wings (continued)
We could see the winter snow again Buy the coat with the elegant faux fur You don’t even have to make amends Cos even God knows talk of sin is absurd We could see Lake Michigan freeze to death While what’s underneath simply carries on One day I’ll get out of bed Just in time to watch the morning’s sun
You know back and forth what real love is My god, you feel it now, just like you did before Watch it coarse through your own stunning veins Opulence and nervousness on the closet floor
Love poem: Moth wings (continued)
You’re too young to be afraid Too old to hesitate We can swim right in the lake ‘Till your body collapses on the seashore
So I decided to write a love letter to myself Not because men let me down But because the sound waves miss my eardrums I go days without hearing a sound But god, I love the tone of my own voice Think it’s so funny that I picked up a southern accent Next time someone says my name I’ll remember I’ve been heaven-sent
Love poem: Moth wings (continued)
I can swim right in the lake In the city of my dreams ‘Till my pale body collapses on the seashore Flooded with hope like the legs of a millipede I am warm and fragile and cold My hair tends to burn if it’s by the fire But my New Year’s resolution will still be to be ‘comfy cozy’ If I said I was suicidal, I’d have to be a liar
I can swim right in the lake Lick frostbite like it’s ice cream Knowing I’d have to seek urgent care Hold myself real tight, several times during the day Feel the humidity of the shower when I’m bare I’m a mother to my children and myself Lover of trucks, flowers, rose petals, and guns I can stick around for a while
Just because I think it’d be fun.
Like I’m the only one Like I’m the only one Like I’m the only one With moth wings
I step outside Of the curtain lining To tell you the truth But you’ve already gone to work
I step outside To my midsummer garden Cos it’s all about myself In my own little world
And in my opinion, it wasn’t meant to be I see it in the palms of my hands See it in the trees But looking at past daydreams I so wanted it to be A universe where things could work out for me (playing the victim?)
Poem: Haunted (continued)
In the grand scheme of things They’re always listening Don’t pay much attention to it cos I spend my days dreaming Future apartments with bay windows New acrylic nail salons Runs with my dog on Lake Shore Drive
You could have just told me Though you did in your own way I made sure to Curl up in a blanket I didn’t cry at first But then the weekend came I was tangled and interwoven into you and me again
You should have just Taken it out on me You should’ve just – You should’ve just – But you stopped yourself. I don’t get how You didn’t take it out on me You should’ve – You should’ve – But you stopped yourself.
Poem: Haunted (continued)
In an arboretum I found truly my favourite flowers Next few hours, you grew so bored, I thought you would fall straight into your hands The thorns from the castle drains would Stop to tell you that This wasn’t exactly Part of her plan. I grew quite timid Wasn’t born to be an alarm clock So I let you sleep the next day while I did my own thing The thing was, it was my birthday And anyone knows that can have meaning So it isn’t worth the frame-worked lawsuit The heavy weight in my mind
You shouldn’t have Taken it out on me I thought we were different people Living new lives, so it seemed. You shouldn’t have chosen To take it out on me I thought we had become new In the grand scheme of things.
Poem: Haunted (continued)
Fortune surrounds you So I’m in a blanket Wishing you well in skyscraper heaven. If you turned around, To retrieve your belongings –
My apartment would be empty, But it would still be haunted.
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Like picked out of a hornet’s nest, I painted the walls an ivory-white mixed with peach-pink. You don’t even drive a truck, so why am I so in love With you It must be your character Your calm personality, too I can’t do my own laundry without thinking of how you told me, You would move to Chicago if that was where I was meant to be We planned our future alongside each other With short attention span like honeybees.
Like picked straight out of a hornet’s nest You melted and hardened me like the sap on Sycamore trees. You kept your cards so close Like a wild Siamese A cat scratch disease
Love poem: Skin to teeth, nineteen times (continued)
You’re the kind of guy that – If you hit someone with your car They’ll say it really wasn’t your fault at all I’m the kind of girl That knows to carefully watch the things I may say Even though it all Gets skewed anyway
You can see why I thought we’d be perfect. You can understand why I wanted to work through it I nicked my finger trying to open An Amazon package Got blood stains on my t-shirt and had to change immediately Obviously, you know what they would have to say Sometimes I feel jealous that your life is so black-and-white Because I feel like the clothing one doesn’t want to put away And I have no right to complain My life just turned out this way
When we sat on your couch, and you paused the film To tell me all about work and all the things that you feel, I think I fell in love with you for the seventeenth time And I knew I’d be in love with you for the rest of my life.
Love poem: Skin to teeth, nineteen times (continued)
Because if I accidentally looked down, and hit someone with my car they would probably say that I had planned this all along I don’t wanna sound like a victim, but am I truly wrong? If you were to do quite the same Regardless of which neurotransmitters were on fire in your brain They’d forgive you before you even had the option to apologize Exactly how I did so, so, so many times
Because when I think of that one night, Our entire future flashes right before my eyes You and me and Chicago, the city of my dreams Yet God has other plans He knows what’s right, it seems And so did I because when came the sinking feeling I had the strength to come up for air Am I self-absorbed to say it? Am I no longer a casualty if I own it?
Now I’m driving on the motorway, passing by your place I think I would collapse if I were to see your face. But if you saw mine, You may not even recognize I walk a fine line between being everybody and nobody at the same time
Love poem: Skin to teeth, nineteen times (continued)
I still have visions of us going out I still have thoughts of us dancing together I still have visions of us going out I still have daydreams of us dancing in poor weather
If we were next to each other in the car And if you were to make a mistake, No uncertainty I’d take the blame immediately Because it’s ingrained so deeply within me Written on the inner walls of my veins I’d take the blame
A martyr for nothing A martyr for you and me And now I’m changing course I’m thinking things through a little bit more definitively
I’m on the motorway passing by your place and if I were to see your face I would hopelessly fall in love for the eighteenth time
“Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.” He died for our sins So that I can make peace with mine, For the nineteenth time
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Nuclear envelopes A testable hypothesis Will you still love me if I – Will you drown me out Like the noise in a soundproof room He always said he’d like to go to solitary confinement just to get away For a honeymoon
Light leaks Asparagine and leucine Convoluted sighs and my pink floor-length satin dress Eating three times on Mondays, Eating four times, the day after Consuming enough carbohydrates to be like a plant A prisoner in your gardener A wide-awake blooming orchid Couch that fell from a truck bed onto the motorway We could just make it ours Watch the fires and fireflies swarm in the distance Devouring apricots A routine for my bedtime
Poem: Ant colony (birthday balloons) [continued]
Letting go of lethargic tendencies But I don’t have the energy I’m miserable, with or without you Have to be the writer of my own memoir, the heroine in my own maladaptive daydreams That serve me quite well Like soft serve by the beach Made from plant-based oat milk & Oreos I’ll let the sea and the sun and the sky devour me, so I can merge with the ants and Worry only about my colony What a dream it’s becoming
Empty head Empty thoughts Your Percocet My writer’s block I’ve been too, afraid, to put this down on paper A typewriter with no keys Hands that swell Knees that bleed I know perfectly well That I’m who you need Will you be there for me, in the daylight and the evenings? My handsome prince Tread carefully I’m exactly who I aspire to be
Poem: Ant colony (birthday balloons) [continued]
I believe in myself, most of all Though, the cognitive dissonance gets swept like ashes At a fireplace Melting, blurring a reality that you swore was three-dimensional You vase of a porcelain starlit galaxy You atmospheric void, claustrophobic from your own apprehension I’m so in love with every part of you Especially the pieces you really disdain
I’ll take them in my hands Like the softest of sand
Poem: Ant colony (birthday balloons) [continued]
I don’t know what to do with all these birthday balloons The vinyl you bought me, thank you, by the way You precious thing. And the things I have to move on from Tangled in grief-ridden spiderwebs Merging through lanes with my blinker forever on I follow all the laws When the crows are watching, carefully
I’ll let the sea and the sun and the sky devour me, so I can merge with the ants and Worry only about my colony What a dream it’s becoming
