I can’t fall in love with you if you’re across the room from me
But I can’t change you Been so endlessly patient with you Waiting for the thunderstorm to clear, yet a new one comes in hot Shows me my fears Pours hot coffee all over me Covered
I bit my inner lip Overflowing with an unwelcoming anxiety Until both the insides of the top and bottom started to bleed & as the blood poured in Filling the tiny spaces between my teeth I could taste the iron & I felt closer to myself Than I did Looking in your bathroom mirror Wondering why the tiles on the floor have to be so nice The bathtub so luxurious, so unused A pitfall of possibilities & potential Thought I was steering towards irrationality But all it was Was hope & isn’t that familiar Isn’t that something I could dissolve deeply into
I realized, there was nothing to save If I could just have that museum day Back & I’d be on time & you’d see that I’ve been waiting what feels like my whole life To look into somebody’s eyes & feel safe
But this empty space – This is not the place These are the alleyways your parents warned you about The Instagram posts about what red flags to look for Suddenly you’re driving and cannot stop thinking About how someone doesn’t have to necessarily be a bad person to still be unfulfilling to you I swallowed that truth It’s all a girl like me can do – One who dreams in pink Prays every second she blinks Doesn’t ever let spiders go down the sink
Unless they want to Unless they beg me to Then, what am I to do?
This Is me Letting go Of you
It’s all A girl Like me Can do
I can’t fall in love with you if you won’t walk across the room towards me
Be gentle with yourself Your graceful little steps Lavender ribbons in your hair Pulling a drive-by at the car wash Infuriating all of your closest friends Tugging on the rips in your jeans, hoping that when the fabric bursts at the seams You will pave the way for new daydreams & life will be plentiful Once upon a time
Like lock and key, I thought you were made for me But I was made for more Than what this world has to offer
Inside we are all vulnerable Deserving of kindness But God isn’t always so polite. A penchant for Throwing stones at your door My fingers appear as though they have suffered frostbite
Chewing on a plastic straw I thought that I had gone too far But then I noticed – I had not moved at all Weaving a new daydream Absorbing my most fragile insecurities And thinking they might be the reasons someone wonderful will fall in love with me
What would that be like? I thought I had it in another life When our spines reached the corners of the bedroom That we had painted the most ethereal blue I had ever intoxicated myself with, out of sheer hospitality For the fiber network of my musculoskeletal orchestration A girl in a sundress The middle of winter Taking my gloves off to text him back Frostbite Frostbite
Needless to say I buy one pack of Parliaments per day Just to never Just to never Just to never run out Because what if I Because what if I What if I were to run out Find you in the middle of the intersection Screaming for help on a bookshelf That you built yourself
Then, what would I do? Coat you in ethereal blue? I’d display all the facts that I contain in my porcelain doll frame, regarding the closest moon
Or find myself at home With nobody on the phone The concrete entering my residence like it’s testing my weightlessness
Paint me diamonds, buy me charcoal Unravel me on purpose With potential To be In a picture frame with me
I don’t want to put my cards all over the table Though I’m dying to show you what’s true How real this significance is My significant other
Sitting on my lily pad You know I’m the only one that can get you to relax Move in slow motion I’m heavenly reserved & I know you don’t do these things on purpose But the caffeine in this Earl Grey tea It’s making me nervous I know you don’t do it on purpose
Swaying with myself in my bedroom I can be violent if you turn the heat up No longer desperate to be enough I’ve got a sweetness concave within me A fruit I only bear to those that can hold it Tight
Pushing all my buttons Convincing myself I kind of love it Have I shown you what’s at the bottom of the sea? Underneath all the make-believe
I don’t want to have to ask if you missed me! I’m getting run over by the same train over and over again My eyes close when I drive & I don’t even mind Collect my cigarettes in an empty coke can Police on a motorcycle Firearms in my trunk No longer desperate to be enough I keep trying to make it to the bottom of the sea But something pulls me back above I want you to drown with me If you do Make sure I drown too
Don’t read into my words Don’t touch me softly, then make it hurt A one-way ticket to my favourite Chicago Transit Authority stop Where I am free to walk around I don’t need bells and whistles I need the fogginess to stop
A rose that blooms On repeat A rose that blooms On repeat A rose that blooms When I sleep A rose that blooms On repeat
I want you to drown with me When I get off my Lily pad
You know I stopped myself before I could love you But We broke apart And I can’t help but stare At your blank, sad face And the only thing sad about it Is that you’re not afraid to let me go You’re not afraid to let
I tried to wake up But I’m always on the wrong side of the bed We never got to have that night in the hotel We never got to have that heavenly first dance The first and the last pages don’t make me too sad It’s the way the world turns Your fingers latched on Not very tight Like a blouse that’s unloosened A foggy memory that never becomes clear
I’m trying to relive the skyscrapers and unraveling chaos Though all that comes to mind in abstract vision and delusion, Is you screaming in my direction Telling me to stop Telling me to stop Telling me to stop
What makes you so afraid To show love to an unloved person The way you play guitar It makes me so sad It makes me so sad Not for anything do you feel bad Like grey, fallen embers on a cold winter night Even though you’d say you’d never Be there for me Your sovereignty Your power
And I remember you Telling me to stop Telling me to stop Telling me to Telling me to stop
Feeling the things that only I do The distance that separates me from jagged, carbon you In ocean waves, we grasp at what feels familiar What’s underneath us will quench our thirst Yours, preferably Mine, isn’t regarded Unless it’s four in the afternoon & the sun is piercing your nerves Telling you that these antics are your last fatal curse I’m far removed To tell you the truth I do only the things the boldest among us do
I don’t wait until there’s nothing left to take In the distance between your brown eyes And these soft, fallen embers of Victorian blue Crawl back Crawl back Panic attack Mesh and in pieces Forgive me for grieving
All ends in love, and love has its reasons Come find me Come find me Come find me Come find me
It’s so unnerving Like an earthquake on purpose It’s so delectable Like you’ve lost your ability to reason
I’m always portrayed as the one who leaves the throne Gown is disheveled, porcelain skin intact Like an earthquake on purpose Telling me to stop
Feeling the things that only I do What has become of rage has given its way to you
This is a free verse poem about attachment and detachment – defeat on behalf of simplicity’s sake.
I didn’t expect myself to still feel like this And my mother laughs because it’s only been a few days But I feel like it’s dragging on It’s dragging on And we didn’t even come to the conclusion of what would become our song So what am I here to do Sitting in the corner of the modern, moss-green, vibrantly street-lit café, A damsel in despondency, A variation of your favourite four-course strings A broken-down parlor path with a shiny diamond entryway and glass slippers lining the blizzard-sinking ships, That match my cruelty My taste for rabid tongue The whispers I wouldn’t let you utter And the hesitation you’d be lucky to never have suffered
Portrait of Princess Tatyana Yusupova (1850) by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, oil on canvas
A chance for melancholia to clash with the force of nature To detract from a foreign film A lost, aching still An avalanche of surprise Beguiled by sheer imagination and phosphorescent icing
That smothers a kingdom like the holiest ghost Always bittersweet to the liking Made for sharp, pristine vengeance
Sans Titre (Untitled) 115 by Eliane L. Guerin, oil on canvas
In my own reserved portrait of solitude Gazing vibrantly at the majestic cars that drive by The classics, the tragic The ancient and recumbent Reoccurring in stunning ways I could not even think to properly illuminate in due time Typing Silently Wishing you were next to me Smiling The way you do The way you do So magnificent Eyes glimmering in concave and crimson, blue God, I was this close to being obsessed with you
I feel like A teenager An angry one A bitter fool Mad at myself because I brushed away the The fleeting thoughts of nah, he won’t like me if I say that Nah, he won’t like me if I wear that Nah
The Bath (1874) by Alfred Emile Leopold Stevens, oil on canvas
I’m moving in circles because I forgot how to dance I forgot how to feel alive I trip over my own words Everything is in disarray I thought you were going I thought you were going I thought you were going to make it work I thought you were I thought you were I thought you were going to make it work with me I thought you were I so thought you would have Made it work with me And that would be Meaningful Hopeful Spontaneously planned Crimson and clover all over Soft rubber bands
Now you’ve got me in a pit and you Hung up on me I threw my cellular device on the street I don’t want to talk to anybody Anybody at all Anybody at all Anybody at all Anybody at all
I’m not writing another poem about a boy that doesn’t have the strength to come Tell me it’s not working Stand there in your clandestine flesh Stand there, giving me a real piece of yourself Look at me with dandelions in my hair
Mending the Gown (early 20th century) by Adolphe Borie (1877-1934), oil on canvas, figurative artwork
Don’t say I’m too charming for you Tell me I’m too alarming for you Tell me I scare the living daylights out of you
And you’ve got other girls calling you Answer the phone in front of me Take the flowers out of my hair Push me down on the tar-stained sidewalk Bully me like you do on your bad days Get your way
That’s how I want you to leave me
Not like Not like Not like Not like Not like Not like Not like Not like
Open Air Interior Barcelona (1892) by Ramon Casos i Carbo, oil on canvas
