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
a free verse poem about finding stability & self-acceptance
I know That things won’t work out as planned I know that Because my mother taught me how to be a man But there are Parts of me that won’t let someone hold my hand Because I Because I Find graveyards appealing Harsh winter thunderstorms healing And the chaos within you is quite often revealing Of the doom and dismay your surroundings convey The filth The agony The dreams others built for you become destroyed I’m my own person
But when I drive home at night I don’t feel alone I just know I am
It was cold in Chicago And I wanted to lay down In the snow My frail body Seldom appears melancholy Singing you songs, breathlessly, to you in your sleep Though my voice is never the right pitch Maybe that’s why I wait Until you hit your steady dream state An abyss of perpetual ignorance to moral obligations
The impatience Is testing me Like a ticking clock Telling me I Haven’t painted The sky quite right Haven’t gotten the stars To my audience’s delight And I think I might combust From the tainted, porcelain figure I often wish to set on fire Because what burns Feels so warm In winter
It’s almost February The anniversary of A thousand slumbers A rainfall that struck me like Lightning on the fast lane on the highway Swerving between cars with my eyes closed Thinking I’m oh – I’m just so composed But me, parchment paper thick, practically comatose Wouldn’t keep anyone up at night When you haven’t Made a name For yourself And nobody Gets the intonation In your full name quite right Maybe it’s not The right time To say
That what burns feels so warm In winter My god The shades of blue How I’d devour the skyline Like an arsonist, I fade to grey Along with the trembling cityscape
I encapsulate all the seasons & am easily forgotten
I only hope to properly portray The vacancy light in this hotel I occupy
Me, Against the wall Cold, doll-like, confused Fingertips Painted the lightest shade of pink that the nail salon could offer me If only, I could be elegant I could like parts of myself that others don’t I could live my life like My father envisioned
When he said to me
That I was born In the perfect season For a girl who prolongs Finding a reason To burn this place down to the ground
Hollow Cave Where my old journals remain Where ex-boyfriends mispronounce my last name They never remember the best parts of you They never really knew How to get through How your eyes turn dark green when your favourite song comes on Or when the colour temperature is five thousand Kelvin and I feel ashamed That I woke up to find Myself Not in embers But filling a body With wholeness that only
Real self-acceptance could develop and create
Something permanent Is never Found
I’m no good with directions but I don’t believe I’m lost I’m exactly On my own two feet Waiting To leave a message after the beep
But I hang up, because I remember They can’t pronounce my last name The intonation Is weak And I Am so Much farther than I thought I would be At this time of my life Are you, at all, surprised?
When I look At the cars Passing me by On the highway, I wonder If they’re going Somewhere warm and inviting
I don’t know why That To me Feels so terribly frightening
Free verse love poem: Speaking volumes (white florals)
I’m in the pool, with your gentle gaze moving toward the horizon Smooth riverbeds, crashing yet Solemn Tender in their collapsing wake My sovereign ways trap you like hurricanes Find slumber in the rectitude of my rendition of a classic painting of a Prince attending to a young queen Dismayed at her place, though in a quiet peace, That glances violently towards a moral upbringing A softness I couldn’t portray
The Dressing of the Favorite (1857), oil on canvas, by Henri Pierre Picou (French, 1824-1895)
A sea-foam fog dynasty I swore was mine I told you the truth It mattered to me I found thoughts in my mind that I couldn’t hold back, entirely Though I did my best, To provide you with rest My satin sheath, vibrant with scarlet cardinal fibers The delicate breeze, like rapture Golden but never, truth be told, reflecting lightning that makes marks in the sky A tribute to no one Is every structure soon to fall down? The bolts unfastened, my lace dress & ultramarine form A silhouette only God could have created A boldness that scares away anyone who isn’t Strong enough To hold a woman in his arms and Not want to change her
The light pink August calendar I have on my contemporary glass tabletop That forgot the date when we Began things Paved was our course with giving looks at each other like we’re in a vintage film A theatre for just the two of us Hopeful dedication Watching our past conversations and having new conversations about those from before We don’t run out of things to talk about But when you find me watching the cars on the road pass by us, viciously, Counting the trucks Taking note of their model and make You see something in me that I could not tell you Not because I can’t find the right words I always find the right words
Along the Siene, Winter (1887) by Frederick Childe Hassam (American impressionist painter, 1859-1935)
I don’t know what you know And I don’t know if you know me But when your gaze becomes increasingly familiar, I cascade into a Reflection interrupted by the silliest words you stream together A childlike ambiance, golden in accuracy Crisp like a wave’s current Interjected with passing a cigarette lighter Getting higher From rays of the subtle light of day, Muted only in temperament Dulcet on the edges I told you I was yours I meant it, of course
Le Baiser (The Kiss) (commissioned by the French state in 1888, carved between 1888-98) by Auguste Rodin (French sculptor, 1840-1917)
We stop at the gas station; you run in to the corner store; you bring me honey green tea For your girl (that is a friend) Patient and kind A dove’s brisk white feathers Softer than mankind Rougher than a woman’s fingertips Comfortable in the chaos Surrendering to a time when you could count the green specks in my eyes And smell my white floral perfume
It seems as of now we have moved on to the Heavens Where you call me Venus And I mistake you for someone I’ve never known before An oceanic climate to the boulders we create When we feel inclined to say Why do I like you so much? Why do I like when you’re rough? I do still find, thinking to myself, whether I’m good enough But when the porch light comes on, I move the thought along To the binder where I keep my disarrayed opinions Resolving to find Some water to allow My throat to stop tightening when I get up during the night Patience, my ever-present accomplishment, finds its way to you Presenting an elegance you couldn’t get from anyone else
Improvisation (1899) by Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935), oil on canvas
I find myself in spaces When you are absent Distress being transient Because your face is
A discernment I couldn’t get from anyone else
The Aleutian mountains and the disintegrating cliffs Couldn’t mask the foundation I thought we’d bring Resolving to find Some water to allow
My throat to stop closing when I sleep at night I wonder if styrofoam composure could fail to observe my fright To weave in serenity in light shades of pink,
On days like today, I’m unsure how to drink Come, lay in bed
A love poem about admiration & being interpreted as an authentic rendition.
A chamber orchestra to tell you that I liked you in that grey t-shirt Where stillness isn’t illness & former wounds don’t hurt Moving my bed for me Minding the carefully close-cut angles Sweet diamond necklace for Your baby girl Soft as a feather Lie here forever Absorb the crisp meadow fog that bestows upon us In our transient youth We carry inherent truth Teardrops like vessels that transmit to the azure My ivory-white dress Hair is a mess Porcelain flesh
Find me in your wake
We drift like sovereign kingdoms unheard of I don’t know your middle name And this playground is made for the game We play where you hold me when it’s dark outside And the streetlights have yet to become undone Every weekday I rise before the sun Make you early morning toast Vegan butter for my lover You make me laugh in ways nobody ever has And you’re so good at that Turning my eyes lilac
Eyelashes painted tar pitch black Tainted with dismay, but The softest, quietest features make up your Sweeping shoulders A worn man with a contractor’s tan That moves like sunbeams across flourishing streams Finding meaning Hope is so fleeting But like windmills, we find a day’s work ahead And you crawl in bed Influenced by times I had said, I would be here to calm your nerves Patient and kind, like a little bird I’ll be so warm, nothing has to hurt
I set a little trap; in it, I gathered dewdrops Fragrances from the heavens Get me home by eleven Lay on your truck bed and I tell you I’m scared The future felt obsolete but, When our gaze meets I find you in a pocket of porcelain teeth Gnawing at the frostbite The howling of the mariner’s night You rearrange your textbooks and I, light as a pinion Slip out of the way and I want you to stay In your grey t-shirt so I can admire The fibers that overlay your hardened shoulders Something inside me no longer unnerving The weight of the earth no longer a burden You’d go mad from the chaos in my sheath
A smoothness to my skin that absolves sins The way I’m lighthearted, like no one ever departed Leaving me to stand in the snow that is falling And it is now that I think I am stalling From telling you, I see Amber rays underneath your eyelids In the near distance, a gathering of kids Laughing like God allowed them to celebrate We’ve got our entire lives to make what’s never been made Your swarm of avalanches The dark-cornered branches This is my stop; I’m home now and In mint julep transience and snowy ambiance I’ve somehow arrived in your department The flowers in the vase in the center of my apartment The things that make me smile before I go to lock it
Behind me to turn to you and We drove through Stars and Stripes Detonating furiously like January ice We slipped and fell in front of a chamber orchestra A noise I can only recollect when you object To me, choosing a spot in the shade,
You want the sun’s rays to cast their marvel on my figurine, my sugared marmalade Vast open skies Graceful, feminine thighs I’m fair-skinned, I know, but your words go to show You want to have me in the best possible light Get the green in my patient & reserved eyes, just right Note the ash blonde strands that are tied with a ribbon Falling slightly on my face, Terrible thing to waste Being at the right time at the right age
When you are near I don’t have to fear That I will be seen differently than I am composed
It’s gentle velvet days and nights like those That I don’t mind you being so close In your charcoal-grey, woven-cotton t-shirt
To see me as delicately as I am composed It’s silk & satin days and nights like those That I just love you being so close
We’re sitting down at a soft-lit diner You’re asking about my old man, the coal miner I think of soft petals when I see you
Your grey truck is parked out front There’s flowers in my hair and flowers in my hands The only arguments we have are about who are the best bands And I always win I always win
You listen to the things I say, like they’re important And your gorgeous pale skin is coming to focus I’m not sure when I want to press the shutter Because I just love looking at you like this Ambivalent Pink kiss Collagen lips I love looking at you like this
This is about the time that I begin to get paranoid But, no My gaze is on you The sky interrupts me into pieces I have nothing to be guilty about I think I’ve got it figured out
I’m madly in heaven; the ocean is crisp The sea makes me forget about the bitter drip Your eyes are magnified
Ambivalent Pink kiss Collagen lips I love looking at you like this
I found myself without inspiration So I didn’t write for weeks I think you know I think you know If I took your hand, where I would lead you to
I have nothing to be guilty about This time around This time around I’m running away from you on the playground I’m running away from you on the playground
Your voice is my new favourite sound I say to you Speak loud
This time around This time around I’m running away from you on the playground Your voice is my new favourite sound Your voice is my new favourite sound
The ocean is crisp I love looking at you like this
