Poem: Your honeycomb (you were pure)

Poem: Your honeycomb (you were pure)

Respect
My angel baby, my love for you
Your honeycomb, bittersweet elegance
Pink nail polish on the highest shelf
With you, I’m my best self
Rest assured I’m in good health
All for the commonwealth
I have a thousand secrets I’m refusing to tell
But if you captivate me enough, entrance me into a maybe, lure me into your consensual cave where we can reminisce about our funniest, most awful, of heartbreaks
For the moment’s sake
I’m crystal-made
I’m dissolving in tangents made up from aptitude
I’m L-Dopa converting to dopamine
Transfusing to you my sweet nectar of the gods (hey, I love how that collar looks on you)
Hey, I love how that sweater looks on you
And if I wore one just like it
Interlaced your arm with mine
Would we be simply divine?
Would we look intertwined?
Would your heart, at the end of the night, be mine?

I’m silly
I’m running away from you
In the whitest of the white lace and tulle
A skirt so pretty it makes boys hurt
I’m not a pacifist, I’m quite the ignorant jerk
I repel people like diamonds in tunnel vision
I’m sparkly and iridescent, but they say I’m pitch black
They don’t know me like that
Don’t know I can be precious
Don’t know I can be sweet
Hot and heavy, sharp on my feet
Lose myself in the summer heat
I find myself when I choose not to cheat
I’m nobody’s mistake but my own
Crescent moon devour me still
Hold me until I’m candlelit
On fire, rupture, rapture, hold me, capture
I’m quite the disaster
But if you were to look away…

You’d never
I’d beg you
Surrender your hopes and dreams to my castle of what could’ve been and what was once was that is no more
I found you in a cave, you were mine, I found you!
You didn’t behave on your own!
You had to be tamed!
Was it foolish of me to pick up where we left off?
You glanced at me, took a sip of whiskey and scoffed
I don’t like how you look with that cup in your hand
I’d rather find you at the DMV, Tolstoy’s narrative in your hand
You’re so good at being grand
And when I’ll be queen I’ll demand
To share this bittersweet, homely, wholehearted world with you
Never shelter you
Always unsettle you
Make you divide by two
Alongside me in front of Lake Michigan, that’s a dream too sweet for me to save in my neural space
You always said I had the most perfect, soft face
But you couldn’t keep up with my vapid pace

I’ll outrun you in marathons, I’ll sprint past you in daydreams
I went to five stores to find a wedding dress that I ended up being unhappy with
So we canceled our plans
Were unsure of where we could stand
See each other in impure reality or dissolve into volatile pieces of sand
I’ll take you by the hand
Push you into the ocean, make you suffer some more
Until you’re practically begging me to take you to shore
But I’m not done yet, I haven’t even gotten to the gore
When you were in love with me, you were pure
When you were in love with me, you were pure
When you were in love with me, you were pure
When you were in love with me, you were pure

Fly me to Paris, I’ll take you on a tour
Of the rose gardens, I wanted to become your bride in
Of wife and of man
I’m laying in the sand
Drew a heart in the dirt, cobblestone made me hurt
You wouldn’t say a word

When you were in love with me, you were pure
When you were in love with me, you were pure
When you were in love with me, you were pure
When you were in love with me, you were pure

Now nothing I wear makes me pretty
I’m shaking, trembling, and fidgety
This is what the anxiety does to me

You were
Stained black and I couldn’t
Differentiate up from down
You closed in on me like atmospheric surround sound
And when you asked what I wanted to do, I didn’t lie, I said I wish I would drown

You used to tell me I was prettiest in the bathtub.

Poem: She could’ve been

Cocaine kisses, send me off the edge into the abstract obscurity of my conception of time, space, life, youth, vigor, hate, and sour green apples

Cradle me
I’m an angel
Lying in a soft heaven encapsulated by aquamarine lullabies and the cries of a thousand little shadows
So hazy
Pretty baby
Little lady
Spiraling in clusters of neural cell bodies that extend axons down to their terminal buttons
I recognized her voice coming from outside my window
But she wasn’t talking to me
She wasn’t talking to me

Tiny clusters of dazzling diamonds
What, in your life, is priceless? Conceptually?
Sensually?
Horizontally?
I am a nicotinic receptor, please don’t bother me while I’m at work
It’s a little complicated, but I’m going to keep on going
It’s all I need to do – be brave, be strong, endure, go on
Lying on my pink plush bed staring at the ceiling fan
Circling and circling and circling and circling
Enzymes and substrates and catecholamines
I do my best work when I can’t be seen

Starships and amphetamines

God, I love your energy
It soothes me
Invigorates me
Calms me
Quiets me
Loves me

Cocaine causes your brain to sit in a bath of dopamine
I like to pour lavender-infused Epsom salts into the warm water and add bubbles because I’m a child at heart
And I’m trying to hold on and not break my own heart
But it’s hard
It’s so hard
I don’t know where to start

And you’re so far

You’re so far (we could have been as deep as the oceans)
And I think I’m okay
The mental image that I’ve created of you is slowly fading, and I’m returning to the reality, the vacancy
Encouraging normalcy
Doing pirouettes in my living room to French classical music
Tranquil lullabies
Cheap thrills
Hundred dollar bills
Poison in your pocket for the next martyr you’ll kill

Sit down at your desk, put your chin to your chest
Stretch your neck
Give feedback to the people you like in your life
Tell them how you’re doing
Ask them how they are
I’m overdosing in the bathtub from all this dreamy black tar
I’m racing a stranger 120 miles per hour in my fucked up classic car
They’ll say, she could’ve been a star

They’ll say, she could’ve been

Poem: The ones I love die

I’m getting better at glamorizing myself
I like my safety pins and textbooks neat on the shelf
Can I have your permission to be ambivalent
About my whereabouts?
Don’t ask me why
Don’t ask me why
Don’t tell me not to cry
Don’t tell me not to cry
If God is mean and bad, then that makes sense
Why does he let the ones I love die
Why does he let the ones I love die
Don’t tell me why

Don’t ask me why
Don’t ask me why
Don’t tell me not to cry
Don’t tell me not to cry

Well, I met with your father at the café
We talked about you, pretty much the entire day
He said how you’ll have it is how you’ll have your own way
I’m too left
I’m too left
Toughen up
Toughen up
Decay is pressed petals and sorrow intertwined within one membrane
The words just spill onto the pages
I’m not even thinking as I’m writing, maybe

Collapse onto me, I swear to god, I’ll let you love me
Don’t suck your thumb at me
Roses and thorns, yeah, roses and thorns
Roses and thorns, yeah, roses and thorns
I like the way you cross your eyes
Yeah, I only really hang out with guys
Since my best girl friend hung herself out to dry

I’m not even thinking as I’m writing, maybe
The words just spill onto the pages
The words just spill onto the pages
The words just spill onto the pages
The words just spill onto the pages

Poem: A hundred drops per second

When I met you, you hated yourself
Like you were afraid of yourself
As the storms went on,
You found it to be best to be by yourself
And there,
I was,
Watching a man crumble in front of my very timid but sparkling eyes
It was no surprise
You liked salt wounds and touching my inner thighs
But I –
I bask when I wake with the sunrise
And you –
You look down on me for loving everything until it dies
You hate the earth
And you wonder why
It doesn’t pity you back

I moved out, clean new apartment
Living with a friend
I’m working on my craft
No longer at my wit’s end
Looking forward to all the money I’ll spend
Me?
And you?
Will we ever make amends?

I care no longer
I wouldn’t bother
Oh, your poor father
He knows what’s in the water

I care no longer
I wouldn’t bother
Oh, your poor father
He knows what’s in the water

If I were to swim
To you
To build a new continent
I’d turn around
Find a river raft
You think I’m strange and daft
Never read any of my first drafts
Fell out of love just like that

Now you –
Hopefully you’ll remember the words I’ve said
But it no longer matters to me
Whether you’re alive or dead
Instead

Don’t lose your head
It’s not worth it
We were perfect
But we weren’t
And I’m gasping
For thin air like –

A hundred drops per second

©️ Elle Silvestrov

Poem: Heroin dream (tears)

You’re even sweeter than when I met you
What a bloody surprise
You’ve become my moonbeam
My perfect sunrise

You tell me secrets & I keep them
‘Cause I’m loyal like that
I’ve always got your back
Be right there on my bike at the drop of a hat
Haven’t you always wanted a girl like that?

I’m a skeptic of your likeness
You got me carried away
I’m dressing all fancy
Do you like me this way?
Will all the nice jewels get you to stay?
Crisp marmalade
Sunshine in the east
You made me unafraid
You made me so afraid, of what’s to come
And when I daydream before falling asleep
You’re the only one

And you’re reading this right now
Don’t even know it’s about you
Part of that makes me smile, part of that turns me blue
We’re careless on Tuesdays, that’s just what we do
Hit a gram or two
You trace my necklace with your fingertips
Kiss my little shoulder softly with your lips
Got me hung up on this

The drugs won’t work pretty soon, and we’ll fade out
You look so blank like you don’t know what I’m talking about
And then what happens when our families figure it out?

I was spoiled when I first met you, that I got to see your gorgeous face
And we were moving so fast – a dangerous, volatile pace
I wish you well forever
Always in your sweater
Rock me to sleep in this heroin dream

You’re even sweeter than when I met you
You’ve become my moonbeam
My perfect sunrise
And when I think about it
All I do is cry

And when I think about it
All I do is cry