cant leave yet

I thought on Sunday about leaving this earthly space. bliss and serenity

would set into my bones with every recurring thought of 

“if this was over it would be over and all of the pain passed onto me would melt into the palms of others. the palms of those who have crushed me in their palms” but 

in the back of my mind my index finger was being held by the smallest hand 

she has my eyes and sly smile that I often find trouble in hiding

has a heart with enough space for everything breathing and everything that has ever dragged their feet so softly

on these grounds

just like myself.

–

one day I will have a child and she is going to need me and 

I can’t leave yet. she came to me to tell me she needs me, 

they always told me that I cannot predict the future but they don’t know me and they 

don’t know her

I will name her the name of a warrior and I will kiss her temples before she rests and during the early hours

I will love her in the way that I cannot wait to love myself, in the way that I cannot wait to love her

I often feel as though I do not need myself but she is waiting. 

no it will not be soon but she is waiting to need me and 

I need to be needed. I love her already

She came to me

I never got to say goodbye

tell me: when i was first born, did you hold my hand, let me wrap my tiny fingers with skin the same as yours around your hands- did you feel something, or did you feel nothing at all?

in my first moments, first days, did you kiss my forehead, did you see that my eyes would look exactly like yours

tell me or tell me that you knew this was coming.

–

the last time i saw you- the first time you were sober in six years

it made sense that it was raining out. 

tell me too, in those first moments, when i first opened my eyes, 

did you think i would be something to be proud of and if, if you did;

when you saw me last, were you content with who i have grown to be?

–

when any scent of alcohol fills the air, sits on the inside of my throats though I will never crave it, i find myself anywhere but because

alcohol smells like when i hugged you, when you said you loved me too at night, 

comforted my first heartbreak, sent me off into the world at fourteen, 

i cannot stomach when alcohol invades the air near me because it feels as unrequited love feels

sitting on my left shoulder and digging into my collarbones with claws of

unfulfilled wishes.

–

you, broken glasses, and slammed doors are the sickened symphony of my youth.

these sounds, these sounds leave me with weight- did i replace my youngest years with my oldest-

learning to raise my own being, and

am i proud of myself now?

–

you did not give me much, perhaps a mental illness and the same green brown eyes,

you did not give me much- you did not show me how to love and so perhaps ive never known how to

you did not give me much and I do not believe that i was more than born of you

but i do forgive you because when you left, 

you twisted my heartstrings and broke them and made them a golden trophy,

and with that goodbyes are so much 

so much more familiar,

easier now. they are as simple as waking up and falling asleep.

deserved love

They say we accept the love we think we think 

we deserve but i do not know what there is to say for myself when I do not love myself

I spend so many seconds passed staring at a mirror wishing I were something 

better and though my outer being is just okay, the inner stuff the good stuff and all of the gears and pieces- it 

is so far from where I wish it to be.

So we accept the love we think we deserve but 

I don’t think I deserve much at all- I only owe it and should not accept but a closed door in return 

I wander around my own mind consistently with stained shoes and hope for the best. 

We accept the love we think we deserve but

I have not ever asked anybody to take off their shoes before coming into my heart. 

I keep the windows locked and the shades closed and they’ll think I’m sheltering away from strong winds

simply accepting the love I think I deserve.

big city dreams

the music of my childhood was my mother’s raspy voice from yelling as much as her lungs would allow, and the sound

of the ceramic plates shattering against the tile floors.

it was her leaving for days or weeks and the sound of the door as it slammed and locked

it was talking to myself late at night and swearing i would leave as soon as i could

–

i can leave now but i am too afraid that i wouldnt come back

that the subway wind against my cheeks would feel to pure to ever turn around

that i would spend days

talking to myself late at night but i will not be talking to the same person

im too afraid that if i leave, i will leave myself here.

–

i dont love or like myself but i do not want to be anybody else

and while a rose by any other name may smell just as sweet

i see myself as not a rose

but simply as a girl whose head is too small for these shoulders and

these shoulders are too sore to carry on

–

somewhere new.

on the daily

i can feel my clothes on me and i can feel people staring

and it feels like salt on the tip of my tongue, i am not in pain but

living in this body sometimes is unbearable.

some nights i don’t sleep and some i do and the shell that i am in

it reacts the same to both

the shell that i am in feels so far from me, and from

knowing how to be calm.

–

on the daily

there are ten people in the coffee shop but it feels like there are ten thousand

when he kisses me it sometimes feels like i am being held against a wall

my knuckles are sore from making fists because i

am so afraid of what it outside my door.

–

the world and i owe nothing to each other simply because

i feel as though my feet are not meant for this dirt.

on the daily i only crave to be gentle to others because

each person i have met in my life deserves what i cannot give myself.

–

on the daily

ill breathe deeply when i feel as though i am peeling myself from

the floor

even when i’m halfway through my

on the daily.

falling.

the stars, lately have been so kind to me and to youand though we both have been haunted at how crossed they are,

perhaps they have been displaced.
i often lay my head in the space where your shoulder and chest meet,
and it is resting in a space where the heaviest parts of the back of my mind cannot touch.

–
i would never say that you’ve cured me, but
you’ve sat and have kissed my cheekbones when i was crying,

made sure i took my medications, 
no i would never say that anyone besides myself has made me get better but

you have been around while i have grown, which will always, unconditionally 

be why when i gaze at you, all is lost but a place of all love and you.
–
you have, undoubtedly, found all of the good pieces of you and i even in the times where

i refuse to move. you do not know all of me but you know how to love me

so well. all i have ever needed is never far away.

what they don’t teach you

i was taught that if it happened, it would be in an alley way somewhere dark

and i would be fighting. 

i was taught i would not know him and 

if i carried pepper spray that it would all be fine.

i was taught that it wouldn’t be me.

that it wouldn’t have to do with me. it was just something that they

had to teach. i was not taught that i would be fourteen.

i was not taught that i would not know how to fight. they do not teach you fighting words in sex-ed, they do not teach you how it will make you

cry every time you see yourself alone and naked for years to come.

i was taught that he would be scary and that i would not know him but i thought i loved him. 

he was not taught that ‘no’ does not mean ‘convince me’.

he was not taught that it was rape. to him, i was simply another notch on his bedpost. 

to me, he took from me the most valuable thing at a ripe fourteen.
dignity.

 

Cigarettes

I don’t smoke cigarettes, but the boy I love does and so my shirts always entrap the same smell that lingers behind his teeth

I walk around with a small piece of him each day.

He always walks with his shoulders back and eyes straightforward, two steps in front of everyone else, as if he is being called for

with a cigarette in between two fingers, lit or perhaps not.

He speaks like the words on his tongue are burning and he smiles like the world is so pure each day, and though the smell of cigarettes is sour and rough to me,

he loves so gently.

He knows so many things like the back of his hand and his mind is a maze that I am so elegantly lost in:

I know you like I know the backs of my hands, and you know me in the same

perhaps that is why it feels so pure when our fingers are intertwined.

 

 

Been a While

there are things that i remember about you, but i don’t remember most things about you. i remember that you introduced me to your parents on the first day that we kissed. i remember that you were quiet, quiet almost always and you always stood away from others. i remember that you were a lot like me. i was a lot like you.

you taught me how to make pancakes and which kinds of tea were the best. we bought matching shoes one day because we thought it would be funny but then i threw mine away because i didn’t think it was funny. i knit your mom a scarf for christmas and you spent more time talking to my dad than i did.

i don’t know why things ended but we both knew that it wouldn’t last. you were a piece of me and i was a piece of you and we were pieces of each other that only felt wrong. i don’t know if we actually ever loved each other. i sometimes wonder what it would have been like if we had.

i hope the way that she kisses you does not feel empty, because when we kissed there were no fireworks, no words to be said: when we kissed it never felt like home. i begged you to never touch me. i think it was the mental illness that dragged what we once had and dove our hands tied by our intertwined fingers into the lake but i don’t remember most things about you. i don’t remember most things about us.

i wonder if i will ever see you again and if i do, if it will sting. if it will burn my feet like my apartment floors after you left. i wonder if i will see you and it will feel like walking past a stranger. i wonder if you would even recognize me at all.

i’ve fallen in love. you have too. we never got a goodbye, but we’ve fallen in love- just not with each other. time is the only thing that will always be.

 

Poverty

my clothes smell like the cheapest cigarettes mom could

find at the gas station tonight

and there are holes in the bottoms of my shoes

they say home is where the heart is

but where is my heart-

when i do not have a home.

–

don’t tell me that there is a god:

why would he make my

hands without gloves in january

so frigid that they can not move

don’t tell me to pray

when all i can hope is that

mom is sober when i wake up

–

poverty is just a word with seven letters

until you cant afford a meal-

mom asked me to go away when i was

fourteen because

i was too much on the plate

poverty is just a word

until it is a feeling.