“A Collection of Love Poems In No Particular Order About Boys I Hate Now In No Particular Order”

2014/2015/2016

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#1

I was ready to feel alive again and

instead, he made me feel still. Not sedate

but tranquil. He smelled of cologne,

cigarettes & slight nerves. It

was intoxicating.

he plucked grass out of my hair.

quietly, he made me feel his care.

“How did you sleep?”

We left the language barrier up like

a soft linen curtain. The language

of eyes, hands & breath sufficed.

We sat in silence. 13 mins. The bus was late.

Thank god. I couldn’t let go.

He was going to.

But it wasn’t right.

So he got on.

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#2

He is white, so I paint myself black.

He wears a halo,

but I’ve just noticed

that he wears it crooked.

So I step reluctantly

into the devil’s costume

fumbling with the zipper.

I question where my

masquerade ends.

His ideals are beautiful and so with

great sadness I fear him.

I think he’s the good one. So if

I can make him leave

I know all the rest will.

A scared love half-acknowledged,

Eyes and mouth unrequited,

An extra rib given makes me

all but his woman.

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#3

They took a lot of things from me, but most of those things I don’t miss.

What’s scarier is that

they robbed me in the dark

So now I’m still - I try to figure out what I have lost.

It makes me feel self-righteous.

My finger and my person itch

I want to take things from

others. Just in case they

are missing

“Sticky fingers.”

I never kept a list of the

things

I had

So now my vacancy has no name.

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#4

I no longer feel the painful need

for him that caused the implosion of

my mind

but I still catch glimpses of the lust

in the visions that elicit palpable &  frantic breaths

& sometimes I forget

to breathe altogether.

I fucking hate lustful nostalgia.

I miss your smooth, dark skin.

The way it radiated warmth.

I miss the way your presence made me

shake with desire, your touch was

ecstasy in the way you transmitted

your essence into mine.

I miss your hands, they held me & my

world. rough & wise they knew of hard

times and subtle pleasures.

I miss the indomitable electricity

between us. It defied attraction. It

was magnetism, despite everything our

bodies seemed to meld into each other

sometimes effortlessly and sometimes

we crashed, our rough edges & unspoken

words transmitted to each other

in jarring & pleasureably violent strokes.

We felt each other’s pain even though

we could not speak of it.

I miss the sensation, smells, sounds

& tastes that transport me to memories

of you.

I miss warm and humid summer nights

that smelled of freedom & possibilities

the evoking words word of J.Cole & the

bass i felt through & through my bronze skin that

met the black leather backseat of your

car in a sticky & sweaty civil war of sex. I miss

feeling the sensation of care & corruption as your

rough & experienced hands searched my virgin skin. I don’t

even remember us as two people; we had were two faces

that searched the other’s

for answers to questions we knew

neither had.

We were a tangle of limbs. Your arms & fingers

lost in my hair; my legs rested on your shoulders;

my toes clad in cracked red nail polish pointed

towards bright summer

stars that seemed to shine through the

upholstered roof of your car.

I really fucking miss you. I don’t love you anymore,

but the lust is still there.

And that’s always the beginning.

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#5

I have a self-loathing

vagina.

Whata cunt.

Pleased by: ignorant dick.

This shit sucks.

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#6

Your smiling eyes, my head filled with war

summer flowed, days of endless seams, yet when

tired feet and hearts were swept out we swore.

Consumed, time sped, our now became then.

 

Flashing teeth, and yet your eyes revealed in you

Deep secrets hidden down within the deep

depths of your boy, that hold a man of new

I breathed in so many nights, dare I peep

 

Those inner thoughts you dare not share and those

Which weave our feelings deep, a choice but which,

mouth misshapen, I spat empty and hollow prose

my warm veins of silver bound to make you rich.

Cold touch so conducive, you righted me wrong

An acre of love, you made me feel, so cold, yet strong.

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#7

“I’m sorry” doesn’t seem like the right thing to say anymore.

I think “my condolences” is more fitting.

Ego death walks upright.

My little death is no more.

And the death of my person walks briskly, shaking hands as she goes

She places thorns in sweet flesh of palms.

My world fits in my mouth, and my mouth no longer tastes blood.

I used to rip scabs off my limbs,

And press my lips to skin,

Copper currency in my veins,

So lurid, I acquired a taste for myself

And my own brokenness.

I soon learned that my love hurt.

Passion was war, and if there wasn’t blood between both sets of lips

Then it probably wasn’t real.

Loves lost, I learned how to exact pain on myself.

I was 6 when I sewed my skin.

I sent the needle through, not patching myself but creating more holes.

At 16 I sat on the plush carpet and dejected and low eyed I stared at the 200 lithium pills on my right and the scissors on my left. I chose scissors

I didn’t want to die

But had words, they just happened to be lost in translation on my skin.

I’m rich.

The warm silver of my veins are bound to make you rich too,

But I gave away so much

Hoping Karma saw my open palms, no longer bearing thorns

But small pieces of my want.

Empty handed my only currencies were the ones given to me by my

womanhood

I directed them to consume me like Christ.

Only asking that they resurrect me in return.

•••••••••••••••••••

I choked a lot of times on the word “love” and I wonder if I hadn’t

Maybe I would know it means now.

Last night I drank until I tasted the rejection in my throat.

I kept thinking about the roses on the ground and my fist grew tight around the cup.

I threw the pong ball again,

My miss became another excuse.

Deciding I was ready to leave the day behind I told him I was tired.

His eyes glinted and I looked to the ground.

A moment like so many others that a girl knows that she must exchange her thighs for a bed.

He pretended like he wasn’t after one thing. Deep words and philosophies

Hung from low eyes and hungry hands

I could see the tension in forearms that purposed to make me small.

It look less than five minutes for him to forget I was a hurt girl.

He tried to do all the things you do.

But his motivation was not the little moans that loose from my lips so easily with you.

He was impatient and his hard body writhed over mine.

Cutting me smaller and smaller with every stroke.

Reducing me to a doubt.

Every time time he hit me I was jarred from my fantasy of you.

I saw your green eyes turn brown and I closed my eyes tighter willing them back.

I concentrated on the dark outline of the ceiling fan wondering

how many revolutions does it take to feel a breeze.

How many revolutions must I make before I realize that the best love,

And the worst heartbreak are no longer assuaged by killing my consciousness.

I slept with my body against the wall, wishing it was the door.

I thought maybe I didn’t feel anything because I was drunk.

But when he soberly climbed into me in the morning I knew that something was wrong.

In a sick twist of time he finished at the same time you texted me.

I felt the mattress vibrate and suddenly I remembered

What the three revolving hearts next to your name meant. I cried quiet tears and looked again at a stationary ceiling fan.

I’m having a really hard time writing this, ——– . The whole thing seems fictitious.

I sat in his shower for an hour, watching water and him spiral down the drain, I wanted to go with it.

I responded to your text: “I’m sorry”

What does one say to a dream like that?

I didn’t feel guilty because I know I didn’t do it to hurt you. I didn’t feel ashamed because I knew I didn’t owe you anything. I didn’t feel happy because I’d realized I’d failed at replacing the way you felt

in me, on me, for me.

I don’t know if I can say I love you because to be honest,

I don’t really know what that means.

My love usually hurts and you don’t hurt me the way they do, in small ways yes, but

I don’t bleed when I’m with you.

You are nothing like anyone I’ve been with. I’ve never said this but

You

   Fall

       Short

In almost every way compared to lovers of my past.

And yet, I still want to swallow you.

Preserve you, protect you inside me.

Never have I spent two days writing poems about boys who left me with roses in my hands.

So I don’t know what the fuck you are, but I’m trying to figure it out.

••••••••••••••••••••

Last night I told you of my futile attempt at replacing you.

I knew you were a man of logic

And with logic as your savior,

And pride as his help

I knew you would say you

couldn’t

want me back.

And I think I became okay with that.

I know there was hurt in your words and I’m deeply sorry for that.

I also knew,

That you could’ve said worse

And so maybe there’s a small modicum of want

still in you,

To see me whole, and breathing warmly and sweetly in the small of your collarbone.

Because I can’t tell you what I’d give up to have that back.

I feel like you think you need to be strong. You called me to help me from a distance,

But in your voice I swore I heard: the

The night when I told you I had been cracked and you told me you didn’t care,

You thought I was strong

And beautiful at that.

I’m not really sure if this is about willpower, to stay

Or to leave and not look back.

But know that I don’t think you’re weak

Or strong

If you decide to come back.

Or if you keep walking away

…I know you glance back over your shoulders and that’s fine too.

I didn’t write these words to bring you back to me.

I’m not justifying what I did.

And I don’t think an apology is appropriate.

Because I am free, but I still feel tangled in strings of your care.

But i just wanted to let you know how you made me feel,

In words that I didn’t have before.

It is hard to write poems about someone who doesn’t see in the same colors as you.

But I know I’m willing to try. Knowing my words may never reap a reward that I can hold

Without thorns in my hands.

•••••••••••••

I fell asleep last night

thinking about how dapper you looked

on ice skates.

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FIN.

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​

“Motion” - July 4th, 2015 

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It’s that time of year again. My overwhelming emotion of stillness gives away to the

so strange and yet so familiar feeling I know in the dictionary as lust.

But it’s not lust of the physical sense.

I do not need a person. But once again

I have an appetite for some form of emotional stimuli.

Imagine the sensation of your palm - it pushes slowly

and steadily upwards. Traversing

from its origin above the navel and

forcing its way upward with grace. Through

the crease in my stomach it moves, pushing

my ribs apart with slight forgiveness.  It ends at my collarbone,

pressing firmly, daring my ribs my lungs and bated breath.

I feel a cylindrical vacancy in me.

I’m beginning to refer to it as my axis. How can one spin without a center?

The theory of self known as “spinning”

becomes the self-evident theory of “rolling” - a motion

much more unpredictable than that of spinning. The

motion is random, sometimes violent,

the pressure of the ground pushing back - resulting in the

depression of parts unexpected.

I’m still figuring how to respond to this feeling.

I fed it last time, entertaining the thought

of emotional hunger. As hunger goes,

It is cyclical.

So now I’m still. There is a great need to

do something,

but I proceed with answering myself with

much more apprehension.

How do you handle a beast

when you have already given it

an arm & a leg?

 

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