Long Brown Hair, Foolish Eyes

Today I am grieving. For a glimpse of a moment I felt the toes of my little self Pat the green deck Where water laps over and leaves my nails Shiny and sleek. I grieve the way my toes bent, The freedom I lost to bounce off callused rocks and Morph into spaces I wasn’t welcome. I see a picture of a panther on my phone.   My heart lifts and spirals into memories of wanting to be a…

Monet’s crisp bubbles of colour send me to a sleep I do not wake up from for a long time. There, I see familiar faces I’ve never met and sultry memories I’ve never known. Yet, all the while I know I am awake, parading down Times Squared in leggings and shoes I bought with university loans. Somehow these worlds collide and never meet, a battlefield with two dead generals and confused armies looking to becom…

Sunrise (a life in PTSD)

So which part of me will you kill? 

The part that whistles into blades of grass, 

Kisses mockingbirds, 

And sings to the boats on the stream? 

Is that so worth the shame of what has passed? 

Is that so forgotten in you? 

  No. I do not want to die yet. 

I wish to see the day my fingers touch the hairs of my child. 

I await the greyed locks that will twist around the aged lines on my face. 

My…

So what do you do?  

You write it out.

Each line a cathartic piece of the black night sky

Ripping through white pages,

Coated in heresy and mildew.

I feel myself rotting here amongst

These pages.

Time and age are as distant as those stars

And I am nothing but a

17 going on

60

Going on 4 –

You can’t have me at that age.

You can’t touch me because I’m not

There.

But my body consumes…

The extravagance of mountains clinging at my lips,

The taste of such beauty a poison I want to sip

Until the crush of fatality

Weighs on my bones.

Warm milk pouring into my tear ducts

And out through my toes that

Crunch through leaves and

Fall into the white patches on my grandma’s

Pathway.

Such aged perspectives grow like roots from my heart.

All the while I lay at the feet of the bridge

to hold on to

Some cryptic and gentle thoughts should not be written.

That nonsensical connection I feel with you,

the feeling we are, in that moment, sharing the same thought – of each other.

I understand something that I did not understand those years back.

Instead of sharing, I will keep your secret; I will kiss this precious moment

and hold onto the bit of you I still unconditionally have.

And it’s not for…

A hat caught in the crowd,

A whisper then a volume then a shriek.

She

She screamed

She screamed and she cried.

All the women starred;

Some men watched;

Some men walked away;

Some men tried to cover her mouth with a kerchief.

Some men listened.

All women listened, anticipated.

Women waited for the she

For the reason

For the punch

For the she in the voice. For the her. For them.

Their…

Dec 13, 2018 ; Recovery

It finally happened today.

Stepping off the bus, I take a look at the parking lot outside the cafe I showed you by my house. It’s a habit. I used to check for your ex’s car and now I check for yours.

And there it was. Blacked out everything. The sleek compact car narrowing at the hood. The headlights a mysterious and wicked shape like your own eyes.

I’ve spent months being afraid of this. Of the…

I’m waiting on the ash at the tip of the cigarette

To flake away.

  I was so many things.

I was a person.

  “I’m sorry.”

“That wasn’t okay.”

“I overreacted.”

“No… that wasn’t normal.”

“I know. Why are you still with me?”

  I asked for your help

When my heart fluttered to my mind

And I could no longer breathe.

  “I was just mad you didn’t ask for help.”

“Okay. I will next time. I’ll tell…

I thought you’d want to read my poetry

To learn about me:

My superficial thoughts and desires.

Yet all you had to learn from me

Was from that desire alone.

That I wanted you to know me.

I wanted you to love me.

I wanted you to so desperately pick up my broken pieces

And love me whole.

That’s what you learned,

Not from paper,

But from the way I screamed when you ran away from me.

And…

Yes,

I am a woman,

Which inherently means I overreact.

To undone dishes,

Smelly sheets,

And cold food.

  Yet,

As your woman,

I should have overreacted

To the hair band in your new car

That did not belong to me.

She shook hands with the men in ties

And her fingers shook over the corners of her papers.

Her hair was mostly done

Just as her trousers mostly fit.

She lived in the county but spent her days clacking on the cement

Of the city’s dance floor.

The lights, the shopping, the glamour

All something to stay awake for,

Even in the dazzling and dirty hours of the night.

Some of those nights spent…

Sand and Synthetic Cotton Fields

I heard your voice in the thunder.

I lay on my bones underneath

the faraway suns and moons

as they watched from above.

I heard the leaves bid me to sleep;

I heard the waves drown out your screams.

And though I stayed awake the night,

I felt a Woman hold me until morning,

Heard a Man tell me He loves me.

I watched as effervescent chili powder

Spatter the sky’s milky surface.

I witnessed…

The cobwebs are swallowing me whole today.

The fitted sheets with grey textile

Come loose on the bed and I’m knotted in them in the morning.

My foot is stuck in the polyester thread.

It is the morning

And the white light pounds through the window

And demands to be seen.

It looks beautiful

And I lay in the sheets and cry.

I will never say good morning to you again,

And I will never sleep…