#postapoem

my first attempt at a pantoum...

Jesus said love your enemy so I am trying to love myself. Phobia ridden and nail bitten, I've been working on my independent woman. But independence has a mean girl mentality. Independence likes to fuck your boyfriend, leave you at the bar, forget your birthday. She's always reminding you that you're on your own. Yesterday I cleaned the kitchen, Put away my laundry, Called my mom, I took an hour long shower to feel like I was under the ocean. Did you know that fish don't have any feelings? I want to be dinner to a whale. Drowning in the deep of his soulless belly. In the silence I can forget the way that old song goes, forget how many pillows you have on your bed, forget how the world can be so hard without your softness. I'd like to look at the inside of your eyelids. I'd like to throw stones in that deep of a pond. Watch the way the water ripples, study how it laps the shore. I'd like to pick up a seashell from those banks, put it on my bedside table, listen to it when I want to remember. You are so genuine, Or Genuinely distracted, Or Insecurely ingenuous. How can I expect someone who doesn't care about anything to care about me? Cold shoulder me harder on this hot summer night. I like the way you do inconsistency. I hate to admit that I love to submit, I always remember when you forget. Look, I remembered how much you like the color red. Here, check out my insides, they're your favorite color. I think I have stars dotting my psyche. I think I have glitter clogging up my soul. I can't separate the way things could be and the way things are. I'm choking on idealism. I never told my mom when I found her tendencies in my makeup bag. I never told my dad when I found his anger in my back pocket. Some parents don't want to see themselves in their children. Some parents didn't ask to be parents. Some parents didn't even ask to be born. It is not easy being the product of extreme sadness, a cacophonous cocktail of crying for help. I've learned everything from my parents, including how to love. Insecurity was an epidemic in my household. Germs named hidden intentions climbed the walls, got into my head, underneath my fingernails. Maybe that’s why I always wash my hands before I touch you. I wonder how many times you’ve held the knife, how many times you've thought about ending your life, I wonder if your childhood was worse than mine, or if my head on your chest feels heavy or light. I made a Venn diagram of everything that has made me laugh, and everything that has made me cry, and your face was the center. I cut it out and made it into a dart board. Named each dart as I threw them at your face, confusion, anxiety, loneliness. My independent woman falters in your wake. Insecurity in love is the death of everything stable, everything sacred, and soft. My hands were peach fuzz. My mouth was the ripe fruit. You were a hungry tongue. We were a softness that made pillows look rough and tumble, this was a softness that had to be smashed--- Before my mouth over ripened, before my hands became wrinkled and moldy, before your tongue lost taste for me.

Hey y’all! I have a new poem that I’m about to post. Feedback would be seriously appreciated, in my inbox or in a response to the post. Thanks in advance. 

these days

Your hands were guns and you never put the safety on. You fisted your armada in my hair, tightened. Released, discharged. You killed me that night. My grave is in a field of wild flowers. I wrote us an elegy on the petals. Picked them one by one. Lit them on fire. Put the ash in my mouth. Kissed you right in the face. Left a black pair of lips on your forehead, to match my exit wound.

don’t talk 
 don’t twist 
 don’t twerk at me like that with your lips all open
 your arms all open 
 with your body all under your clothes like that 
… 
don’t look at me unless you can answer this question: 
what are you seeing that isn’t there?
 is it sharp wit? whip cream coolness? jelly bean warmth? 
the right kind of softness?
 …
 I’ve always been the wrong level of excited, 
 the worst level of frizzy, the rusty undertones in the perfect shade of lackluster.
 are you lacking lust, boy?
 …
 don’t talk
 your voice might sound like my self respect, 
 the sound might carry out the door 
my friends might hear me losing myself again they might try to stop me 
…
 what good is making sense when you’re looking at me so ordinary?
confession: 
I look at you in rainbows.
 sorry if that freaks you out, 
 it freaks me out too.
 ... don’t smirk, lurk,
 don’t return. 
you don’t even have shadows to hide in,
 you left them all in my heart, 
do you want them back?
 can I kiss them back into you? ... boy, I’ve seen this movie before 
go ahead, ruin the ending for me