poetry makes nothing happen

[alannadp]

It is morning in this burned body. I set the walls on fire half a day ago but they continue to remake themselves while I sleep.  This body is resurrection, no paradise This body is phoenix, ashes of its predecessors This body won't die

[alannadp]

Last night I repeated that I loved you while you had a panic attack in my arms. You cried into my chest and I could only repeat "I’m here, I love you" until I felt you breathe again.

[alannadp]

I mistook you for someone else just as you mistook me for Her; bent at all the right angles our silhouettes moved in just the same way.

[alannadp]

Fingers curl around your shirt, dig into your back, assure me that you are not an illusion.  As I twist myself into abstraction you give me shape, but you don’t know how I am supposed to look.

[alannadp]

I wanted to tell you that I’m no longer afraid of the movement of your chest; Rises and falls repetitive whispers of the fragile work of veins that promise to keep you alive But I still hold my breath between every heartbeat

[alannadp]

Look alive. You are a woman. You are still searching for your own body. You are a canvas to the boy who will tell you he falls in love with broken things. You are braille to the man whose hands will trace you as if you hold simpler lines beneath your skin. I am seeing less and less of you.

[alannadp]

I dreamt of disintegration. I dreamt of a body dissolved into salt water. I dreamt of becoming the sea. You say I have such an expressive face and I wonder if you could see the ocean when I pulled away from you.

[alannadp]

I bent my head in prayer only to ask for a God I could relate to. I still have never heard Their voice but I’ve heard your unsteady breath  on days when I prayed to disappear into eternity. I haven’t prayed to God in years, but there were nights I prayed to you.

church in midnight tones

[alannadp]

that morning i woke up in tangled tides of bedsheets limbs and lips and collarbones a year of fumbling words in the dark we learned to hear i love you’s in whispers of thank you i’m sorry the morning I woke up in a hospital bed they told me you waited for hours in the lobby i learned to hear i love you’s in silent hours spent on trains and crumpled notes stuffed in the pockets of my jeans this morning I woke up a thousand miles away from you afraid that I’m exactly what you want to be afraid of.

you said you fall in love with broken things

[alannadp]

he called me pretty like it mattered, mistook subject for object to prove to me that I was wanted. the thoughts come and go so quickly now I cannot catch them, just watch as they blur together. this is girlhood (and it will kill you)

girlhood

[alannadp]

As a young girl, a sickness starts to eat its way through your body. The doctors are the first ones to teach you that your body is not your own. You are never given the chance to learn it from plastic dolls decapitated in the search for beauty, from squeamish boys and proms and white wedding dresses or to one day realize you are too big for your skin. There is nothing left to say of you.

We Do Not Play On Graves