bree

27•poet https://substack.com/@bansheebeez?r=4ko44w&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile

[bansheebeez]

[bansheebeez]

hard poem to write. some of my better work i think.

[bansheebeez]

this is what I love about poetry. i can’t stop reading my own poem over and over again because it’s an understanding and transformation of some very complex emotions. it’s a transformation of my own grief and heartache. I have captured it! like a firefly in a glass jar, it blinks back at me.

[paper-wounds]

[bansheebeez]

I keep on bringing things back from

the dead like the stories didn’t all

tell me these things never come

back right.

But I am a necromancer of skill.

I bring back the soul and

never the wound.

I am the wound. I am the

necromancer who gets it right.

The stories were mistaken. Dead things

don’t come back wrong they

come back exactly the same.

I am the one who has changed.

I am a different girl who carries

all the same wounds.

In my grief

I am deadly.

In my grief I

decay .

I cannot leave the dead alone.

The dead do not leave me alone and I

please them every time.

[bansheebeez]

[girlstressed]

"did i tell u this already?" we are in a timeloop and i am in love with u tell me again

[bansheebeez]

this shit hurts

[bansheebeez]

ok but

[bansheebeez]

on deserving / avoiding creativity and art

[bansheebeez]

Eve Knew

Eve knew, I think, better than to believe

the thoughts were her own.

It was the darkest place her mind could go.

God said “If you eat of the apple, you

will die.”

Its waxy skin would catch the sun and

gleam red.

She thought it’d be juicy and sweet–

death.

She stopped then, I think. She realized

it was not what she wanted but

what she couldn’t have.

The apple.

It was like this for a long time. The urge,

intruding– a visitor she’d

hurry away. The thoughts were not

her own. All of this was true, most likely but

it does not change the fact that

she wanted the apple and she

ate of it, too.

[bansheebeez]

Why? I wondered to myself if there could be a reason good enough to justify God putting me through that. And yet I would not undo it. The pain was not worth it but to give up the life I’ve built from the suffering would be worse.

I think maybe God has done the only acceptable thing in the aftermath of such suffering. He honored the wound by distilling it into anointed water. Water with sacred oils, the kind you dip a finger into before making the sign of the cross. Water you bring to the sick, the dying. Water you share with the suffering.

[bansheebeez]

I skim my hand over the water but I can feel the depth all the way down. I love and hate and long and I think about God and my past feels sacred, especially the unholy bits. It all is water from the same spring, brought in cupped hands to my mouth.

[bansheebeez]

I am less of a liar and more of a poet.

But I am a liar too

[bansheebeez]

There is peace in knowing exactly what you get

It doesn’t get any better than this

[bansheebeez]

You bury memories and they 

come back up, bushes full of red 

berries- the ones you used to find 

next to the blackcaps. 

The ones your mom

told you never to eat. 

and you’d never.  

but they tempt you, sometimes.

Forgetting takes time.

[bansheebeez]

[bansheebeez]

Gods bleed red, too.

They were not at all scared of my blood.

Mask of the lamb yet

they knew exactly what I was.

Fallen angels are still angels,

fallen gods are nothing at all.

I had no faith, no obligations to anyone but

myself.

[bansheebeez]

-Brianna Fay

[bansheebeez]

& it was a safe disguise

for a while.

Who would want to hurt a lamb?

[bansheebeez]

You Are Right Here

i.

I was out every night looking

for the forests

in my dreams. I was searching for

white birch trees. I remember them. They were

right there.

I don’t know how long I was

searching but I was

searching still, years later in

the living room.

On the couch.

I looked for

freckled bark in the curve of somebody’s

elbow.

ii.

When I was a girl on the altar

at church I was brave

enough to ask God to slow

time

down.

I knew that moment was eternal. It was.

iii.

Some eternities are scars.

I can’t think about love on a couch

without thinking about

fissures between the

cracks in my skull.

But there were a few moments

when I didn’t think about love on

the couch. I was just

loved

on the couch.

Moments, one at a time.

iv.

I have already dug myself out

of the dirt they call my grave.

Ghost sometimes call to me and

I have learned to

turn away.

v.

You are not a ghost you are

right here in front of me. I am trying

in more ways than one

not to memorize the sound of your guitar but

listen, instead.

I am trying to calm down. I have already

memorized

the angle of

your elbow from where I lay. I have

already moved on. You are

not a ghost you are

using your hands and making music.

vi.

We make love on the couch

while my roommate’s not home.

I am a ghost or maybe

just a body that

remembers everything.

vii.

There are forests in the way he bent his

elbow, yes. There are more forests

than I thought.

Here, now,

this forest is deeper than any on Earth.

We make love on the couch while

my roommate’s not home.

I am a ghost or maybe

a birch tree, still rooted.

I remember everything.

You are not a ghost. You are

right here. Touch me. I’m sorry.