[betweenthebody]

why do you deny yourself heaven? why do you consider yourself undeserving? why are you afraid of love? you think it’s not possible for someone like you. but you are the love of my life. you are the love of my life. you are the love of my life. - reformation, warsan shire

[betweenthebody]

mother make me over.

my body never closes right when i need it. chokes sometimes in the midst of recovery. sweats all night like fever, until all of our habits fall out. wakes up sometimes splitting itself in two. forms itself into an expression instead of a sound. my body sometimes fits itself in places neither one of us belongs. my body often walks into a lover without me, everything touching our skin until we’re finally both sick. i scrape my finger down the throat for the both of us. in dreams, i go to bed as this body and wake up as someone else’s.

have you ever went to sleep in someone else’s love? do you come back out as waste or wanted?

[betweenthebody]

on how it could all be so simple —

the way a heart pours into another simply because it feels right. and it feels right and it feels right. and it feels right. the way a flood drowns everything it touches simply because it is in the way. and sometimes there is not a softer way to land, a softer way to be, simply because you overflow. the way a light brightens an entire room simply because someone else can see it. and often times than not, you are a light brightening an entire room simply because someone else can see you. and one day, the right door opens simply because you decide to walk through it. and how simple of a thought? that the right face will look back to you at the right time. and the right love will wake you silly in the mornings, simply because it’s yours.

[betweenthebody]

on “to my beloved, think we need some time away”

1. if only you knew what I sacrificed to get here. how I grabbed onto bleeding heart after bleeding heart just to say I didn’t arrive alone. how I made habit of starving my body at any given moment just so it could fit, anywhere. how I swallowed all of my memories so others couldn’t tell I was once abandoned. how I surrendered all of my dreams of him so that one of us could say we made it, alive. you’d drum all of your questions, fold all of your doubt. you’d burry your knees into the cloth and you’d just thank god that I made it.

2. you disappear one summer and I spend my entire life running after you. I hold onto you in any way that I can. I close my eyes and stain myself with your every photograph. I memorize your laughter. anyone that shares your name, I worship them. I pray in every language I know to never ever forget you. I realize I am incapable of letting go. maybe this is where the loss started. or how the worry grew. I am afraid that if I remember you wrong, even for one moment, I will lose you forever.

3. I try to erase the last six summers, the last six names, the last six months. but I arrive right back to where we left off. except the only thing that has changed is  I am more in love with you, and you are more in love with someone else.

4. I begin an experiment. I convince myself the two of us never existed. I lose sleep. stay awake so that you can’t grow in my dreams. I lose weight. remove you from my insides. I drink. mostly red wines and whisky straight until i can no longer keep you in my stomach. I go quiet. I forget your name. I forget the way you breathe when we lay next to one another not making a sound. I move to another city. I move to another man. I stand in the middle of the subway one day, carrying home the groceries, and remember, out of know where, that I knew love once.

[betweenthebody]

on skin.

sometimes you learn everything there is to a person. like how they were named thelonious after their fathers favorite jazz musician or how they broke their index fingers at fifteen during a basketball game or how they grew up afraid of clowns and how now at 27 they still have not learned to let go of fear. and sometimes, you listen to stories until 2am about how the bone broke and how they never quite healed themselves. and you learn that some people need healing and some people are healers and sometimes it works while other times it doesn’t. and you learn that some people’s feet get cold first during the winter and that they brush their teeth first before showering. and you learn that they place french-vanilla creamer in their tea and that they cannot take meals without saying prayer first or that they cannot take love without running first. and sometimes you learn that some people love with their feet and some with their hands and some with skin but you learn that there is no right way to love a person. and you hear the stories about all the other women that did not quite work before you and you learn that you too are a woman not working, but you try anyway because you’ve learned that you love with skin, and there is no right way to love a person, you know.

[betweenthebody]

on how it could all be so simple —

the way a heart pours into another simply because it feels right. and it feels right and it feels right. and it feels right. the way a flood drowns everything it touches simply because it is in the way. and sometimes there is not a softer way to land, a softer way to be, simply because you overflow. the way a light brightens an entire room simply because someone else can see it. and often times than not, you are a light brightening an entire room simply because someone else can see you. and one day, the right door opens simply because you decide to walk through it. and how simple of a thought? that the right face will look back to you at the right time. and the right love will wake you silly in the mornings, simply because it’s yours.

[tristamateer]

“You had to stand there saying:I love you, I love you, I love you we’re soul mates, you and I, but that doesn’t mean it works that doesn’t mean it works that means my soul can’t bear to be without yours but that doesn’t mean it works”

— “You Couldn’t Just Leave?” Trista Mateer

[betweenthebody]

on secrets.

slowly, i just stop speaking your name. camaria asks what happened to you and i quickly change the subject. i tell her, “i think it’s easier if i just stop believing in love for once.” she pauses, long. on the other end of the phone i hear her suck her teeth. she says, “so, you haven’t seen him since he got back with her? didn’t you all have dinner?” i sit on the sofa, holding the pillow that carries your scent from last night. my shirt still smells of acqua di gio because i refuse to remove you. i forgave you that night, for almost everything. i thought about her every time your phone buzzed. wondered if she was looking for you. or reminding you to come home. mainly, hoping she would forgive me. “hello?” she says. i take the phone off speaker. “i cancelled that dinner. but you know, i’ve been thinking. i think i want a new couch.”

***

some days, i don't know what i’m supposed to do with other men. i often pray for god to bring them. i also pray for him to take them away. 

***

the truth is, nothing is absolute. you and me, we make a chaos out of love and all of its familiar qualities. all i know is, i cling to you with everything i have in me and still, you choose someone else. i also know i spend my work days on google. i memorize all of the characteristics that make for a good wife. ‘present...understanding...compassionate’  i make a chart of what i have and what i need. i send a text that says ‘hi lovely, i hope everything is going well for you right now. how was the meeting with sam? i know you were worried about it..xo’  i re-read it six times before pressing send.  present, check. understanding, check. compassionate, check.  

[betweenthebody]

girl loses the conversation.

my friend asks about you one night over dinner and i choke a little because with you, nothing ever leaves. and i look at the time because i wonder how much she has and i wonder how much is left. and of course your you is still seeped into my me and i don’t think there’s a way to dispose of something that has died in you? died with you? and i suppose there’s no cure for a feeling — ive tried you know? prayed you away so many times contemplated a new god just to remove what was left changed the sheets until they no longer looked like you. stayed awake most nights so you couldn’t grow in my sleep. but you still showed, you know? in little ways i couldn’t put a stopping to. like the way i position my mouth when introducing my name. or the way i smile when ‘poetic justice’ plays on the radio and more simply —the way i laugh or take a breath. and of course the next man can see that i keep you like secret — wrapped delicately in the floor of my memory. so no, there’s no cure for that. no cure for this. and time says there’s not enough so instead i roll my eyes and tell her i haven’t thought of you since last december. we both laugh — and i wonder how many people can hear you leaving me?

[betweenthebody]

on hey what’s up, i hope this message finds you well.

girl says: ‘what the fuck? block him...you have to! that ain’t love, it’s just not. he just thinks you’re weak for him...’

you overshare every detail about him to all of your friends until they can no longer stand to be around you. they all start looking at you different. wonder what it is you see in him. wonder why you allow yourself to wait for him. move entire rooms for him. close your whole mouth, for him. you say his name so many times you sometimes have to stop yourself from breathing. you think if you stop letting the air in you’ll finally be able to leave him behind. 

girl calls you over saturday evening. says she misses you. wants to see you, and know how you’re doing. you sit on her sofa and watch re-runs of girlfriends until the moon takes over the night. you always imagined your life turning out to be like joan’s. black, successful, colorful...but lonely. that night, you’re on your phone so much you don’t even notice that she has left the room. you wet your lips to break the silence. you say: ‘he’s not like that, you know. you just don’t know him like i do. but he’s not like that. he loves me...i swear to you he does.’ 

[betweenthebody]

on goin’ crazy.

girl wants love so bad she begins to tell all of her friends about a man that doesn’t even exist. sends texts and phone calls that go unanswered, unloved. girl cannot take a hint even if it is standing in her front door. girl dreams about boy in past, present and future and cannot decide which version of him loves her less. cannot decide how much more of herself she has to give before she is actually wanted. girl expands like a balloon whenever something breathes into her. takes a mouth and speaks back whatever it is missing. girl falls in love with anything that looks her way. wants a man that won’t die, or leave, or exist, without her. and they are often all one in the same depending on who you ask, and who is answering. girl wants to be the answer, for someone. anyone. or just whoever is listening.

[tapiwamugabe]

You left home wearing his kiss

- you couldn’t wait to wipe it off and wear her favourite purple lipstick.

His i love you dangling from your ears eager to climb and nest in your mind

- for a few months you have found methods of contraception against his declarations of affection.

You refuse to be pregnant with unwanted love

- can you abort or donate a love at full term?

You come home with new habits

- the way she kisses her teeth, her laugh and how she says hello

[betweenthebody]

“your mothers chest holds together the loneliest sound you’ve ever heard. she is fatherless and motherless and two heartaches away from another coffin. her husband roamed twenty-eight years to kiss her forehead only to never see her again. in her womb she carries memories of their son, every summer looks like him. her alone became heirlooms that drape around your shoulder. and you, you wear her losses loudly.”

— the lonely bones (via theamychronicle)

[betweenthebody]

on staying.

normally, you’d have chosen to stop breathing by now. would have slept the entire year away, the entire lifetime. would have picked the bed instead of the world. the boy instead of the bed. the bottle instead of the truth. normally, you’d have starved your heart. would have told all of your friends you were moving, would have walked through a door that lead to a hallway. would have packed up the sheets and evaporated until the ground felt safe again. until your heart felt safe again. until your love felt safe again. but look at you, facing you and all of your existence. walking, even when your knees hurt.

[betweenthebody]

“one night i ask her what it is like to be married. what it is like to be a sacrificial wife for an overbearing man. i ask her what it is like to disappear for twenty-five years between the teeth of someone else. she tells me that marriage is like constantly rearranging the word ‘home’ on a map. that some nights feel like unpacking all of your body and placing yourself in their hands like a trophy. she says marriage is compromise; then tells me about the times she traded all of her self-worth for his. says marriage is all about making the man feel like a man. that after three years you have already forgotten you were your own to begin with. i ask her if it is worth it, the love. she replies, “honestly, i have laid my life down in this body and there is still more to give if he needs it.””

— wedding vows, brittanyceleste

[betweenthebody]

can’t believe i used to write lol.

[betweenthebody]

girl writes boy out of love song and ends up losing her mind.

praising boys name is a lot like sin except the mouth doesn’t fall completely off the body and instead the lips swell until boy finds them full.desirable. boy is a wandering body left back home. back home, girl wears boys name trapped around her throat until all of her friends can’t stand to be around her. back home, boy makes songs for girl. you know, the sad and slow ones filled with pause, or enough breath until silence sounds a lot like the melody. boy smells like desert camp with no survivors. back home, boy is a veteran losing his mind and girl is a body used in battle. boy is bruised, soft cut in half. girl, is a girl who needs a boy. how could boy refuse a girl who needs so much love? boy builds home inside girls head and moves in with spare key. girl grows underneath boy until her weight starts to disappear. girl disappears under boy. girl is boys. back home, sometimes the story starts and ends the same. boy goes back to war and girl loses her mind.

[betweenthebody]

boy goes back to war and girl loses her mind.

me, forever.

[betweenthebody]

on goin’ crazy.

girl wants love so bad she begins to tell all of her friends about a man that doesn’t even exist. sends texts and phone calls that go unanswered, unloved. girl cannot take a hint even if it is standing in her front door. girl dreams about boy in past, present and future and cannot decide which version of him loves her less. cannot decide how much more of herself she has to give before she is actually wanted. girl expands like a balloon whenever something breathes into her. takes a mouth and speaks back whatever it is missing. girl falls in love with anything that looks her way. wants a man that won’t die, or leave, or exist, without her. and they are often all one in the same depending on who you ask, and who is answering. girl wants to be the answer, for someone. anyone. or just whoever is listening.