the night has come and won’t be gone

the poetry and writing of elise devries

[dampdeer]

I am cement beneath snow

wood rotten, full of holes

fingers caught in wire and twisted

purple, black and sallow gold

the tone of healing bruises

makes me feel at home

I could paint the walls with them

and still I'd feel alone

[dampdeer]

this body, a vessel for water to pour over

hair to grow from

for life to take seed and fruit

I am dismissive of it

its functionality and worth

a hundred and some odd pounds of flesh

to carry and make waste of

knowing I have an implemented purpose

am I not alive to ponder and explore

is my purpose merely to give life and nurture that life

is it selfish of me to nurture myself instead

and indulge in breathing only to breathe

I wonder what creator designed the curves of my body

or the softness on the inside of my skull

I wonder if there was one at all

or am I but an amalgamation of evolutionary instances

that taught my cells to be the way they are

disconnected from the vision in my head

of living life to the fullest

and knowing more than my mother did

about the tenderness of wasting away

[dampdeer]

i want to sink into the ground but it's too cold the earth is as hard as my thoughts right now i wish my hands were shovels, or that i was as small as a mouse so i could sleep inside the walls smoke drifts from my mouth and fades against that hard darkness the wall of winter nighttime the light above me flickers, shivers as i do i feel at home in the cold but i fear that comfort how familiar it is to sink back into sadness after fooling myself into believing i am better

[dampdeer]

there is love in the hair on your chest i am nestled breathing against you your body is a home and i am always leaving the lights on to remind you i live inside i never even had to carve a place behind your ribs for my soul to rest it has always existed waiting for me to find my way home i encourage distance but that doesn't mean i don't miss it breathing beside you in your bed listening to the din of crickets crying in the summer grass from loneliness and how unlike us that is to feel alone since we met even when you're not beside me i feel it the love that lives inside the rise and falling of your chest

[dampdeer]

warm bone, fed by velvet nourished by it a womb of bristled fur that living sheath to hide natures sword beneath (it) do you hear it calling in the night or see it fallen by the roadside those twitching legs like fragile spindles wracked with guilt for being caught against the headlights its crown, a cradle for the birds with scarlet velvet hung from it like garlands

[dampdeer]

i fold like paper wrinkled, ink stained never has my mind been blank nor the stalls of it bare but covered in the crude graffiti of my fear instead there are curses or craigslist ads that call out we had a missed connection i saw you and i wondered how i would feel pressed up against you like old newspaper wrapped around fragile things and put into cardboard boxes to bury in the attic or store in the basement forgotten about, safe in containment i always wonder when my eyes meet a strangers was i just an ornament hung there motionless in the middle of everything disturbing its movement with my stillness do i shine like a beam of light or flicker as the stars do at night was i real to you or just merely a moment an absence of movement a deer in the headlights just waiting to die

[dampdeer]

i hold my hands out wait for rain or maybe tears to fall god, i don't know which would feel better

[dampdeer]

juxtapose

i'm just trying to position myself comfortably against the sharp waves of emotion tenderly, bitterly i feel in my pit in the pit of my life is comfortless but i guess that's not right life is comfort sometimes mainly it's regret that i have to feel or that it moves so quickly when i'm sitting still

[dampdeer]

i see more stars in the depths of your eyes than the sky could hope to hold you are a constellation in the flesh some demigod dreamed up in ancient times a myth i can touch, how i hope to touch you forever in your arms i am not broken like i have been made to feel in the arms of others i haven't been incomplete since the first time you touched me you are the missing piece, you are my dream i've spent years with the fear that it was fleeting in your arms i am born again you cradle, you castle of a man and every sweet word you say to me becomes a kingdom in my heart

[dampdeer]

whose hands are these i knead, i need, i knead i braid my fingers a thousand times twist my skin until it’s purple whose hands will bleed i knead, i need, i knead i rotate my wrists like tires against the road belch burnt rubber and black tar smoke whose hands are these i wring my fingers like they might run from me twisting skin from bone like asphalt skins knees i don't know, i need to go i knead, i need, i knead

[dampdeer]

i would cut off my hands if you want to hold them whenever i go, wherever i am i would pull out my teeth just to give you a piece sew them to your sleeves for when you feel weak my heart is mine but i guess it's yours too i would cut it right out if you wanted me to

[dampdeer]

my heart doesn't ache for what was it reverberates in knowing that every heart i have touched every life i have been part of has shaped me and helped me grow i am not afraid of what i don't know anymore i am finally thrilled to see what's behind every door i wouldn't let myself open when my hands were weak and my heart trembled at the weight of the unknown i can shoulder things better now i can climb trees and see the horizon more clearly than i could before, the height makes me hopeful even when the limbs shake in the breeze i am at home in my unsteadiness i feel like i can breathe again

[dampdeer]

i dream often about the art of kintsugi where things that are broken are fixed with seams of gold and held in high esteem all my broken pieces are still pieces of me i may never get everything that i have put out into the world back again but the act of giving means so much i can fill the gaps with gold no matter how many times i break and that means more to me than anything even if there comes a day where all i am is golden seams

[dampdeer]

mirror, is it me? i am water washing over sand and shore seagulls cry all day and fall i swallow them whole i swallow everything i want to float away there is sand between my teeth i feel the grit, i want to be rid of it but i can't lose you again to the city the way it shakes my bones and makes me feel more alone than anything

[dampdeer]

why are people so hell bent on making me emptier!!! quit gutting me, fuck your empathy you don't even s e e me i am only b i t s and p i e c e s in your eyes, incomplete

[dampdeer]

petals, dried and pressed once felt soft between fingers, am i the same as them? was i softer then? before i felt your hands brush against my aching skin.

[dampdeer]

rotten fruit

light me on fire, i'm your funeral pyre i am a witch worth burning, lover if i dance naked through the woods of your mind would you braid me a necklace of rope and take me to the water, leave my bones where pearls are swathed against soft tongues of mollusk mothers? eat my flesh, sweet one, feel me but don't keep me as a totem . you may lay me among the flowers when love withers, leave my soft skin to rot like fruit in the sun i can be new again, i was ripe once