The Words I Write For Mikey

My name is Gabby. I'm a big fan of coffee and crazy sock days. This is a celebration of rough drafts. Everything you read here is yours in every sense but the legal one. The details on that one are listed as follows: All original works are tagged and are subject to the following: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. sc_hit(1174914,126,5); Tumblr Hit Counter

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Gabby Hummel - "The Speech Impediment"

Gabby Hummel performs at the Providence Youth Grandslam 2016

Almost a month into practices with my incredible BNV team, and I’m thinking a lot about how lucky I am to have this opportunity in my life. Here’s the second poem I performed at the Grandslam, “The Speech Impediment.”

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"The Shock of Survival" last night at AS220!

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So ridiculously excited to announce that I’ll be joining a team of four other AMAZING poets to represent Providence at Brave New Voices this July!

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This weather has me feeling really grateful that I chose Rhode Island over Vermont last year (at Kingston, Rhode Island)

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Friends in the Providence Area!

Come hang out around 8:00 at AS220 this Thursday for the Youth Grandslam! I’ll be competing alongside some amazing poets for a chance to perform at the Brave New Voices International Poetry Festival this July! It’s a guaranteed great night and I would love to see you there :)

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I've been on campus for 48 hours and I've already visited the greenhouses 3 times

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We're really excited about the snow (at Wallingford, Connecticut)

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Had so much fun last night! Thanks to everyone who came and to the amazing staff at More Than Words for being so welcoming! (at Waltham, Massachusetts)

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Tonight's the night!

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To the Heart Breakers

This is for the heart breakers, for those who mistake their throat for the barrel of a gun, for the ones who run faster than their hearts beat, for the people who have reduced another person to begging and still said, No.

This is for those who can’t help but notice that the art of taking and breaking is not hard to master. This is for the bridge burners, the guilty, guilty, guilty, for the ones who think love is all about survival.

Title this poem with the name of every person whose ability to accept love you have damaged.

This is your chance to accept the fact that it hurts to be responsible for such a significant shatter.

You are not a bad person for being so okay with breaking up.

Sometimes love just falls out of place.

You are not destined to destroy for the rest of your life.

Love can be terrifying. Love can show up at the wrong time. Love can place itself in the hands of the wrong person.

The person you are is not the damage you have caused.

The person you are is not the damage you have caused.

You are so much more than a heart breaker.

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If I Could

Love is not something that can be put into words.

That’s a beautiful thing until you have a girl looking up at you, begging you to find the words to save her life.

All I have to give is love.

Maybe there’s someone who has more practice with aesthetics and can write you a line that will out every lie that has ever been birthed by the night sky, but I am barely a poet. I’m just a kid with a pen, and if I’m lucky, a microphone stand.

I have too much passion and eyes that are far too wide for my own good.

There’s a lot I would do if I could.

I would write you into every poem that has ever birthed hope in the cracks of kids who could have sworn that they were broken.

I would drag you across this world to your light shine through the floorboards of the foundation they have built themselves up around.

If you have hit the ground, you do not need to give up.

Nothing beautiful ever came from anywhere but the ground.

Life grows from the ground.

Your heart has the right to pound as loudly as it wants. Your eyes have the right to cry sometimes.

You do not need to apologize for being human.

It does not mean you are weak.

It does not mean you are unworthy of love.

Scars can never be too deep to scare me away. You do not need to hide them. You do not need to hate yourself because they exist.

Your clenched fists do not always need to be clenched.

Your heart does not always need to be drenched in the loneliness you are drowning in.

You are human; no matter what, you will always float, even if it feels like there are rocks in the soles of your combat boots.

There is more to you than this.

There is more to you than this.

You will always be worth the love you’ve been given.

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Want to see this poem live? Come to More Than Words Bookstore and Cafe in Waltham, MA tomorrow at 7:30!

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The Shock of Survival

Since the fire, I’ve been saying things like, I am just happy to be alive to hide the bruises on my neck from the months my own mortality spent choking silence out of me.

It’s been working well so far.

These days, I can go full weeks without feeling anxiety hollowing out my chest.

There are good days when I think there may even be a chance that I am finally free,

but there are also good days when my memory reminds me of what dying looked like.

It’s how the good days  become bad days. It’s how the bad days steal my breath.

What you need to understand is that I wasn’t scared of dying until I survived, racing down my driveway asking, How, how, how am I still here?

What you need to understand is that I am still not sure that I survived the fire my body ran out of.

I couldn’t stomach the therapy long enough to be gifted a name for the way my life had been split into a clear before and after a single, nightmarish point in time making itself into an axis around which I now spend every waking hour of my existence spinning.

It’s why I can’t stop talking about it. From my perspective, everything still looks like it is burning,

but I’m still here.

Which means that I am going to say that I am just happy to be alive until it is true.

I’m going to love life so hard that I forget what dying looked like.

I’m going to write, and write until someday I can speak,

and say, This is what surviving looks like. It is broken and exhausted, but it is also defiant, and that fire couldn’t kill me, so neither can this.

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The Speech Impediment

I was born with a love for words and stories that left me spitting out sentences like carbon dioxide.

I was born with a speech impediment that weighed so heavy upon the shoulders of meaning that I was left shrugging and sheepish.

Love never came out right when my “L’s” sounded like “U’s,” so I stopped saying it.

Hurt sounded far too much like “hot,” and misunderstanding tore so many layers away from my bones that I grew up thinking nothing of the way I was always so cold.

I have been told that I don’t know how to love people casually.

That I’m too much of a poet, that I’m too obsessed with healing the broken pieces of other people.

What I’ve learned is that the broken pieces of  other people are obsessed with finding someone to heal them, and I  am too much of a poet to listen to the part of me that knows that we cannot fix people.

I’ve always been so convinced that I had not been born with the ability to deserve love that I tucked my heart into my chest, hid my feelings in my breath and said, There is no way to break a heart that you haven’t been given.

So I played a part instead. Spoke in poems and metaphors, offered a listening ear and a dependable shoulder, wore my compassion like a little black dress until trustworthy was the sexiest thing a woman could be.

There’s no denying that I played the part well.

My favorite lie to tell is best friend. With time, I figured out that everything has an end, so I adapted and mastered the art of telling secrets. I spat them out like shackles on feet: I trust you, don’t leave me. I trust you, don’t leave me.

My heart is always beating to the pace of friends walking away.

My body is the safest haven I could manage, so I carry my friends like ghosts  in my chest, mistake healing for permanence.

Every time

I tried to train my tongue to say love clearly enough to be understood, I was left grasping at shadows of people who know that L-O-V-E is a four letter word I can only say  in a poem.

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Want to see this poem live? Come to More Than Words Bookstore and Cafe this Friday at 7:30!

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Were you made speechless by the way 
you had painted your own hands
 red?

gabbyhummel (That’s her url, check her out she’s astounding as hell)

My readers are the absolute best

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Risk Assessment

From where you stood, could you feel the ground get pulled out from under me the day you said you were finally gone?

Is it why you wouldn’t let me call? Were you too busy drowning in your own goodbye? Were you choking on every promise you had found the spine to break? Were you made speechless by the way you had painted your own hands red?

Since you left, I haven’t been able to get your memory off my mind.

For months, I have been trying not to think about the fact that I know it has already started to make a home for my name on the tip of your tongue, and I know it is no reflection of the love that you once had for me, but in my heart you will always be family, and it hurts to watch your grip weaken on the piece of me I gave you.

From where you stood, could you feel the distance between us multiply with every lie you said?

The worst part of your goodbye was the way you shoved “Misled” into your vocabulary as if you hadn’t meant every second that you spent my by side

but I still remember what you looked like when all it took to make you smile was my presence, and I swear that I heard God’s voice the first time we made eye contact saying, “Breathe, Child, you have finally found your purpose.”

So if you thought that hitting where it hurt could make me hate you an easy way out, I want you to know that I wish you were right.

I wish you were right.

From where you stood, could you feel the tug of my heart breaking? Could you see everything I once used to define myself crumbling at my feet? Could you hear my heart beat me a battle cry, like I could stop myself from breaking if I could force my eyes to see red, like repetition could force the lie into truth that I will not be made to come undone just because one person said “I love you” in a voice that sounded like God’s.

I will not be made to come undone. I will not be made to come undone. I will not be made to come undone, but I think I may have been made to love you,

so I don’t know what I am supposed to do with you leaving, when all I ever wanted was to see you breathe easily, and you said that you felt like you were led to me, that things made sense with me, that I was blessing, and your breathing was so steady when you said it, there is no way you could have been lying.

My love was a safe space for you to start healing, and all the heartbreak in the world could not make me take it back.

From where you stand, can you hear that?

It would be easy to let you go if I could believe that I am doing the right thing, but I can’t.

I am scared that you are just running from someone who could see under your masks, but I’ve seen under your masks and I would not take my love back.

From where you stand, can you hear me promise that I do not see in you the monster that you were so terrified I’d discover?

You broke my heart, but people break each other’s hearts. You are not a monster. You are not a monster.

From where you stand, just hear that.

You can take back every one of your promises. you can claw out every inch of me that you once placed in your heart. you can forget my name if that’s what you want.

Just please listen when I say that I have met the parts of your soul that you are afraid of, and I am a better woman because of it.

Even your broken pieces shine light into darkness, guide the world toward courage. Even your broken pieces are beautiful. Even your broken pieces contribute to the world.

Not every relationship is meant to work as planned, but from where I stand, even with my broken heart in hand, I’m still saying, Thank you,

Thank you for proving that love can be worth losing.

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Ten Steps of a Dishonest Reunion

First, you will notice the size of me. I take up more space than I did before you left.

You will notice this with a sense of embarrassment, so you will quickly try to shake the thought away,

but it will be too late. It will have already tied itself to your memory of the day I spread my pride out like wings, said, This is my body and I am finally grateful for it.

You will notice the apathy like this. You will see the trauma first, and then me, know that it took complete disregard to clip my own wings.

You will blame yourself for this. I will silently wish I could stop you.

Second, our eyes will meet, and we will wait to see which one of us is stronger than the other.

We are both cowards, too afraid to do anything but stare blankly at this legacy of silence that we have left behind us.

Third, I will hear your voice for the first time in months and pretend it does not break me.

We will trade Hellos like old friends, and then remember that that is exactly what we are.

Old friends. Old friends.

Again, I will pretend this does not break me.

Fourth, I will find the words I tucked into my chest preparing for the day I would see you again, and spread them out in front of me.

I will see you smile, and I will finally know what losing me felt like.

Fifth, I will give you everything I have. I will share with you the boring details of a past that you missed.

Sixth, you will probably say the wrong thing. I will watch your eyes dilate in a panic as it crawls through your stomach, and I will greet it with open arms.

I will not give in to the piece of you that is begging me to show a sign that I hate you for leaving, for leaving when you did, for leaving.

The truth is that you loved that person out of me before you left.

Seventh, it is my turn to say the wrong thing.

I will let you in a little too far, and we will remember that everything we are lives exactly two steps beyond what is safe.

Eighth, we will both break apart in recognition of the way our death still lives in one another’s shadows.

We will realize at the same time that we will have to say goodbye again, and this is not the place to amend the mistakes that we made last time.

We will realize that goodbye means that we are not meant to want to amend the mistakes that we made last time.

Ninth, we will say goodbye. I will offer you a smile that begs you not to say something you will regret like Next time, like I’ll see you when I see you, like I still love you, like I’m sorry, like I want to take it back, like I miss you, like

Tenth, I will leave. I will pretend I do not feel your absence already. I will pretend I have not waited months to see your expression at the exact moment that you process I am leaving.

I will process I am leaving, and maybe it will hurt less this time.