caroline

She/her - 27 - poetry and shit

[grilledcheeseat3am]

[grilledcheeseat3am]

What if I never write

Another beautiful thing

Or draw something worthwhile

What if my back hurts forever

And I’m always wondering when

I’ll be okay again

Can you hold me between your hands

So gently it almost hurts?

I’d like to try out what that feels like

Could you place me down in the soft grass and smile at me in a way that blocks the

Light from above

Shadow against the blazing sun

Will you look at me with kindness

When I do not deserve it

Will you hold me forever in any way you can even when I cannot write

Will these words be enough, if they’re all I’ve got

[grilledcheeseat3am]

I’m making coffee again.

Making art is still working out though, I promise.

I’m making coffee again

And when the sprayer for the dishes

hits the sink

The sound of the water on cool metal

Almost sounds like the ocean

Mom, making art is still working, I promise.

I’m making coffee again and the steam hits my face at the same time the milk bubbles over and scalds my fingers

I hiss and then laugh to save face

The customer laughs too

Large vanilla latte for here

I ice my hand until it’s numb

So listen art was working and then I sort of lost it inside myself right? And it’s there but it’s sort of…dormant.

Coffee is interesting because it’s the same recipe over and over and over again and the steamed milk looks like clouds when it goes in and it stirs up to be something between melted chocolate and brown like tree bark and it smells like earth.

Small nonfat mocha to go.

Art was working and it still is I guess but I have this fear that I’ll never make something beautiful again, never make something that actually matters. I don’t know why it has to matter. I don’t know why it can’t just be beautiful because it’s being made.

I’m making coffee again because I need money and honestly I really like it. It’s simple and it’s pure in the way service jobs are. It’s not about me and how much I’m worth. It’s just pouring milk out and out and out until it swirls away into something that warms someone else.

Mom and dad, art is going to work. I’m going to work. I made it and I’m making it. I will. I promised you the art degree was worth it and it is.

Am I worth it?

The coffee is one of those things that clings to you. The coffee grounds get under my nails. The smell of roasted beans stays wound up in my hair. It stains my jeans and finds its way onto every white bit of my sneakers. I’m realizing coffee is a lot like art in that way.

I have paint on my clothes again. I haven’t stained clothes with paint in a while. The coffee gave me time to think and time to think gave me art. The green of the paint and the faded smudge of coffee intermix near the pocket of my favorite jeans.

I like them better like that.

[grilledcheeseat3am]

I’m learning to like summer again

The heat on my skin

The happiness of everyone around me

But it took a long time to get there.

That’s the thing about mental illness

It takes away the things you like

And it leaves behind a prickling

Unease

Like something’s been misplaced

Like the most important things you’ve ever had are stuck in your couch cushions.

And it should be so easy, but you can’t lift them up.

I used to walk around feeling like danger was on the tip of my tongue

The wind would shift, the shoe would drop,

The electric charge of near hysteria waiting to hiss its way up my chest

and burrow into my lungs.

I was ten when I decided I hated summer.

And not for the heat or anything so mundane as that.

It was how bright everything was. The way you were expected to want to have fun.

It was the pools. Always the pools.

Even when my drowning obsession was at its peak.

I would stand in my rainbow swimsuit and stare at the crystal blue water I used to love and wish with all my heart it was winter.

The thing about obsessions is they twist and change. The electric charge fizzles. The shoe never drops.

(It never will. That’s the thing about OCD. You’re stuck in midair, waiting.)

And you realize.

Halfway through a beer, floating lazily on a tube in the lake, right as your friend laughs

Bright and free and clear

The sun hasn’t felt this good in ages

And water doesn’t scare you anymore.

So yeah, I like summer again. It only took sixteen years of wishing for rain. I think it was people that healed it for me. Made my lungs stop burning their way through August.

Made me laugh in July.

[grilledcheeseat3am]

You’ve left the garden of Eden far behind when you realize you don’t even like apples. And you turn to this man who says you’re part of him and you wonder if he’d have taken his bone back if God allowed it. If God had traded an apple for a bone and a woman for a parable and a utopia for a story. You think he would have. He would have ripped it from your body and slotted it back into place and left you with your rotting core. And you kind of wish he had.

So yeah, you don’t like apples and you’re mostly dust anyway and before yesterday you didn’t really know anything about yourself so maybe this is actually a good start.

Before yesterday you were a bone from a man taken by a god and covered in dust and you realize now you’re more. You don’t like apples and god doesn’t like you and man has thrown you to the snakes and so now you will be your own.

You don’t like apples and you’re a wanderer and a mother and the world will know your name and they will blame you for the dust that you are and they will ask you to nurse them and they will curse you and they will suck you dry. They will spit on you and drink your milk. They will call you mother and it will be an insult.

So you are dust and bone and milk and soot and spit. You are mother of a cursed garden, keeper of a rotten fruit. You are a womb. You are a witch in a wood. You are a woman and they will never take your rib back.

[grilledcheeseat3am]

You run out of the woods and you’re bleeding from your feet where they gripped bark in your haste and you’re bleeding from your heart for other reasons and your ears are ringing from that goddam secret keeper. And the falling of trees. It’s hard to forget, the first time you hear death like that.

You run out of the woods and it turns out you changed in there which is new because you don’t remember ever changing much before that but now you’re different and your feet are bleeding and god is this a heart attack?

You run out of the woods and you’ve got moss for clothes now and your bare skin feels like fire and your mouth tastes like copper and cold and truth. And your home was the woods but the woods are behind you. And your heart is beating out of your chest. And your heart is bleeding. And your heart is saying they’re wrong.

You run out of the woods and swords cross behind you and the swords are branches and they are alight and they are gone in a wisp of wind and so is the woods.

You have been out of the woods for a while and your feet have stopped bleeding and you wonder if that is a good thing. They are proof. Proof of the woods. Without the blood and pain, who will believe you?

You have been living far from the woods and each day that passes you vow to find it again. You vow to rip your heart apart in the finding of it and run over its bark and pull those gleaming swords apart with your bare hands.

You vow to rip off the moss and take joy in the burning rage of your naked body as you pull the forest up by its fucking roots.

You vow to go up to the tree that started it all and set it alight. You vow to eat every last goddamn fruit.

-eve’s rage saved me, a letter to the church

[grilledcheeseat3am]

When you hold yourself captive, what is the ransom?

Is it that for once in your life you might love yourself?

What is the proof of life?

The blood pumping in your ears

What is the meeting place?

Sleep

What is justice?

That we both might be free

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

You meet god and she's mostly dead fish. You ask her why and she says most of the world is dead fish, and she's made herself to appeal to the most common denominator, the everyman funnyman comedy show that runs for eleven seasons but with the entire universe in mind. You ask her how much of the dead fish is your fault, she says it's far less than you'd think, in the grand scheme of things. You ask her if you matter at all. If you can do anything. She shrugs her rotting shoulders and says mattering is a made-up concept, like life, but sure, you can matter if you want to, on some scale. She has many scales. She doesn't know what you mean by 'anything', but you can do everything you can. You ask her if it's enough. She says there's no base requirement for deserving to exist. She's smoking a joint and the smoke filtering out of her gills gathers and forms gas giants and red dwarfs. You ask her if there's any hidden secrets of the universe you should know and she says it's not a secret if she tells, plus it's fun to let you figure it out yourself. You ask her if any of your questions were right questions and she says you worry about being right so much it might keep you from fucking around, which is as close to meaning of life as she ever bothered to make. You don't ask but she says she loves your hair, also your whole being, also your planet. She says she figured out what love is yesterday and is trying it out, which explains the ten thousand rainbows and sudden influx in rains of fish. She offers you a drag of her joint and you wake up half past midnight behind a chain restaurant clutching a smoked salmon. The new stars are winking like they're in on some joke and you're sure if you try hard enough you'll remember what it is.

[dragonflea]

Idk what just happened but op's right, writing *is* a martial art

[grilledcheeseat3am]

You will be staring at the ceiling when you decide you aren’t a good person

Not by a long shot

And it might be the religion or it might be that you yelled at your sister but more likely it’s the fact that you aren’t sure if you’ll ever be able to cut a vegetable again

And what kind of person can’t cut up an onion

Or wash the dishes

Or get a snack

You will be seventeen and far too big when you crawl into your parents bed

You will attempt to explain but they don’t need you to

You will fall asleep because they won’t let you do anything

They can stop it

They can stop it right? (You’ll still see it in your head, the mess of what wouldn’t happen if they couldn’t. Like a fucked up Dateline episode in 4K)

And you’ll beg to stay even though you’re packed to go. You’ll beg to delay your trip another night another week another lifetime

What if we were always a cocoon between the hours of 6am and 7 - when the thoughts are on hold in the hazy safety of confession.

It’s a compulsion and you know it and you’ll go, crying the whole way, with a bundle of sheets and a duffle bag, white knuckling the steering wheel and rehearsing lies for the benefit of your friends.

But they have to see it right? I mean goddamn are your eyes red.

But

It’s a summer camp, you’re in charge there, you have to get your shit together.

You will cry in the bathroom at 6am when everyone else is asleep and wish it was your parents bed. And that will fill you with shame for some reason so you’ll go on a run and be back for breakfast and eight year olds will look at you like you’re the most put together person in the world. They’ll hug you. Your hands will shake.

It will be week three when you decide fuck it, you have to tell someone. You expect horror. You expect yelling. God, they should put you away and throw away the key.

They hug you under some trees and you feel like you’re floating and you’ve never felt more seen. You swear they’ll be in your life forever, just because of that. They wont be, but the sentiment remains.

You’ll talk about it now, and that’s something. And you’re making dinner tonight. The recipe says there are onions. You’re okay. You’re okay.

[grilledcheeseat3am]

I can’t stop drawing crashed spaceships

[grilledcheeseat3am]

[grilledcheeseat3am]

Someday I’ll have a scrapbook

With nothing in it but

3am Taco Bell receipts and sketches of my sister and the poems I wrote to god when my parents were fighting

They’ll ask what these pages of trash are for

And I’ll hold them open like a priest with a holy book

And tell them the stories of girlhood

-scriptures are crunchwrap supreme wrappers and $5 mall photo strips

[powerlineprincess]

Jesus Camp 2006 screenshots.

[sailermoon]

babe are u okay ur crying about closeness lines over time by olivia de recat again

[stillorbitingu]

Vocabulary, Safia Elhillo

[may-was-here]

[ID: A poem written in the style of a vocabulary test. It’s titled, “Vocabulary” and reads:

fact: the arabic word هواء /hawa/ means wind / the arabic word ‎هوى /hawa/ means love

test: [multiple choice] / abdelhalim said / you left me holding wind in my hands / or / abdelhalim said / you left me holding love in my hands

abdelhalim was left empty / or / abdelhalim was left full

fairouz said / o wind take me to my country / or / fairouz said / o love take me to my country

fairouz is looking for vehicle / or / fairouz is looking for fuel

oum kalthoum said / where the wind stops her ships, we stop ours / or / oum kalthoum said / where love stops her ships, we stop ours

oum kalthoum is stuck / or / oum kalthoum is home. End ID]

[Plaintext: Vocabulary, Safia Elhillo. End plaintext]

[grilledcheeseat3am]

I was christened when I was 9 by a woman above the highway whirling and twirling with two crucifixes in her hands.

I asked my dad what it meant and he shrugged. “An omen maybe. You clean your room yet? Maybe god sent her to warn you.”

My mother slapped his arm. “Fucking godless.” But she was laughing.

I met the ghost in my house when I was twelve. He asked for a cigarette but all I had to offer were a bounty of Polly pocket boots and mud pies. “It’s no good,” he said and I nodded even though I didn’t understand. What does a man made of vapor do with more smoke?

If that ghost had been God and God needed a smoke and God was made of vapor too, I think I would have known it, like I knew the lady with the crucifixes was warding off something only she could see. Like a fairytale or a spell full of sticks and braided flowers and corporeal things.

I didn’t see my ghost again and I wondered if God had abandoned me for a 7 Eleven full of Marlboro.

I was sixteen when I realized that not the ghost nor god or the lady with the crosses could fix the way I felt when I looked in the mirror. It turns out god is no match for the combination of braces, acne, and a shitty haircut. I wondered if all three of them were in front of me, if they’d point and laugh, a holy trinity of vengeful stares.

Im 27 now and if god asked me for a cigarette I’d laugh and hand it to her.

-what am i if not the keeper of God’s smokes