Half A Grapefruit

This is a poetry blog where I will post my own poems and writings as well as others that catch my fancy. Enjoy the fruits of my labor ;) I tag all of my posts with: #writing, #number of post, #piece title

[half-a-grapefruit]

Lost in You

I hate it when you steal my breath away

You scumbag

Making me feel trapped in my own head

Unable to breathe for fear of drowning

I hate how you feel like moths

Fluttering inside my chest

Trying to distract me to break free

I hate that you take away my expression

With you I can’t write, talk, or even think

You smug bastard

Watching me flounder for control

The harder I hold onto it

The more slippery it becomes

Until I’ve lost myself

And there is only you

Only you

With nobody.

[half-a-grapefruit]

Red Constellations

Small red points scattered across thighs

Reminders of pain

Punishment for living

Each prick a pain endured

A sting piercing the skin

Leaving screams and tensions in its wake

These red points mapping all the places never travelled

All the pain endured to live

The jabbings suffered for the bad to give

Red pinpricks on his thighs

All about like stars in the night sky

But these much more ominous.

[half-a-grapefruit]

The Letter Why

Dear Mom,

I know I mess things up and we disagree

But, I love you and I want to say sorry

Sometimes it’s hard to—I know it isn’t easy loving me.

I think you sometimes see everything I do

As a personal affront to you

Like when I told you I wanted a tattoo

I promise I don’t mean it that way

My honest intent is not to dismay

Or to lead you astray

So I’m sorry for all the times I’ve lied

Like when I said I wasn’t home—maybe if I hadn’t clarified?

I saw no other way—I tried

I don’t want to go home anymore

It’s easier when I am away because then I can ignore

All that has happened and go back to before

Before, when our family was normal and whole

And your body was fine, your mind in control

But sadly your illness has taken its toll

And I’m stuck with the broken picture frame

Around a family that isn’t quite the same

But there is no one to blame

But me, for all the pain I keep inciting

No matter what I do it will always be biting

At me, despite me rewriting

The ending, over and over again

Trying to find a place or two with my pen

That is far enough back, like way back when

The only issues we had were what was for dinner

But now in our home I feel the sinner

Because my truth is diluting, getting thinner and thinner

And I can feel you and me separating

I’ll be honest, it’s isolating

But I am so sick of fabricating

The truth, so I’m leaving as soon as I’m able

Before our relationship becomes more unstable

Before my truth becomes fable

But I love you, and I want you to know

That I always will even though

Sometimes, it’s hard for me to show.

[half-a-grapefruit]

The Whole Sky

He died at 11:50.

I remember because I was staring at the clock

But

I’m not sure how I saw because my eyes remained unseeing

That was not when he truly left

He had left perhaps an hour before

Floating off into another world where I could not follow

Like a petal slipping into a sewer drain on a breeze

How could such innocence be sacrificed?

Without him I was half a grapefruit

Cut open and vulnerable to the violence around me

But able to taste the sweet juices of life and love at last

Understanding them only once part of me was gone

His loss was like a knife

That I can still feel sometimes rattling around in my chest

Even though the wound appears healed

Because every time I meet someone new,

I await the dreaded question:

How many siblings do you have?

And it rings deep in my ears, mocking me

Because I don’t know how to answer.

If I say “none” I’m lying, but if I say “one”

I open up the only question worse:

How old is he?

One that digs into the backs of my eyes

Like an ice pick in a novice’s lobotomy

Spilling out the remains of my mind for all to see

Because this question, while seemingly simple

Is loaded with history, and to unpack it

Would mean telling a stranger my life story

Would mean facing sympathetic looks, and teary eyes

Would mean forgetting myself to comfort them

And I am sick of forgetting myself

Like an optional Alzheimer’s patient

Why do I allow their pain to trump mine?

Perhaps because

I don’t want them to know the pain I’ve felt

Because to show a sliver of it would be

Like cutting a hole in the sky

And watching all the stars spill out in their tangled fiery glory

Burning everything they touch