Haley. Kalamazoo/Ann Arbor. (semi-hiatus)

Haley Winkle studies creative writing, italian, and art & design at the University of Michigan. She wears black on days that end in y, calls her succulent plants her children, and is a pleasure to have in class. Contact: [email protected]

[halienwords]

I gave you the space I thought you needed and maybe it was a bad gift but you never told me you hated it - I kept the receipt and you kept quiet.

[halienwords]

fulfill

i scratch pomegranate seeds from my scalp

but that’s the only fruition i’ll ever come to.

[halienwords]

Hooligan Mag Issue #11

"Finding Your Voice" - Featuring Lora Mathis, Genea Bailey, Maria Grazia Mormando, Doug Lobo, and our special Spilled Ink column.

i have a poem in another excellent issue of Hooligan! mega thanks to the lovely staff and shout out to all of the talented people on its pages ♥

[halienwords]

3 september 2015

i am changing for the first time in a year, it feels, and i am uncomfortable in these gray crossroads high speed trains rushing to join from all four sides and i can’t tell why i am here or where i will be next and i am scared

change used to feel good but i don’t recognize this anymore

[halienwords]

all i really want is frigid air to fill me for four months straight so i can remember how it feels to shake for breaths of it tainted by the clouds

[hooliganmagazine]

Hooligan Mag issue #10 is now live! Featuring Meggie Royer (writingsforwinter) whereareyoupress, and more! Spread the word!

Visit our website at http://hooliganmagazine.com to figure out how you can be featured in Hooligan Mag.

[halienwords]

Excited to be in the Spilled Ink section of another issue of Hooligan!

[halienwords]

my favorite constellation was always orion because i could easily pinpoint his belt in the sky among all of the others trying to contribute to its collection of notches but found themselves in their own formations. i used to be one of those stars, wanting desperately to be in a certain portrait that my placement and fate would not allow, but since then i have found my  own constellations from where i stand.

[halienwords]

Spending this week at Martha's Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing! Hopefully I'll write some things worth sharing on here while I'm at this beautiful island and program. Take care, everyone. xx

[halienwords]

i haven’t felt alive in a few weeks just somewhere between the topsoil and the tulip roots waiting for their next bloom

[halienwords]

often i am too far from Sleep and her gentle reach i miss hearing her soft hands kneading the line between conscious and not making me wonder which side i am truly living, when will she come back and let me know?

[halienwords]

wish list (item 2)

i wish to pluck myself from the painting on the mantel live a life unexpected

become my own installation, a work in progress  my own illegible signature in the lower right corner

so that others can see my self-portrait, outside their frame admire that i sought a way to escape the confines of their perfect, ideal, blueprinted lifestyle

[halienwords]

wish list

someday i would like to be a sun so that others will feel me through any amount of layers, but for now i am only a dollar flashlight and my light alone cannot be felt through coats made to guard against the bitter.

[halienwords]

i am glad for many things, mostly for the incapacity of my voice  to travel out my window, along stretched roads through leaves to the people for whom my softly spoken words are meant.

though one of these days i’d like to have a voice like the wind - for now only my hands can shake trees and you would only hear these mumbles of you if the wind herself screamed loud enough to turn me into a quiet memory, stealing my voice mining away at my secrets for profit.

[halienwords]

haiku #1

i cannot scream, but instead i can whisper my thoughts to make you care

[artificialgingersnap]

It’s come to the point where if I stay up this late I remember things that the sun lets me forget and I wish the moon knew about this but I don’t want to talk about it

[halienwords]

i wonder how many of my cells have wished to stay for longer, have feared their ending the way their lifeline does. how many of them wish to be the north star, constant, never moving.

i don’t have the heart to tell them  even stars age.

[halienwords]

she is a force moves oceans beyond their control, her different illuminations evoke more responses than i could ever seek to culminate, she is more than the nighttime sun - much more ethereal. 

yet even the most powerful, most influential woman of the universe needs to hide from the rest of us sometimes, must be left alone to gather her thoughts to mourn the stars in the distant supernovae, to rest her muscles after so much that the rest of the world too often takes for granted. 

venus took her place in the dusk sky this evening, i hope she’s alright.