elinor white

she/her ; original poetry about queerness and the insatiable urge to be known. find me on substack as @elinorwhitepoetry

[nine-blogs-in-a-trenchcoat]

i called her eurydice one time. i swear i didn’t mean it

don’t look back at me, 

im not eurydice:

i’ll never be

anything of value, really, unless you’re counting in scholarships valedictorian tassels thousand page astrophysics novels tugged open by skinny eleven year old hands, got good grades never did drugs never drank never cursed always took the hit never talked back never argued with middle aged bald men that said she’s going somewhere, she is.

yknow, things that aren’t real, things that don’t matter, does any of this matter, can you hear me? are you listening? i don’t want you hate me but maybe it’s better off this way, yknow, torn apart over something stupid so i’ll stop wishing i was there, i’ll stop wishing that you cared, i’ll stop. i’ll stop and listen to the silence in the space where a red bloody heart should be beating but doesn’t. i’ll stop and listen to the stillness where my life should be.

i’ll stop and think, i’ll think that maybe i should’ve made better decisions, maybe i should’ve listened to you, maybe i should’ve listened to my twelve year old self when she said that she didn’t wanna be here anymore. would it have been easier if i had let myself crash and burn? would it have been easier to let her tell me she was leaving one more time, would it have been easier to keep believing her? are you gonna leave me too?

am i once again stuck in the stupid stage where i believe without a doubt the words that are said to me, where i never once think that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t telling the truth. about any of it, about wanting to die, about trying to die, about wanting me. is it so stupid for me to believe it when someone tells me they love me? is it so stupid for me to believe that you won’t leave me even when every muscle in my body is telling me to run.

telling me you hate me. telling me i would hurt you and hate myself for it, telling me you would hurt me and kill yourself because of it. telling me that it’ll never, ever be like the books i read as a kid. was i stupid to think that it might be? was i stupid to think that two ragged edges could fit together, that my hurt would help yours instead of ripping you open even more? 

but anyway, all this to say

if i choose hell, don’t look back

don’t love me

it’s easier that way.

[illicit-opia]

there are some things that you aren’t supposed to think about on a six hour car ride and this is one of them

okay so yeah, it’ll never work out. whatever. is it so embarrassing to keep trying anyway? 

‘cause maybe if i can’t have the whole i’ll find a piece of it huddled

between warm bodies in the backseat of a car,

or somewhere in the middle of broken electronics and goodwill

converse that don’t really fit quite right. maybe it’s hidden in the guts of that 

tiny little camera on a keychain that

works, somehow, but this won’t. we won’t. 

is it so embarrassing to keep looking for it anyway?

‘cause so what if i can’t press my lips against yours. huh? maybe i’ll press 

flowers instead. maybe i’ll memorize your starbucks order and fall deeper

into the car floorboard, deeper and deeper into this. whatever this is. certainly not

deeper into you, ‘cause it’ll never work out. remember? we aren’t stuck

in some wattpad fanfiction read aloud in the car as a joke. we aren’t 

gonna get kidnapped by one direction but maybe we’re stuck in a different way. not

kidnapped, necessarily, but stolen. taken away to a dark little corner of the earth and shattered,

‘cause not one person’s gonna notice we’re gone anyway. not one

person’s gonna notice we’ve come back broken. 

[illicit-opia]

there are some things that you aren’t supposed to think about on a six hour car ride and this is one of them

okay so yeah, it’ll never work out. whatever. is it so embarrassing to keep trying anyway? 

‘cause maybe if i can’t have the whole i’ll find a piece of it huddled

between warm bodies in the backseat of a car,

or somewhere in the middle of broken electronics and goodwill

converse that don’t really fit quite right. maybe it’s hidden in the guts of that 

tiny little camera on a keychain that

works, somehow, but this won’t. we won’t. 

is it so embarrassing to keep looking for it anyway?

‘cause so what if i can’t press my lips against yours. huh? maybe i’ll press 

flowers instead. maybe i’ll memorize your starbucks order and fall deeper

into the car floorboard, deeper and deeper into this. whatever this is. certainly not

deeper into you, ‘cause it’ll never work out. remember? we aren’t stuck

in some wattpad fanfiction read aloud in the car as a joke. we aren’t 

gonna get kidnapped by one direction but maybe we’re stuck in a different way. not

kidnapped, necessarily, but stolen. taken away to a dark little corner of the earth and shattered,

‘cause not one person’s gonna notice we’re gone anyway. not one

person’s gonna notice we’ve come back broken. 

[illicit-opia]

[making-anagrams-from-posts]

faithfulness wilted, hope-incited kiss:

ascend

girly

gritty

antic forbid, thin bud. omit.

[illicit-opia]

is this girlhood?

[illicit-opia]

is this girlhood?

i wonder sometimes if she thinks about that night

her fingertips tracing circles on my bare shoulders

like our footsteps trace the halls of this building.

if you won’t kiss me here then

let’s run away together. yes, yes, i know it’s

cliche but the point is i’m tired of waiting.

i’m tired of trying to pretend like butterflies

don’t beat at the walls of my ribcage and climb up

the inside of my throat. maybe that’s why i choke

on my own breath; on all of the words.

please say them for me. i’m sorry i’m so selfish but i’m

scared. i’d rather never have you than have

to lose you. it’s embarrassing but

it’s honest. i want to be honest. and i am,

in everything except words— in laughter and little smiles that

only you seem to notice— in fingers intertwined

and i’ll bring you your lunch if you want and

god, new year’s eve when you scraped your teeth

against my shoulder and bared open my

bloodied pumping heart—your

immediate apology, face turning red, i don’t know why i did that,

no, it’s okay. i promise.

i just want it to be real.

[illicit-opia]

i can only let myself love her in color

[illicit-opia]

“the nature of memory”

[illicit-opia]

“all needle and no thread”

[illicit-opia]

everything on fire (nothing ever burning down)

[illicit-opia]

everything on fire (nothing ever burning down)

[illicit-opia]

[illicit-opia]

[illicit-opia]

[illicit-opia]

[illicit-opia]

“Do you really think that at any period in our friendship you were worthy of the love I showed you, or that for a single moment I thought you were? I knew you were not.

But Love does not traffic in a marketplace, nor use a huckster’s scales. Its joy, like the joy of the intellect, is to feel itself alive. The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no less.”

— Oscar Wilde, de Profundis

[illicit-opia]

mind over matter

you know how when you’re fourteen everything seems to matter a little bit more? all of it

was a little more colorful— faster heartbeats. cursive handwriting. she was

trees, bushes, limbs, everything on fire

and nothing ever burning down. nothing ever left unforgiven. and yeah, yeah, i

know it’s cliche. shh. it’s okay. come lay down next to me. would

you do that for me? we can stay here all day if you want to. i’ll read

you a poem that isn’t about you and we can listen to young the giant. it’s a

little harder to imagine now, but it’s fine. i’ll be fine. just give me a few

dozen more years of flipping through pages

of a book i never even wanted to read. she used to say the difference between want and

need is when you’re an ocean away and you feel

a sort of drowning. a tug at your stomach. like

the waves in between you are churning and all the sudden you’re throwing

up over the side, except you were never really in a boat and it

all is some random metaphor typed up against some random keyboard. words shoved up against

a sheet of blank paper like how she would push you up against the

wall when you were still in belgium and she kissed you and everything was fine. if that wall

could talk it would murmur sweet nothings it learned from us. if this is

still a metaphor then you’re the fire from earlier and i’m the saltwater that

doused all your pretty orange flames. i don’t know anything about love

but i do know how to kill it. i know how to start all my sentences with “i

don’t want this to end.” and it always does, anyway, but i think

maybe the begging is its own kind of a lifeboat. maybe i still hold pieces of it

inside me. or whatever. maybe that’s love. maybe not. maybe love is just sending an email forgetting that it’s over and then having to remember that it is.

.

this poem is a golden shovel! read the last words of each line and they make a quote: “it was fire. i would read a few pages and feel like throwing it against the wall. is that love? i think maybe it is.” — richard siken