shattered light @in-theembers - Tumblr Blog

Register or donate today to be part of Ohio State's movement to end pediatric cancer.

Hello fireflies! I apologize for my long absence- college will do that to you. However, I’m happy to let you know I’m still writing and trying to do big things!

I’ll cut to the chase- Some of you know that, aside from poetry, I am a future nurse and current researcher who is passionate about improving outcomes for kids diagnosed with cancer. This year I’m participating in a fundraiser called BuckeyeThon to raise money for the very research I participate in!

With every donation of $10 or more, you will receive

a handwritten custom poem on the topic of your choosing OR

a handwritten copy of your favorite poem of mine in the mail

a cute graphic of the poem

a thank you card and some dried flowers or stickers or whatever else I can slip inside

all of my love

This could be a fantastic holiday gift for you or someone you love, and for a cause close to all of our hearts. Message me with any questions or if you decide to donate!

in-theembers

Giving Tuesday! ^^^^

in-theembers

Register or donate today to be part of Ohio State's movement to end pediatric cancer.

Hello fireflies! I apologize for my long absence- college will do that to you. However, I’m happy to let you know I’m still writing and trying to do big things!

I’ll cut to the chase- Some of you know that, aside from poetry, I am a future nurse and current researcher who is passionate about improving outcomes for kids diagnosed with cancer. This year I’m participating in a fundraiser called BuckeyeThon to raise money for the very research I participate in!

With every donation of $10 or more, you will receive

a handwritten custom poem on the topic of your choosing OR

a handwritten copy of your favorite poem of mine in the mail

a cute graphic of the poem

a thank you card and some dried flowers or stickers or whatever else I can slip inside

all of my love

This could be a fantastic holiday gift for you or someone you love, and for a cause close to all of our hearts. Message me with any questions or if you decide to donate!

Register or donate today to be part of Ohio State's movement to end pediatric cancer.

Hello fireflies! I apologize for my long absence- college will do that to you. However, I’m happy to let you know I’m still writing and trying to do big things!

I’ll cut to the chase- Some of you know that, aside from poetry, I am a future nurse and current researcher who is passionate about improving outcomes for kids diagnosed with cancer. This year I’m participating in a fundraiser called BuckeyeThon to raise money for the very research I participate in!

With every donation of $10 or more, you will receive

a handwritten custom poem on the topic of your choosing OR

a handwritten copy of your favorite poem of mine in the mail

a cute graphic of the poem

a thank you card and some dried flowers or stickers or whatever else I can slip inside

all of my love

This could be a fantastic holiday gift for you or someone you love, and for a cause close to all of our hearts. Message me with any questions or if you decide to donate!

in-theembers

Very tired, inky, and happy hands from an amazingly successful book signing 💙 More pictures to come!

in-theembers

We sold out of books, had lines almost out the door, lots of coffee and friends and reunions, hugging and writing sappy notes on page after page, this was a dream come true

in-theembers

I thought about it a million times. Under the stars you love so much, on top of the tallest building in the city, in the quiet crescendo of breath you take after you say my name. I studied anatomy books so I could read your chest like a map and I knew exactly where to place my hand to feel your heart start tripping over its feet. I’d stand my ground, steady with just the right amount of give, a hotel bed with all the covers pulled back except this time you’d know it was Home. You in your favorite gray plaid shirt and me with a body pressed up against yours like the wind in March And this is how I wanted it. But It was 7:34 on a Monday night and you’d been sick all week and I failed a chemistry test that morning but I kissed you, and I think it felt like what God said the first time the sun opened its eyes into His. Somehow the light echoed off my ribs in the half-empty parking lot, gravel gossiping under my toes as I rose up to say hello Because you were laughing at how I almost spilled my drink on my shoes and there were crumbs at the corner of your mouth and I didn’t have a napkin so I kissed you, finally, and my hands were shaking and you were wearing someone elses’ coat and it was nothing like I’d scripted but I guess I like surprise endings (and beginnings) after all.

Improv, Elizabeth McNamara (via in-theembers)

The first book signing for Drumbeat for the Mending was two years ago today- since then it has been read around the globe and been used to inspire art, tattoos, and the healing journeys of more people than I could ever hope to have helped otherwise. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

#drumbeat for the mending #book signing #two years #!!!#i love you all

in-theembers

Excerpt from “For Drew”, which will be available in Pieces of Dawn on December 1st!

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!

in-theembers

Boy with a heart river deep, bleeds red, bleeds blue green pink yellow all the colors, got a rhythm like a sunrise, holy temple hands. Boy as a backseat driver, maple syrup morning voice, covers you in kisses and throws away the key. Boy half concrete, mostly air, bounces through the streets like a tambourine parade. Boy without a plan, firecracker mouth, spits sparklers when he talks and honeysuckle when he sings. Boy who leaves the scared right in your stomach, got jazz making up his bones. Boy who names the city, walks on railroad tracks, sneakers on the edge of the bridge. Boy with pocket change, melted-popsicle handshake. Boy with a graffiti smile. Catches pipe dreams in a butterfly net and leaves them out to dry.

Brooklyn, Elizabeth McNamara (via in-theembers)

#I LOVE THIS ONE IDC

in-theembers

This is from “If darkness comes,” which miiiight just be my new favorite poem in Pieces of Dawn…only a few more days until December 1!

in-theembers

forever my personal favorite.

in-theembers

See how the lights dim: This whole city is an ache. Every street is empty. Twenty-seven miles of open, bruising sky. I lose you in the glow. I find you in the noise. All the street lamps and highway exits are trembling and raw and feel like open mouths and feel like open wounds and feel like the inside of me and feel like losing you. I’m reaching out the window of this car Eighty miles an hour and still no closer Something quick and sharp is on the radio and my heartbeat is synced and I know I’ll never beat like I did before. Pulsing like your body did. Your rhythm. Bleeding onto sidewalks, onto roadsides. Like you taught me. Grabbing at every dot of light on the horizon, slipping through my fingers like your door chain, I close my eyes and think about a crash and weight on my chest and alleyways the crush of humanity girls in black dresses endless desert and losing you. Everything is crimson and shadows of gold. I hear you in the traffic, Especially at night.

The angel city closes its pearly gates at your name, Elizabeth McNamara (via in-theembers)

in-theembers

I picked the prettiest flower in my heart and said, here, this one’s for you.

in-theembers

1. I love you. I always will. That doesn’t mean I will never love someone more than you. 2. You had my heart. I took it back. That’s all there is to it. 3. This is only a tragedy if you make it one. 4. You’ll always be family. But sometimes families can’t talk for a little while. 5. Families don’t call each other in the middle of the night because they are lonely. 6. No, not really. Not that kind of lonely. 7. Families certainly don’t kiss goodbye like you want us to. 8. Family doesn’t look at me that way. 9. You are right for someone. But you are not right for everyone. 10. You are not right for me. 11. You are good. But you are not good for everyone. 12. You are not good for me.

What this means and what it doesn’t, Elizabeth McNamara (via in-theembers)

in-theembers

It’s 3 a.m. and I’m thinking about the mountains again. Waking up to a sky big enough to hold all the things I wanted to give you every color alive bleeding, unashamed nothing faded. It’s 4:30 a.m. and I’m thinking about cabins and smoke and gray mornings your arms around me, a blue plaid shirt, breath and coffee steam curling everything soft. The sun is coming up and I’m thinking about stones and crumbling and big echo silence our hands A pick up truck that won’t start, the smell of gasoline rain on a window, long winding road, nowhere to go rain in our hair, on your face. I’m thinking about the mountains, about the way they hold their secrets the way I could dig my fingers into their sides and feel a century crumble the way nothing really gives until it’s gone. It’s 6 a.m. in the city I feel your ghost beside me in bed waiting to ask me which trail to haunt next like we weren’t always wanderers like we weren’t always lost.

The last picture from a trip we never took, Elizabeth McNamara (via in-theembers)

in-theembers

Here’s to all the hearts that didn’t make it home. All the hearts left on someone else’s doorstep On street corners and calloused hands In gutters with broken glass, Under unmade beds and moving boxes back pockets and subway seats, An unchecked lost and found. All the hearts still crying for a chance, Orphan hearts Transient hearts Hearts that never meant to be drifters, but always caught the wrong wind.

Homeless Hearts, Elizabeth McNamara (via in-theembers)

in-theembers

You are the symphony I devoted my whole life to composing, Spilling ink on my death-bed sheets as I penned the crashing, brilliant notes of you into existence. I know which chords in you are still aching for resolution, I know your thrilling soprano highs, Staccato mornings, Pianissimo cracks and legato nights. I know the dissonance in you, both passing and otherwise. I am the melody you heard in the car on your way to work Stuck in your head for maybe a day You meant to look up the name of it later but forgot.

A different sort of decomposing, Elizabeth McNamara (via in-theembers)

in-theembers

This is the last poem I’m writing for you. And I know if you read this, you’d shake your head because we both know I’ve said that before: People on the street mistake me for a parade to the lost and found, a thousand uncut ties trailing behind me red ribbons tangled around my feet. But this time is different. See, I’m tired of being a full-time haunting and a part-time ghost. When I walk into church it’s like the first chord of a song dipped in blues and everyone can hear my sadness like funeral bells like mourning doves at night. So this is my new proposal: You are the only shade of love I’ve ever worn and maybe this isn’t how it works but I think love grows differently every time. So you love her in different colors than the ones I left on your walls and that’s okay, and that’s good. I hope you love her clean and new and beautiful and enough to paint the whole town red Just leave a little corner all golds and midnight dark first breath of dawn gray where you can remember what we had. The line where we ended was so blurry but it’s finally clearing up, from where I’m standing When the sky lights up in every color and you hesitate on your first porch step, I’m asking you to think of me, and when I slow dance to jazz in my room by myself I’ll think of you, but only for a moment. I don’t mean that to be mean, see, it’s just that we’ve already given each other so much time and we’ve only got so much time left. I’m working on restoring myself into the quiet masterpiece I thought I could be, so it’s okay if I’m just a watercolor memory to you now. Just let me be a good one.

If you find this you’ll know it’s for you (Coming Clean), Elizabeth McNamara (via

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Find this poem and many more about the colors of healing in my latest book, Pieces of Dawn! <3 (Available here)

in-theembers

My love, the snow falls in slow motion here. My love, I’m aching for you like Moon aches for repentance. For a chance to sing her apologies to someone who will listen. Like the tide that almost doesn’t pull away. This love is a grain of sand. This love is the last drop of ocean. This love is a whole world of sorrow and reaching too far. My love, I don’t remember your mother’s face. My love, this is Sun being born in the memory of your touch. Growing from velvet and deep breaths. Where all my golden arrows hit their target, every time. My love, I’m desperate for you in a language I cannot name. All these words sound like morning. Like carving out a cherry tree against my tongue. My love, you are a siren. You are the only thing I Know.

You Are a Siren, Elizabeth McNamara (via in-theembers)

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