esmé

insta: @poetrybyesme

[inesme-veritas]

[inesme-veritas]

[inesme-veritas]

[inesme-veritas]

your sweet sweet smile

and my red eyes bleeding mascara into the humidity of july

i wonder if you can tell i put it all on for you

today in the mirror i practiced looking like someone less complicated to love but my hands still shook the whole time

i keep forgetting i might not be able to change your mind and i’m sorry i came here tonight to keep crossing our invisible lines

i’ll leave us to separate sides of the room but just know i’ve already ruined the distance in my mind

it’s just that i start to forget the way you look at me and i promise my only plans are to go home and turn your face into more poems

it’s impossible to be still with all this buzzing deep in my bones and i wasn’t expecting to end up with so much of you making a wreck of me

it could be the gin or the pot too but

i know i go dizzy from just a little bit of your attention

you’re so easy to look at, i hope you haven’t noticed that i have a tendency to fall apart in your direction

[inesme-veritas]

laying on the ground a little stoned

playing with light streaks

and looking upside down at the trees

i’m trying to remember what it felt like inside of me before i grew up and learned about terrible things

and if there’s one thing that hasn’t changed

it’s the way sunshine looks through leaves

i wish i was a kid again so when i close my eyes it is only red hot rainbows and beams instead of the last time you really looked at me

[inesme-veritas]

if i could love you completely

i wouldn’t have to slip away

into these middle worlds where we have no names and belong only to each other

moonlit grass is the colour of your eyes

and this is where i kept those stars,

the ones from those blurry hours we spent behind the shed last summer

i’ll go get lost

in the only place leaving you never happens

every time we almost disappear

it’s still august in here

and you’re making me playlists

salt sweetened kisses and metric on loop

who would you be for me

if you knew i’d keep us safe in my mind forever

[inesme-veritas]

i become something softer than a person

with you

i can feel myself trying to slip through you

to coat your bones

and dissolve in the places you are lonely

blur the lines between where i end and you begin

i want to be everywhere in you

and found nowhere beyond your skin

sometimes it frightens me

how easily i surrender

to drifting so far away from myself

until there is only

our bodies

your breathing

and the thought

that i was never seperate from this

[inesme-veritas]

this town isn’t big enough for both of us

yes we are cowboys

and i think we should head far west

or maybe the prairies

like that dream you had

but i keep getting caught

with a gun

pointed at my chest

you and the rattling chain at your ankles

sounding like a lonely death

if i have to go

please can it be instead

with your hands around my neck

did i tell you this love’s a rattlesnake

every night, coiled

in my kitchen sink

i could block the drain

but i’ve stopped fearing

the way i get sick and poisoned

with your name

so dust collecting at my boots

yes i still choose you

and those bullets meant for me too

[inesme-veritas]

summer wishes

1. the peonies bloom and they remember my name

2. me on the porch and things that last forever

3. the peaches are soft and split easily in my hands the way i do in yours

4. i believe in june stretching forever

5. i tell the river my secrets, she hugs me and it will be okay

6. the humidity lingers in the 9pm sunsets

7. so do you

[inesme-veritas]

sorry for showing up at your door

unannounced and high

i know how it looks

i become an awful thing

trying to find myself still breathing

in your chest

sorry i’m sweating gin and

it’s mixing with our bad decisions leaking from my skin

tomorrow i’ll be hungover from coming apart on your steps

but for the night

i want to be drunk and looking for myself where pieces of your ribs used to be

i am many things for you and never bearable

always coming back to eat the bruised fruit

and offering a taste from my tongue too

maybe under god’s porch lights i could almost be forgiven

[inesme-veritas]

i’ve never learned how to leave you, only how to come back

you live in the parts of myself

that i never learned how to leave—

this side of the river

and my teenage dreams

[inesme-veritas]

i don’t know how to ask you

to choose me

so here i go leaving poems

at your back door

like a cat with something dead

hoping it’s enough to let me in

i’m dragging things i find in the dark back to you between my teeth

split open, if i have to

just to prove there was a heart

that used to beat

i’m on my own

out in the wild

scraping together offerings to bring

the way i’ve ruined myself

laid bloody at your feet

look at what i’ve done for us

look at what i’ve done for us

you’re good at opening the door

when i’m half-starved

look

look

look

this is what i’ve found

this is what i’m willing to lose

i’ve stopped recognizing myself

when i become something feral

trying to feed me to you

[inesme-veritas]

you’ve been searching for deliverance

and we both know it’s not in the salvation

you claim to find between my thighs

i was never trying to be something

that could be forgiven

still i cannot resist the way you say my name like i owe you an apology

for setting you on fire

absolution must fear

all the wrong ways you want me

but we would suffocate in the comfort

of a clean conscience anyways

so let’s forsake grace

for the sake of the thing in the dark

with teeth that want to devour us

come press your sins as kisses

into my spine

i’ll fold easily into desire

and make altars in places i should not be

let your guilt crumble

against my ribs

i’ll turn it into an offering for the unholy

while we both become irredeemable

[inesme-veritas]

happy easter—

i would die for your sins and hope i resurrect in a place where i’m not one of them

[inesme-veritas]

thoughts about you in the fridge magnets

[inesme-veritas]

what if it’s still snowing at the end of march

and the river forgets my name by summer

just keeps moving— cold shoulders, somewhere else to be

what if august comes and goes

and i’m still standing in the current

waiting for her to recognize me?

what if there’s the middle of june

and the peonies never bloom

keeping their secrets folded

like i was never part of them

what if i try to be sunlight

and still—

they never open for me again

what if there’s stained glass and

little rainbow sunbeams,

two coffee cups in a sink

and lives that began with me

but what if i only watch through windows

and eventually,

i always have to leave

what if i keep learning the shape of hands

that don’t know what to do with me

and another winter comes

where i have to remember

how to forget someone

what if every 4pm shadow stays a memory

of something

i do not have?

what if nothing i want ever wants me back?

[inesme-veritas]

i think i knew you

in a past life

or two

broken clocks

and eternal afternoons

i think all of it is written

in my flesh

how we broke

how we bled

how still

we found eachother

again and again