Poems

Thanks for reading a little bit of my world. Ask me for more of it.

[isabella-d-b]

August

This is the summer of paradise and bold looks that make my cry with the days rolling end to end where it all feels like 4 pm or  4 am no in betweens. We hang out like clothes on a spun out line.

You make me comfortable and I didn’t know I wanted that.

Together this summer we feel like all the air in the atmosphere is concentrated into a thick silicone straw someone is blowing cool air over us just barely touching the crown of our heads. It’s soft.

You make me grateful for slow summers and I didn’t know I wanted that.

This August feeling could last and I don’t even need to grip it. I loosened up this summer  and I think I always needed that.

[isabella-d-b]

7.25.19

We’re throwing ourselves through the universe flaming like a comet or something else more significant than just space dust. We’re on our way to land or water that will dull the flames or crash us to a landing. I don’t know.

My eyes are shut.

I’m not good at closing fully but we’re too bright to stare at. Eventually we’ll land but I could not tell you where.

I used to be sure this would end in fire  but that was when we were in slow, desperate descent and I clung to you as if to hold us by force of my hands to the stars.

Now it’s an uprising.

Now we control the flame. Burn me bright, I wish, burn us long. I keep my eyes open to you.

[isabella-d-b]

Where do you live

In New York City!

[isabella-d-b]

All my poems are about you lately, even the ones that aren’t

I wear my vulnerability under the

arches of my feet, which to be

fair, are not all that high. Sometimes it feels

like a smooth metal arch, Saint

Louis under bent skin colored sky

though I’ve never been to Missouri.

Other times it’s the whole wet

workd compressed in a ball and I’m rolling

it, the universe that is, around hoping

it won’t pop.

It peaks sometimes in sharp

needles mountained in the most arching

slope, painful but I grimace, continue.

My vulnerability vibrates under the turn

ups of my toes. I breathe and break

and I cannot balance.

I will not, again I say, not fall.

I’ll let it puncture head to heel instead.

[isabella-d-b]

I want to write about you so many times I lose count

I’m scared we sell us short.

When you came over on Friday night you were wearing a black T-shirt and in the fold of your sleeve I found every breathy yes I’d ever said, every time I scraped the night off my raw lips with my tongue, desperate for a bit of your DNA.

I’m scared if this ends what I’ll have to call it is cheap.

And when we went to sleep that night I felt the plants and vines on my sheets come from thread and nothingness to wrap my legs to yours, my heart to yours, my everything tied up in life and in you. You and me so tight together our roots start to meld and mix.

I’m scared you’ll let your fear get in the way and we’ll end.

Do you realize every morning after every night we spend together, you wake up before me, sometimes hours before? That I can imagine you hovering next to me like you know how electromagnetic your touch is, how I couldn’t possibly sleep with that much heat radiating, vibrating?

I’m scared we both won’t ever be able to say how much this means.

But when I finally wake up you find me and hold me, hold me to you so deeply if a tidal wave washed over the city, the whole thing threatened under ten pounds of salt and dirt and leftover stop signs, you and me wouldn’t fucking move. We could swallow every gallon of water feeling nothing more than the bubble stuck in our throats.

I’m scared sometimes that you don’t admit to yourself that I’m something real to you. I’m scared sometimes that I convince myself you’re something real to me.

But Saturday morning we got up not too early. You slept better than you do and I got up to make coffee, find light from the sleep of my bedroom. You were a step behind me, barely, and you lifted me up so I could wrap my legs around your hips.

Real. We didn’t even kiss. This is real. We stayed there for a minute. I know it’s real. I looked at your eyes and I think my lips opened, barely. This has to be real.

[isabella-d-b]

I’ve been trying to write this poem for three weeks. This is what I have. I wish it said more.

There could be a world under our feet and we would never know.

There is, you say. We’re standing on it.

No. Not that one.

You look down at the brown earth that you know you can see and I think my metaphor is not for you. I think it’s for me

but look at what you see when you close your eyes, I tell you. Or in the second between taking out your contacts and putting on your glasses. What do you see?

You know I don’t like when I can’t see.

you tell me but I’m not talking about that. I know that. I look out under my feet and I think I can make you out I think I can pull you out from under the dirt. I’ll dig if I have to. I know you’re there.

I’ll teach you how, I say, to crack the dirt floor with little taps.

Say okay and let me. Let you, let us both let you out from there. We can move into metaphors together.

[isabella-d-b]

In every journal I have I write on the last page the lines and phrases I don’t know how to use yet. Some of these have made their way into poems, some haven’t yet, and some never will. But I finished my journal today so here they are.

[isabella-d-b]

3.4.19

Sometimes I picture you sitting with ghosts

across the aisle in the church where I

won’t get married.

I picture you clapping with your

see through hands for me, translucently at me

with the physics of your fingers blinking through

one another.

I wish you wrote poetry and felt

more like me. I wish you’d let yourself soften

like I have. I grew more flesh so I could see clearly

the ghost parts of me, making room

on my side of the church.

It’s better if you let them in.

Your ghosts come through the walls regardless

so relax and let us in. I can show you to soften

for us.

If you are looking for angles and glances around walls, I am not your woman.

[isabella-d-b]

Front doors & future plans

My door doesn’t lock and

I think there’s enough space in front

of the room to push my heavy desk in front

of it (if it happens)

did they ever fix my intercom?

I think so, but my door doesn’t lock and

I thought which kids I would die for

(if it happens)

Does that make me a bad teacher

if I wouldn’t take a shot for all twenty seven

in first period

My door doesn’t lock and I think

my desk isn’t heavy enough to block it

not if someone really wanted to get in

I should tell my parents I love them more often

this isn’t what I signed up for

none of us are ready

none of the furniture in here is heavy enough

but I’m not ready, especially not me because if

a shooter comes (it happens)

my door doesn’t lock.

[isabella-d-b]

Thank you for liking my poem. I'm enjoying reading yours (and your prose)!

I’m so glad you like them! 😊

[isabella-d-b]

C,

-you sat next to me at the Port Authority, early for the bus, and didn’t say a word because I was folded in my copy of Catch 22. I held your coffee while you took your coat off and convinced you that your new haircut didn’t look too short.

-in Jersey City I opened our friend’s refrigerator to make drinks with nicer vodka than either of us would buy. I held each bottle, seltzer first, over my shoulder to think about them, and you stood behind me taking each one from my hand to counter, hand to counter.

-we all went out to the divey bar with the arcade games nearby. We sat next to each other in that racing one where I moved the seat all the way up and reminded you I really don’t drive. I reached into my back pocket for the tokens and you slid over and squeezed the seam of that pocket, twice.

-we both agreed when we waited for the PATH train that we could never live in Jersey. You were freezing on the platform and we didn’t know which way to go, so I asked the cop near us because I know you’re scared. I don’t care if people say I try to protect you too much. You looked relieved. 

-and on the other side, when we got off at the new World Trade Center station and you saw me tense, shake, I told you why I get so                here, you decided to come home with me. You were right next to me with my head down and my hands in my coat until we got to the N.

-I got up at three in the morning to pee and get some water. Back in bed, you waited wide awake with your arm across my outside part of the bed and the blankets drawn back so I could curl up into you like I like. I couldn’t sleep on top of your arm. You let me push it over and then pressed the whole side of your body to the side of mine. Your head against my shoulder, my arm against your waist, my toes landing somewhere by your knees.

-a few minutes to eight we woke up, me feeling hungover and grumpy. You ran your fingers through my clean hair, scratched my back, made me come twice, dug your palm into my shoulder, and pressed your thumb into some space on my palm. I rested my tired head on your grey t-shirt and listened to the sounds of your hands. “Is your headache gone?” you asked. “Like magic,” I said. “Magic,” you agreed.

-we talked about my feminist mom, your commute to outer boroughs, my dying houseplants, your roommate’s dog, the best type of command strips, and if there’s a Sur la Table in Soho or if there ever was. We thought of the same joke at the same time, about if I can be a real vegetarian with all the blow jobs I’ve given you. I said it first and you almost spit your coffee laughing. We lied to ourselves last night when we said you would leave early. For right now, this is all I’ve always wanted and I trust you. That’s all, and that’s everything.

-I wrote this down so I would remember. I told it to you because I want you to remember too.

[isabella-d-b]

Winter ‘19

I feel like the last day of a cold month

turning the sink water as hot as it goes

you stick your hands under my faucet drip

and recoil because it’s too much

and you thought it would be perfect

I thought this would be perfect.

It feels sometimes like I’m standing cold

outside the falafel stand on Bowery

and my legs are shaking with all of it

(all of what?) all of it

I’m so tired of wearing this scarf around my

neck

but it’s colder without it.

My fingers run cold and my fingers won’t make it

through the winter much longer like this.

I wear gloves with holes and I hope the watery heat in my belly

will spread. There’s heat in here if I stopped giving it away

it would warm me

warm me

please warm me

[isabella-d-b]

My first of 2019

I’ve been drinking the same coffee all day

because when I poured it you were here

the outside world is burnt toast soggy with

grey rainy Tuesdays

but in my room it was sweeter than anything inching along walls made of browning ivy

I know nothing quite perfectly fits

into the three minute mint cold cracks of your day

but your hand laid on the small of my back

held me so upright

I could have stacked my fingers in a ruler row

all the way to my clouds.

The imprint on my sheets, the

soft spotlight on our coffees, and your hand laid on the small of my back.

[isabella-d-b]

This whole year I kept track of the things people said to me, write to me, or sang to me (yes, a lot of these are song lyrics) and this is what it ended up looking like. Kind of cool, I think.

[isabella-d-b]

If we keep it honest we don’t need a label

If this goes south I’ll write a poem

that starts:

Are you angry that I changed the rules and let you break them?

Or if it goes well, I’ll start a poem about:

the kiss of ours that feels like all twenty four hours at once and your hands like millenniums

But I don’t know where we’re going yet.

So for now I’ll write you a poem that says:

you make my stomach feel like caramel sweet and sticky on my fingertips and mind, you color my early mornings pink the whole way to work and I feel red by noon in the best way. I’ll wake up at the six thirties that feel like four and I ask if it’s five as long as I get to do it all next to you.

[isabella-d-b]

Mondays

I want to be the biggest mistake you ever made

Regret me like the morning after spikes when you’re hungover

and every movement hurts deep

with every roll over onto a new square inch of sheet

think of me and wish you had given

all ten of your fingers stretched out to hold mine

instead of just saying I could have five

but handing me seven.

But people are whole and I am not your world.

I don’t want to be either.

I want you to mean what you say and act like what you told me in the staircase of our high school

(this all feels shades of sixteen)

was made of your chemistry, my words, both of us leaning on the tile wall

that gap where our eyes met.

They met yesterday afternoon and if I trace the edges I can go as high as I

want to the third floor maybe.

You were real in that staircase

but I am real too. People are whole

and so am I.

[isabella-d-b]

Any guilty pleasures?

Hmmm mostly trashy tv shows. The bachelor/bachelorette for sure. And every once in a while that really bad for you, aggressively sweet & chemically hazelnut coffee creamer