my soul is a crowded subway train

poems and essays about boys and homesickness. also at nextbestcoast.tumblr.com

[katesbennett]

the whole sky looked like a grave. the moon, a wide open mouth reaching towards something we couldn’t see. everything is black and blue and hurts too much, and this winter feels like it will never end. this winter of hurt and solitude, the winter she lost the baby and I wrote a hundred poems about the winter she lost the baby and here’s the punchline, the baby is still gone. the house, still empty. my bed, too full but only on the nights I want to be alone. the whole sky looks like a grave. the midwest is too far away, mid-march, a time stamp of the places I loved and left. leaving is the only thing I’ve never loved as much as it deserved. leaving is the second thing I’ve loved more than it deserved. you were the first, and every time I go home I think about the nights we spent loving each other. the nights you should have spent leaving. all rain storms feel like forgiveness. when I close my eyes I feel like I am young and things are okay. “the thunder sounds like your heartbeat,” you told me years ago. we don’t have thunderstorms this far west but I imagine if we did they would sound like a train heading far away from the people we were when we loved each other. if Arizona is not everything you hoped, at least you can be disappointed in my birthplace. at least that, if nothing else, will feel like closure.

[katesbennett]

In this poem I am still fifteen and unafraid. Neither of us knows what leaving feels like. In this poem I am still fifteen and haven’t learned how to write poems for you yet. In this poem the tin vase clatters every time I bump the table. In this poem you are 1600 or so miles away, a figment of my imagination blurred into reality. In this poem I haven’t called you in days, haven’t spoken to you in months. In this poem he throws me a surprise party and everyone I love but you is there and I don’t cry because I don’t miss anything. In this poem we don’t talk about the ending. In this poem I stack up all the peels from all the clementines, a shrine to forgiveness. In this poem there is still clay underneath my fingernails and caked on my good shoes and I don’t care, I don’t care about anything except west Virginia in august and two bottles of champagne on a front porch at the top of a hill. In this poem I continually categorize all the places I have loved without you. In this poem I have forgotten your laugh. In this poem I grind coffee beans and wash dishes, a shrine to forgetting.

[katesbennett]

I am dropping ice cubes into a glass, slow clinks against the silence of solitude. Something about this reminds me of last December in Arizona, the way I was cold for an entire week except for when your suit jacket hung loose around my shoulders. The cigarette smoke reminded me of fireworks but looking back on it now I can't tell the difference between the sulfur that hangs in the air after a shotgun shell hits the ground, and the American spirit blues that touched your lips.

Last December

[nextbestcoast]

Things end and we turn them into poetry and no one ever says quite what they want to, and I have written hundreds of words about your leaving, and none of them made it feel any more real, and the only thing really certain is how much I will miss you. I will miss your cashmere hugs and the purple hairs in the shower drain (but those have been gone for awhile.) I’ll miss the art supplies on the kitchen table, that one week there was graphite dust coating the coffee table. I will miss drinking endless gin & tonics, and later when you discovered absinthe and every cocktail was absinthe and you lit them all on fire. I’ll miss the constant raspberry and blueberry cartons in the fridge (and the monthly melon club is no good without you.) I already miss trying to cook vegan dinners just so you can share the leftovers. I’ll miss all the spontaneous coffee dates and that trip to Denver where you almost hit a truck on E-470. I will miss your presence in our house, the way you hung dead flowers everywhere and always watered my plants and made our space feel like home. It feels less like home without you. I’ll miss you forever.

[nextbestcoast]

We sleep with the door unlocked and the windows open, small and quiet in our little infinity, our gentle world together. I am learning what it means to love and love well, how to be held without running, how to rest without feeling restlessness. I look around at the people we love and the people we love together, take comfort in the realization that we are all just figuring this out, and thank goodness we are lucky enough to figure it out together. I drown in the gratefulness of these quiet, slow mornings in the midst of the hustle. Of coffee dates and real talks and sitting cross legged on my living room floor, drinking gin and reading poems. We’ve lived in this home for a month and a half, and there is an air mattress permanent on the living room floor, a homage to the community and the family we are building here, a place for uncertain strangers and friends from far away. All I ever wanted was to feel at home somewhere, to settle my restless heart long enough to grow roots, and here I have that: an air mattress on the living room floor. Him, kissing me awake in the morning. House plants growing on the windowsill. Me, growing into myself.

[katesbennett]

Every summer, a different taste. Last year still lingers like beer and space queen in my lungs. If I try hard enough, I can still feel the sweat dripping down my back from all those nights we spent in my apartment, shit talking and laughing until the sun came up or we collapsed in a puddle like puppies in my bedroom. That one summer, it tastes like ripe figs and sandstorm, gritty between my teeth. Even though neither of us ever said anything, I still know he loved me. I still know it would have never worked out. The summer I left is bitter and tart and sweet on the back of my tongue. All hibiscus and sweat and sunshine on grass. (I didn't kiss him until years later, but that, too, was bittersweet. An airport goodbye laced with leaving.) I can almost still feel him, arms around me, frustrated and fed up at the rocks that just kept sinking, but god back then I would have done anything for his arms around my body. Coffee and cigarettes: always lingering on his breath. Always the whiskey. Always the late nights and the smell of rain. We will believe in something better together until it kills us.

Every Summer, a Different Taste

[katesbennett]

The same night you caught me writing you a goodbye note in the journal you keep in your pocket, I picked you a daisy and tucked it into the vents of your new car. You never finish all your ice cream, not even when it gets melty, all puddled in the bottom of your bowl, the way you liked when we were younger. I want to go back to that night and freeze-frame those memories, snapshots in my mind: Your eyes, crinkling up in a smile across the booth from me. Your crooked teeth, my silence, the way I never told you how much I loved them. Your long hair, lit up and tangled in the sunset. The way I couldn't tear my eyes away from the sunset. We drank beer down by the pond when we got home, talked about disappointment and shooting stars and all the things we used to wish on. I never wanted to stop writing poems about you but I think I'm ready to stop writing poems about you. The next time I leave, make a wish on the gravel in my grandmother's driveway. Make a wish on our memories and our broken hearts and the way we loved each other so hard, the way you do when you are young and foolish and love matters because it is happening to you. Wish on my absence. I'll pick daisies for you all these miles away.

We Deserve More Than Metaphors

[katesbennett]

Buy a bag of oranges and let half of them rot on the kitchen counter. Plant poppies in the backyard even though you know you won't be there next spring to see them. When he finally digs himself out of the darkness, answer the phone but do not tell him you love him when you say goodbye. Think of the burning, of the wildfire. Of the death and then the growth. Of life, and more life. Slow dance in your kitchen two days before you move out. Sway to the music that is playing only in your head and let yourself think "this. this is how it feels to love." Toss a shell into the Mississippi as you drive over it. An offering to the gods of your past. A prayer to the gods of your future. When the sun sets neon pink over the cornfields and you are in the passenger seat of his car, tell yourself that it is okay to romanticize this for a little while. Eat ice cream and drink beer with all the old people. Remind yourself that this town is no longer a passport stamped with the hearts you've broken. And then go home.

Instructions for Starting Over

[nextbestcoast]

buy the raspberries even if they are too expensive. throw out all the old beer he left behind in your fridge. don’t kiss boys who taste like house fire. stay up too late, too many nights in a row, and spend your Saturday afternoon asleep on the opposite end of the bed. always lean towards the light, the way sunflowers grow. keep growing tall. when spring turns into summer, let your skin turn pink then brown. walk everywhere you go, even when it feels too far. when you talk about the future with him, remind yourself that these plans are not just empty dreaming. in June, go back home to the Midwest. measure yourself against the corn. carve your initials into the tree you leaned against the first time a boy ever kissed you. lick the ice cream trails off your forearms before they reach your elbows. you could never bend that far for someone else anyways. stop covering up your arms and show your mother the art that that lives there now. do not be ashamed. do not apologize. when you get coffee with the first boy you ever loved, remind yourself that you are both better off. think about the ocean, about a lighthouse on a beach somewhere and the warning signs implied. kiss him on the cheek when you say goodbye and leave it at that. neither of you have ever been good at saying goodbye but you are no longer the girl he loved. when August finally comes around, drive east in the middle of the hottest weather you have ever felt. dip your toes in the Atlantic ocean and remember what it is like to be alive. remember how it feels to see the ocean with the people you love. remember how it feels to live in a moment. stop writing about it in your head. come back to Colorado and keep drinking whiskey & beer on weeknights, falling asleep before the buzz wears off, before you are too excited about living to sleep. all coffee, no sleep, you tell yourself again, and the sunrise every morning is just as good as the sunset every night.

[katesbennett]

Which way is the storm moving? Are you scared? Do you miss her? Do you still regret it all? Have you managed to keep the plants alive through the winter? Have you thought about the ocean lately? What do you think about when it rains? Who do you think about when it rains?

Survey for a Boy You are Trying Not to Miss

[nextbestcoast]

and I swear, this life is the sweetest thing I’ve ever known. like toothache and candy. like, some days the mountains make my heart beat so hard I don’t think I’ll ever catch up. like sometimes I miss the midwest so much that it hurts. the sunsets are different in every place I’ve ever been. the rain, too, doesn’t smell as sweet without petrichor. there is so much I want that isn’t here. so much restlessness inside my passport heart. and then there are days like today. long and hazy and stressful, and so damn sweet.

[katesbennett]

I'm knee-deep in a snowdrift, and you are still naming storms after people. Have you caught your breath yet? Have you learned to forgive? Have you tried to forget? You are still naming storms after people, and I am still avoiding the fallout. I still hate apologies, still struggle with letting go, still haven't learned to love without leaving saguaro pinpricks behind on the skin I try to care for. We used to love those summer rainstorms, you and I, used to leave the windows open and let the lightning roll past, letting in the wild and the breathless and a little bit of fear. When I left you sent me videos of a blackout storm, the lightning that crackled across the sky, and the thunder that followed. You said "this reminds me of the sound of your breathing when you fell asleep on my chest." I have named every storm after you.

Winter Storm Jonas and Everything that Followed

[nextbestcoast]

two years ago I thought my hair was what made me beautiful and so I cut it off. anything to find a sense of beauty outside myself. that summer I let boys undress me and leave marks across my chest. I forgot to hide them from my mother, forgot to care. he told me he loved me twice before I finally said that I didn’t love him and would never love him and maybe, it’s time to say goodbye. the words tasted like pennies and the cup of midnight diner coffee grew cold between my hands. I turned right instead of left at the light and let the detour take me to the mountains. this was okay. when I finally fell back in love with the boy I had always loved, my hair was still shorter than his. I forget how soft his hair was, how it slid through my fingers when I clenched hard and lost my breath. I thought I would never be happier than I was that coldest day of november, buying sheets on a friday in the midwest but the ocean exists for a reason and happiest is still out there. I know he knows I left my flannel there on purpose, and I no longer care if it still smells like me or not. my hair is finally growing back and I am growing into my beauty, into my danger. I fell out of love with the only boy I ever wrote poems for, and so I stopped writing poems. turns out, there is the same kind of beauty in the setting sun from the top of a mountain as there is in dusky blue eyes and another fire sign. don’t worry, little lion. bravery is hard but we’re both growing.

[nextbestcoast]

my knuckles are cracked, bleeding under my ragged nails. my winter skin is not nearly as tough as I wanted it to be. I taste lavender and peppermint, can’t stop thinking about the warm light in my mother’s kitchen. the mountains last night rolled out way into the horizon, folded in on each other and stacked so deeply that the depth was hard to take in. the future is still scary, still makes me shake, but it is looking up.

[katesbennett]

I say, the mountain, she misses you too. And I know this pathetic fallacy is a cheap shot, an easy target, but it is comforting to take the heavy ache of missing you and put it on something as large as a mountain's shoulders.

[katesbennett]

You say you love me and I smile back at you, candy-coated teeth and a glow-in-the-dark heart. Loving you has always been easy, even when it hasn't. You break your own heart some days, hurting over who you are and who you aren't and who you still yearn to be. I want to grab your shoulders and tell you, let me love you enough for the both of us. Let my love be enough. And so we both ache a little in our own quiet ways, and I am all torn up inside over not being able to make you better- I just want to make you better! I say over and over again to myself like a record scratch skipping on a July night. That's the thing about healing, you can't heal what isn't broken, only love it, only be gentle and soft and kind. And baby, I don't understand how my mom can look at you and not understand you. I don't understand how I was ever me without loving you. I don't think I will ever get over the way your eyes look when the sunlight shines on them. I don't think anything burns brighter than your smile, drunk and sloppy and your hands grabbing my waist. You light me on fire, babe, burning up from the inside in the best way. With you, I only ever want bite marks, mountains and sand dunes, falling asleep on each other's shoulders, over, and over, and over. I only ever want both of us happy, together.

Anatomy of a Year

[nextbestcoast]

Me & God & All My Friends. 

a little poem that I wrote for some people who I love. 

[katesbennett]

this is what it looks like when I work on a poem for a long time. writing and rewriting and editing and taking out entire paragraphs about the people who've hurt me. for once, here is a poem that isn't about them. here is a poem about the people I love and the way we love each other and the ways that we're all learning.