Poetry, Bitches

Poetry, Bitches

[lendingsplendour]

biting down around the words holding them in behind my teeth keeping them caged within my ribs trapped in the space between heart beats cannot let them escape into the silences you leave

[lendingsplendour]

diagnosis: foot in mouth disease.

prognosis: terminal.

[lendingsplendour]

think i love you. think i love you. think i love you. think i love—

can't say it. not yet.

[lendingsplendour]

what i want to be doing is standing on the shore shivering while the stars come out. i want to have you next to me, your hand close enough to touch, blood warm and a little sweaty, 'cause then you won't notice that mine is, too. i want a meteor to streak across the sky and to miss it, 'cause i'm watching you instead. watching how the flash lights up your face, how the moment sears itself onto your memory, how now, every time i see a shooting star, i'll think of this, think of you, think of us.

[lendingsplendour]

Almost is the cruelest cut, the bleakest dawn, the blackest hour.

Could have been; in another life, maybe; if only things were different.

We live in this one, though. And I have missed you without even getting the chance to have you.

[lendingsplendour]

i wake up wanting. i fall asleep imagining. lather. rinse. repeat.

(i feel so fucking obvious/i feel like a neon warning sign/i feel like i can be seen from space)

i could reach for this hand that is slipping through someone else's careless grip. i wouldn't even have to stretch. i have never wanted to reach for something more.

(would the hand be reaching back for me?)

[lendingsplendour]

I tell you things I've never told anyone else.

Reaching out—

And you're reaching back.

It feels like I could make it this time.

It feels like you would hold on.

It feels like—

I don't know the words for this.

[lendingsplendour]

i would love you better, i would love you more, i would love you properly, if you let me, if you wanted me to.

[lendingsplendour]

tonight, in prayer to the sacred grace of being remembered, i am on my knees, in supplication to the miraculous kindness of being allowed to witness and to know. and oh, lord, i am grateful.

i am moved by the tangled cords, by the dirty dishes, the unfolded laundry. i am honoured by the grime, and the dust, and the tears. i am touched by the jagged edges, by the broken pieces.

i am here beside them, in the dark, on the shower floor, the water pouring over us cold and aching, and when they reach for me across the tiled floor, my god, please, let me reach back in time. let me always be fast enough, responsive enough, and oh, lord, let me be gentle enough.

may the ordeal of allowing yourself to be known always be met by the joyous pleasure of being seen, for now and for forever, amen.

[maldarchive]

IF I CANNOT WALK TO YOU

[maldarchive]

THAT IN WHICH I AM STILL INSTILLED IN A SINGLE MOMENT AT THE EDGE OF A DESOLATE STREET IN THE MIDDLE OF A DESOLATE NIGHT

Meditations on a daughter’s distress caught singing tongue-pressed shaking slivery feline shivering it was only so quick it was only so slow please let me go she kept saying and saying please let me go now but you can’t be a daughter without learning to accept that no word of you is strong enough to be heard over their laughter cacophonous glass clink drink spilled lip cut bleeding  lights toppling in and out of laps eyes twinkling nobody can hear you that’s all

*

Crazy mid-morning Birdsong interrupted Candlewax burn Unwanting skin Gate locked, moon startled Wind and sunlessness Questioned again Please let me go Please let me go

*

I was going to write a book last year but instead I wrote myself I was going to write a book last year but I forgot what was important I was going to write a book last year but he broke my heart too sharp I was going to write a book last year but I’d already had enough

*

It is late and I am sorry I have been absent (I am always perhaps) There is pain in the architecture of my dreaming I cannot escape it I cannot cure I can only lunge towards another day and a half until I cannot

[wishbzne-deactivated20210526]

Margaret Atwood, from The Selected Poems I

[primulaceas]

Audre Lorde, "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power." Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

[lendingsplendour]

You are the sun that I turn towards in the darkness; You are the pitch of the tuning fork in my sternum; You are the star I follow in the high northern sky; You are the light in the window that guides me home.

and I am found | (j.a.f}

[lendingsplendour]

August is sweltering sun and the scent of sunscreen when I lean in wanting to press my mouth against the constellations of freckles on your shoulders (but I don't). It's the colour of the sunset in your eyes and you borrowing my sweater after dark while we share secrets around the last campfire (but not this one). It's waking up late and going to bed early and eating peaches over the sink and trying not to stare at the juice running down your wrists (but I can't).

August is for yearning | (j.a.f)

[lendingsplendour]

I must go down to the shore. Where the sea comes in a rush to steal my breath. Where the sand rubs away all the sharpened points of my bones. Where the sun bleaches my hair. I must go to the shore to stare at the water to cease to exist.

Tidal Bore | j.a.f 

[nemnesis]

Anton Chekhov/Friedrich Nietzsche/Kate Chopin/Nikita Gill/Qin Zihao