Liv Nicolette

Half goddess, half hell #amateurpoet

[livuntildeath]

Girl with 9 Lives

I started off with only one

It was white, like a dove being thrown from a hat into a big, blue sky

It was untouched like spring water

There was a love of love, to give it and to receive

But that was before the Judas touch after dinner that night

A dessert I did not want to eat

I wanted to die, but I was given a life

That was before chicken-legged boys called me ugly

And pulled my shirt over my head

I guess they wanted to see what ugly looked like underneath

And I wanted to die, but was given a life

Before the undoing, before the oil spill

And black stains on every Guess sweater and pair of Hollister jeans

I turned my heart into buried treasure and let pirates thieve for me

I wanted to die, but was given a life

And the whispers turned my high school hallway into a haunting, ghosts of my past

They made me into an Other

But I was just somebody’s daughter

And I wanted to die, but was given a life

Then there was anger and disintegration into concrete city streets like smog

Thick smoke filling my head and blackening my teeth

I wanted to die, but was given a life

And a homecoming

I followed white lines from empty house to empty house like highway roads

A beggar drifting and pan-handling for a moment of peace

From the black pit growing inside me

These white lines had no purity,

They were only imitation like crab meat

And I wanted to die, but was given a life

Next came the heartache that masked itself as love, or at least I foolishly believed

It was something I could not live without when it was the very thing poisoning me

And I wanted to die, but was given a life

These little deaths building inside of me cast a red glow like an exit sign above the door

But I was the person yelling “Fire!”

When there was none

And I wanted to die, but was given a life

My lives have all been gifts wrapped in darkness and when I thought it would end

Should end

I was given more

I didn’t know how to let them all live inside of me when I had become so many things I didn’t intend to be,

I tried to drown them, cut them out, let them bleed and I wanted to die,

But I was given a life

By then I had collected so many lives,

Like technicolor butterfly wings pinned down and framed on display

I became so enormously swollen with being that one day I had to give it away,

To a little girl with hair on fire

Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes of my flames

This tiny porcelain frame

Will burn bright enough to overcome anything

And I can finally call myself a name that does not sting

Mother

I am the girl who wanted to die

But not anymore

I am the girl whose been given 9 lives

Then I went and created one

More

[livuntildeath]

I was born into power

Passed down to me like scripture or ancient song

I am wild and beast

womb and breast

Not made for your control

I was born into power

And the choice to wield it is a gift and burden that is mine to own

That is why you huddle around tables and in great halls making twisted plans to overthrow

Because power taken through fear is all men like you have ever known

I’ve read of those men before you

Who stood knee deep in rivers of blood looking for some sense of control

As if searching for a precious stone

The power you sit on now is stolen from the rib cages of brown babies you did not care to save

Wrongly taken by men who rape sacred places

And take up spaces not meant for them

Because they feel small

The irony of being pro-life when men like you have no hesitation taking lives when it suits you

Audacious claims to know of God’s will

Yet you do not call him by his right name

Which is Woman

God is in the face of every woman who has suffered and sacrificed her body and soul

To make you more sons

Who will build more shrines for false idols

And eat stale crackers and drink cheap wine

And call it divine

But never call their mothers

Will she get the message when she reads on the TV that you deem her unfit for sovereignty?

As women, we were born into power

And that is why you have to write laws to make our bodies your own

When you have no fucking clue what it means to be forced to make your body a home

With a hand at your throat

Or else your pussy

Or else your dreams of who and what you can be

Because the bad Santa Clause in your shitty story book doesn’t want us to be free?

Well I’ve read enough books to know there is more than one kind of god:

Creator of life

And goddess of chaos and destruction

Now think to yourselves -

In a world where being the former means not having a voice (a choice)

Which kind of god do you think Woman will choose to be?

And are you prepared for what that means…for men like you

who already feel small among women like me?

[livuntildeath]

[livuntildeath]

✨MATTER✨

You were once like a whisper that haunted me. Like a song the wind carried in to be strummed by my branches, where once there were hands. I am no longer the sad little girl with the broken heart. I am a cherry tree, twisting and bending toward the sun. You see, the pit you spit out and left in my stomach took root between my toes. Its trunk filled my belly and made a home in my breast, where there was once soft flesh. The leaves bloomed in Autumn, they were born into death. The fruit went from ripe to rotten quicker than we could eat them. Quicker than the juice would drip down our chins. Soft and heavy, they clung for a brief moment before falling to the earth, where there were once bony knees. Bruised like the fruit itself. But I don’t live on my knees anymore. Eventually the fruit becomes the dirt, but the tree remains. Dirt is really just a home for things that no longer have a place in daylight. For a moment, I was buried too. In a fond memory of you driving down an old back road. I am so small in the seat beside you. Bruised knees pointed inward, fingers knotted, skin on fire. You look at me and smile. Teeth like daggers, eyes like a tidal wave. I am paralyzed. I cannot speak. I cannot ask you not to leave. The words are replaced by termites. The idea of us breaking off from the house like a rotted porch. But the house remains. Your image still now. Silent now. Decaying. Even memories return to the dirt like organic matter. And maybe, none of it really matters at all. Except for the fact, that I once lived on my knees and not anymore. Not ever again. I stand on my feet like a cherry tree. I stand on my feet like an old house. I twist and bend toward the sun.

LIV NICOLETTE

[livuntildeath]

My mother is not someone who can be fully covered by a blanket of words. There will always be a foot sticking out or a spiky tuft of hair. She seems so small beside me, but she does not fit in small places. She has never been one you can put in the corner, though some men have tried and failed. My mother is not a lamp on the nightstand. She is the chandelier. My mother has always been a bit of a strange animal. Strange and stunning. The kind that makes you break your neck walking past her on the sidewalk. Moving like the shadow of street cars in a city that doesn’t sleep. My mother is too rare to die, but part of her has died for me. Even after they took me out of her, my mother continued to try and put the pieces of me back in her belly. The poison parts, she swallowed for me. And sat beside my demons, hand against hair, ear to heart. My mother is not someone I can write poems about easily, though every poem I write is a little bit about her in one way or another. She is me. One day, I will wrestle my arms through my sweater and see her hands coming out of my sleeves. Because I, too, am my mother. And she is hers... And in time, my own daughter will grow into an amalgam of us three. Our mothers carry us inside of them, but in the end, we carry our mothers long after they leave.

[livuntildeath]

We are never exactly what I have pictured in my mind when I think of us. We are not a couple on film happily falling into the black pit’s of each other’s eyes in a coffee shop. We are not hands held tightly on the sidewalk, arms swinging in sync. We are not “date night,” “no, I love you more,” “honey buns.” Sometimes there is no place you end and I begin except for when I walk away crying. My tears are my own, I know that. And I know sometimes, when those tears come, I want you to take them from me, bottle them, drink them so maybe you could feel what I feel and know what to say. Especially when I tell you, “say something” and you respond “what do you want me to say?” I want you to know what you have to say, and say it.

[livuntildeath]

It is quiet now. Only the birds sing beyond the confines of these four walls as we are left to perform over boiling pots of sauce and behind sea-shelled bath curtains. The deer, no longer timid of human chaos and blinding lights, make no effort to abide by the traffic laws in an empty downtown street. And the sky opens up, big and blue, allowing the Earth to finally breathe. It is quiet now. And I often wonder, if able to measure the sound of clinking glasses and mid-conversation laughter to be had in all the coffee shops, and restaurants, and dimly lit streets of the world, would only silence greet us? Would the decibel meter of public space lay itself down to sleep? Perhaps these sounds have not dissipated, but rather are transferred elsewhere. Reanimated around a coffee table littered with scrabble tiles. In a bedroom of two lovers who had been lost in a sea of schedule, now found again in a sea of sheets. Or a family gathered in a once abandoned dining room to eat, uninterrupted by overtime, choir concerts, or track meets. These moments have become so rare and far between, many of us have forgetten they exist. Let alone, remember how to stop and appreciate each as a gift. To be present; to be alone, together, in this day and age, has become an endangered species. But it is time to remember. To read. To reminisce. To run. To reinvent what it is to be human. Perhaps now that we are forced to be still, we can see ourselves. For it is in the stillness, we can grow with each passing day. Like the woods beside the house or the garden you said you would dig 3 years ago. In the stillness, life goes on. And if we are wise, we will learn to become apart of it all - as we once were. To surrender our illusions of power and godliness, our insatiable need to conquer and control... Perhaps it is then, the Earth will again welcome us home.

[livuntildeath]

They tell me I feel too much, as though it is a medical diagnosis. Potentially terminal, like a heart defect. I haven’t quite developed a cure for it yet. Only a way to stifle it, to snuff it out like candle flame. Oh has man made many remedies for the heart and even more poisons for the brain. But swallowing the darkness every night has only ever added to the black pit inside me. I must have swallowed it when I was very young, like a watermelon seed. And the darkness grew as each piece of me I had given away was returned to me. Torn and stained like old fabric from an unloved sweater. One that wanted to be worn and tried to fit each body just right but never did quite. And as years went on my collection grew, each worn out attempt at feeling something that resembled love, turned to ash and bitter spite. Until one day, out of madness or clarity, or possibly both... I stitched a bit of fabric to another side by side by side, until I had weaved a pattern out of the tangled web of whos, and whats, and more seldom answered, the whys. And as I wrapped myself up in all these things that I feel too much for, it came to me then that maybe it was always me. The master behind all my fears and doubt. It was always foolish little me who wrongfully gave the pieces out. And nights when I am sitting in a lonesome desert with more worries than I can count. I let each piece of this tragic tapestry engulf me and I wear it proud like a graduation gown. It is my story, my heart song, my crown. A truth that smothers the cold. A siren that drives it out. Perhaps, that is why cowboys, Gypsies, outcasts, and wanderers have all told star lit stories in the darkness of night. A comfort for the cold beneath the cold. The one inside the bones. The one that creeps into the mind. You see, people are made of stories and in the end, all we have is our own. So when you are told that you feel too much, pity that they must suffer a life without weaving heart-sung stories of loss and victory to put the heartache at ease. In a world where the emotions are considered a fatal weakness, a disease... It seems to me the bravest thing one can do is to feel all there is to feel and live to talk about it. Tell your story. Live your truth, until you return to the ground like autumn leaves.

[livuntildeath]

If you can look into my eyes and see yourself, then you know what it means to suffer and still choose life. Your light does not burn solely into the night, I am with you.

[livuntildeath]

I have never claimed to be sunshine, in fact I’ve spent much of my life learning to live in the dark. You see, I am not moody like one of the girls on television who read poetry books. I am moody like an abandoned gas station fueled only by emptiness. I am moody like closed blinds and closed fists. And if you have ever accidentally fallen in love with me, you will know this. I am not mysterious. I am a fucking billboard painted over a thousand advertisements looking for love, or is it that I’m desperate for self-validation? If it were possible to live off of impulse and hesitation then I am an unplanned vacation (except if the airport lost your luggage or you left your wallet at the station.) I have perfected making bad decisions like it’s an art and if I had a painting for all the ones I’ve made, I could host an exhibit on how to make your life fall apart. But I don’t make art nearly as often as I wish I did. My lack of motivation lingers around like a sink full of week old dishes. And I cling to the promise of affection almost as long as the sting of rejection, like clothing clings to flesh when caught in a downpour. The kind of heavy, dampness only a storm could adore. And if you have ever accidentally fallen in love with me, you will know this. My heart is as big as a car, and I have learned how to love in the dark even with all the broken parts. It is this alone that has driven me this far, under many starry skies, or long stretches of silence, or unspoken goodbyes. On the day I accidentally fall in love with myself, perhaps it was because I realized this, it was always the love that fueled me, it has never been the emptiness.

[livuntildeath]

I feel that a lot of my life has been spent figuring out what doesn’t make me happy. I’m curious about the other side of that now. I’m ready to fall in love with my life again, or maybe for the first time.

[livuntildeath]

You told me that I couldn’t live without you, one of the reasons being I don’t ever wash the dishes at my place. Yeah, it’s true you’ve got quite the magic touch, but so does your hand when it strikes like lightening across my face. The shine of a glass in the aftermath of you does not cancel out the dull gloom in my eyes like a scorned child in the shadow of your frame. The glisten of a dinner plate can never be bright enough to blind me from the unavoidable truth. You can fill a dish rack, but not the hungry ache in my belly that longs for love like a dumped dog begs for scraps of food. You can scrub the forks and polish the knives, but the tarnish remains. The stains. The dirt buried underneath the dirt. And the dust that clings in the air, dancing between the cracks in the blinds. And the crumbs in the carpet and bruises on my arms and the tear dropped road traveling along the floor, from room to couch and couch to room. And you break out all of these lines between us, dividing us so that I can no longer confide in us and I feel small enough to crawl back to the womb. You see, your words are arrowheads penetrating my helpless flesh like a bow hunter in a city zoo. But I cannot let my heart be caged by you because I’ve got love to give, and life to live, and a sink full of week old dishes to do.

[livuntildeath]

And if you are laying in bed right now listening to the sound of your heart breaking, I hope you know that thunder only lasts a few seconds. And church bells only ring three times. That the neighbors will stop yelling and return to their TV. And the construction behind your house will eventually be complete. That every sad song ever written has an ending.

Your heart too will quiet itself soon... and the soft sound of its beating will put you to sleep.

[livuntildeath]

Why, when I ask for warmth from your lips, am I met with the warmth of a dead man’s touch? When I need you to tell me I’m not stupid for being in love with you, I must be asking for too much. Is there nothing you can say? Is there no bandage of words that can fill the fearful emptiness between each rib? I’d rather my heart reside behind a wall, than trapped in a cage like this. Like an animal I own, but have no control over. A barn horse unbroken. An eagle with clipped wings. A wolf on a leash, flashing daggered teeth. Is there nothing you can say, to alleviate this pain? I wish your vocal chords were violin strings. Your tongue a warm bath sponge. Your teeth, a spilled bottle of Advil. Anything to quiet my aching brain. But there is nothing you can say... Time always gets its way. You were here. You were mine. And like all things that have belonged to me, I was meant to lose you.

Liv.nm

[livuntildeath]

You wrap your overcoat around me and call it kindness, but I know you’re just trying to hide my breasts. How is it you want to worship my body, and yet also resent me for having it? You fix broken cupboards and bring the recycling bins inside, but avoid the rooms where my thoughts reside. As though the shadows fluttering beneath the door are the feared monster imagined in a child’s mind. How is it you believe yourself to be God; unable to die but can’t brave the thoughts of a girl who too often cries? You can call me crazy for not believing that ignorance is bliss, but I am so much stronger than this. For I am capable of terrible things, like feelings... love... forgiveness. I step through the doorway between your eyes, not knowing if I’ll make it out alive or dead. The difference between us is that I do not fear the monster inside your head.

Liv.nm

[livuntildeath]

There are days when I feel so small, like a worm flattened beneath a shoe, left to die in the cracks of a wet sidewalk. And the smell. I hate the smell of worms in the rain because that is the smell of being forgotten, of not being seen, of being walked over, of unanswered texts, of unreciprocated I love yous. A silence that rings deafening. It is the smell of wondering “why am I not enough?” as you cling to your bedsheets half fearing, half hoping to fall off the Earth completely. Sometimes I have good days too. On one particular good day, a nice boy who I will never love because I do not love myself enough yet to love nice boys told me that I could never be a worm. He said that I was a tulip because that is what nice boys say, but I do not want to be a flower. Flowers get stepped on too, snapping their vulnerable little cellulose spines. And if not that, they are picked from their dirt beds by a stranger who wishes to admire their beauty only for a short while until something better comes around to look at and they, too, are forgotten on a windowsill in a dry drinking glass. Flowers do not survive love. To be loved as a flower is a death sentence. No, I am not a tulip. I think I am a blue whale. No one can forget the blue whale, for she is the largest creature to ever live. Yet rarely seen or heard, it is known that she lives and breathes, cradled in the arms of an ocean. An ocean that loves her, and guides her, and rocks her to sleep. And if she were to never be loved by another, she would still have the love of an ocean... Vast, and deep, and dark. The only thing bigger than herself. The only thing that she can belong to and not be owned by. So you see... I am not a worm under someone’s shoe. Or a flower waiting to be picked. I am a blue fucking whale and I am wrapped in the sea and I am swimming. I am always swimming. Perhaps, toward the warm embrace of the deep, darkness.

Liv.nm

[livuntildeath]

“I am a strange animal. Cowering in the corner. Showing too much teeth. I am only predictable in that I will either bite or run. When all I really want is to eat from the palm of your hand. To be loved.”

liv.nm