BECOME SOFT

Deandra • 26 • She/Her

[malgreill]

Stand up and tell the class where you're from:

The south, near the coast.

A small town with a big name where gossip is gospel, where humidity will choke you faster than your neighbor.

A small house buried underneath a forgotten lawn, where the floorboards were rotten and a bunch of creatures lived.

(Do you tell the truth and reveal what is buried? Do you think the new owner knows what you carry?)

The place where officials forgot to care - where a visit happened a few times a year, yet no flags were raised thanks to their facade.

(It would have been better to go away.)

The place - in a few years - you'll want to yank the steering column to see.

The home still haunts you and you need to see: did they level the yard, or did they leave?

[sunrisesongs]

Amrita Chakraborty

[malgreill]

there's something like new york city lights in puddles of rain. im laying in the street and staring at the sky (it's dark, and the moon is always staring back with her soft eyes) and this is where it is calm. this is where there is no traffic and no people exist and this us where i am allowed to be okay despite not remembering how to exist.

i will tell the moon it is okay that i feel the way i do.

i will tell the moon i don't want to think of certain people. that dreams and nightmares rest deeply beneath my eyelids and i am always exhausted.

i will tell the moon it is painful to miss people when you want to tell the universe all the ways i love them.

i will tell the moon nothing is right and i don't want to be here.

[inkskinned]

it’s just going to be like this, huh? i’m going to walk around with nightmares and what you did to me sitting in my stomach like a rotting peach and i’m just going to swallow hard and keep walking and i’m just going to have to live like this, knowing you’ll never apologize, knowing i don’t get closure, knowing i never get to yell at you until i shred apart, knowing i’m going to shred apart. 

and you get to live your life and forget about me and scoff about how im crazy or making shit up or how i’m just dramatic. you get to keep going, laugh about it, shrug it off. we both know i’m melodramatic. that my personal narrative is all messed up. that i make shit up.

like, it must be nice. showers are probably just showers for you. no standing in the water picturing what i’d say, what i’d do, how i’d show you. you get to walk away. that must be nice.

not all of us do.

[weltenwellen]

“Consider the birds. Consider your own soul.”

— H.D., from Collected Poems: 1912-1944; “Helios,” 

[frogbeans-deactivated20181217]

vulnerability after trauma

[malgreill]

there. full stop. it's the way i talk to the stars and pretend they're you as if it'll make a difference. maybe one day you'll descend from heaven (heaven, who has little regard for my persistence in ripping feathers from my back and becoming what they've called me all along. she is magnificent but has no capacity to be human) and speak to me as though you've been real and beyond the figments of my imagination the whole time.

and, hey, i only wanted to see you and hide from the curtain call. we can laugh and share a drink we both hate the taste of (it reminds us of the way we once set our hearts in a flesh eating acid and believed we were meant for graves our parents wouldn't have time to prepare) and part again at the end of the night. i hope you find a little peace in the way you fade effortlessly. the real ones and even those from my fever dreams will shift and forget, and the earth will follow.

you, as will i, will become both nothing and everything and the blood stains on the bathroom tile will turn white again.

goodnight. good morning. ill bow and never thank the director for my opportunity to perform.

[ragewrites]

          dialogue with icarus  ///  a poem for thermonous

[malgreill]

it's november again and even in winter the sun reminds me of honey / there's a thick glaze over the world and it's heavy in a way where im not pleading with God for mercy / it's november again and you tell me breakfast will be ready soon / all you've left is the toast, the story of how we became a resin designed to stitch cracks shut and remind the people named stop that love is honest and we're not generous for feeling only pain.

you serve breakfast and we hold hands / behind us there's an infomercial promoting rings and our wedding / there are two decades or better left unspoken / the pain is buried in the back, underneath a garden where we grow food and enough flowers to give one another a bouquet every day.

it's november again and after breakfast we'll crawl back into bed / and light from the window will fall over your face / my heart will ache in the best way and i won't resist kissing you / and we'll say we love one another simultaneously / and begin to understand why it feels like spring in the winter.

(and one day i will wake up / i won't attend church or thank god for my blessings / but rather ill keep close to you and think i have found a religion best kept between you and i.)

[exitw0und]

candle

its startling to think of how six or so months ago i assumed id die alone or at least surrounded by the personifications of all my regrets and failures. its hard to explain exactly how love gives a person purpose. waxing poetic has never come easy to me. its more like pulling teeth except in this metaphor the teeth are my softest, most tender feelings being dragged up from hell and delivered like a sloppy newborn baby, crying and not used to such bright light. its painful and often impossible for me to construe things in a way that even compares to your easy prose, carrying words like floating autumn leaves down a river. i know its cheesy. bear with me. you always do.

ill admit i was scared. im no stranger to being a coward. you can argue with me all you want but my best talents are avoiding problems and diffusing situations. changing the subject. cracking a joke. making sure tempers dont boil over if i can help it. learning to deal with your own emotions isnt something you can do when you worry about everybody else. what the next problem will be. when. where. what didnt get done. whats out of place. its hard to unlearn that the middle child exists as a referee.

i know that sometimes i get out of hand. foolish and loud, reckless and sensitive. i dont react properly and i dont control myself. this poem was supposed to be about you. i suppose read backwards it would be. about how whenever i look into your eyes i see infinity. endless wonder and potential. watching you sleep with the stuffed animals i bought you pressed against your face gouges at my insides until i am empty of everything but love for you. i am a jack-o-lantern and you are the candle. my smile is only so bright because of you.

[malgreill]

we're both adam, and we've tamed the serpent

i. I'VE BEEN TAUGHT TO BURN EVEN IN HEAVEN,

(in 2008 i attended church for the first time and even though sunlight rested on my chest and women in floral dresses led me to believe i had a family, i still cried when the choir sang. my revelations in love are underexposed and flimsy even in the body and mind of my father.)

ii. THE DEFINITION IS ONLY HALF OF A WORD,

(my brother read dictionaries in high school, and i adopted the practice with impermanency. words are an unorganised religion in which i fail to follow to completion. i may have read the definition of soft a thousand and one times but still, i know it as cacophonous version of violence.)

iii. I REMIND YOU OF A DEER IN ANY LIGHT,

(i have a habit where i stray from the unknown, as though the darkness can bare the teeth of a wolf while i stand near artificial light and act as the rabbit. once, though, the unknown found me in the light and i held his hand. it's peculiar, the way i approach safety with caution.)

iv. ALL SUGAR IS DISSOLVABLE,

(eventually i will teach my heart to stop tearing itself into pieces best viewed under a microscope. the people who have worn their greed with pride and stitched my dedication into them won't leave completely, but you have what i can offer. i have what you can offer, too, though forgive me for being afraid. i have a nasty habit of being stolen from.)

v. THE DAY IN WHICH I SAT NEXT TO GOD,

(you gave me the best lesson on religion - with belief, power manifests. we will be awake at midnight and create hope with thin air. you will be in my veins, and i will be in yours - there is now, in my thoughts, a wonderful kind of inevitability to us.)

[exitw0und]

i have a bad habit of making my own problems worse. i create them then i increase them because ive always been a glutton for punishment and never know when to stop. i work myself up and eventually something gives. usually me. but you dont let me. you try. you pull at my hands when i cover my eyes and you shout even when i cover my ears. even when i fear that ill never be strong enough to pull myself out of the hole my mind creates, you’re there. in the middle of the night when im fucking sinking, you’re there. i talk so much about how different you are from everyone else and you are. you’re so consumed with the idea of being poisonous but the fact is you make breathing that much easier. you’re a safe space and a happy place and home all rolled into one romantic sap and i can never thank you enough for letting me exist. please try to let yourself.

[exitw0und]

does love ever surge through your body like a charge? crash over you like a wave? slap you in the face like the other shoe you always lived in fear of dropping? sometimes i feel it may overtake me completely and the heavy beating of my heart forcing blood thick with sugar through my veins will stop. cut me open and all youll find is syrup. my teeth are all rotten and thats how i like it. your sweetness is worth it. ill fucking drown in it if i have to. it matters not to me how we’re seen. hope they see us. i hope they know. i hope it keeps them up at night while you’re dreaming enough for the both of us.

[malgreill]

well, listen -

nostalgia is delusive. im not meant for rose tinted glasses and the word alone echoes in the back of my skull because it's an estranged best friend in which the past is announced as what i deserved, in which love finds a new meaning. not a beautiful one, mind you - there's nothing to be romanticized about crushing worry dolls into glass bottles as punishment for not granting your nine year long whims, or feeling adrenaline surge through your veins in response to an empty threat.

but eventually, even through an involuntary addiction, you grow through self inflicted rehabilitation. childhood quirks become objective phrases for your deepest woes and the actual definition of love leaves you awake in fear. the hardest part is ingraining the difference into yourself and letting nostalgia nestle between the pages of a family photo album you'll neglect to touch.

the best is knowing ill still be awake at 6am, holding your hand while you forget your dreams before you wake.

[actuates]

“you fell in love with the artist. the one who, even after you shattered their heart, crafted you as something breathtaking- made you appear as a divine miracle. they wrote you into thousands of poems, and poured you onto wine stained canvases. all to simply allow you to exist within the lines of beauty. i hope you know how lucky you are- to have broken the heart of someone, someone who will turn every piece of you into art. you’ve been alive before, but never like this.”

— the artists, the poets. |(morsus engel)| (via morsusengel)