to the valley

through the sea /// poetry by clover mills (ARCHIVED)

[melancthapoetry]

nine months and that look in your eyes still lingers i feel your anger from a mile away, most present in the worst parts of me.

sometimes i wish for seagulls sometimes i wish for dust storms and locusts and train derailings

parts of me are parts of you every night i sever them off and wake up to a clearer reflection of you

my face is yours my hands are yours for as long as i live i'll feel your grip on my wettest parts

your fingernails pull at me even from miles away

[melancthapoetry]

Had the incredible opportunity to participate in & help organize 'Color Against White Canvas', an art show featuring WNBT artists of color. Thank you to everyone who came out & big thanks to those of you who purchased my zines & art from everyone else! Here's the piece I did called 'Grandmother.' Took 12 hours to paint, even with help.

[melancthapoetry]

shoving soft metal through pearls find me in that place where Earth is swallowing itself whole. her hands weigh on me like dead twilight.      i believe in regret;      i feel it in the worst parts      where the mud cakes itself on,      and clings to forgotten surfaces: to my skin. it isn't her fault in the aftermath where i am swallowing myself whole her hands lift me like the morning clouds.

[melancthapoetry]

titan

Mother, you left me open, face up on a rock. high and dry high and high.

Mother, i wish i could weep in your arms. i still remember what your sweater felt like that Christmas.

Mother, you used to call many years ago; when did the hurt heal? he left you open, face up on a rock. high and dry high and high.

[melancthapoetry]

I am the wave Throwing my friends on shore, Sputtering.

Remembering how to breathe On the beach, They watch me crash

Watch me rise, watch me crash, And spittle, And recede.

Who can hold a wave?

[melancthapoetry]

innerspring mattress

i am going to take this ceramic knife through your center and insert myself between coils because they've been pushing against my back all week, begging to wrap themselves around my ankles and my throat.

you remind me of home. like old hotel furniture does, and it's always mismatched and tilted but you hold my gospel anyway, and sit quietly, watching the comings and goings, and listening, and absorbing and that's why you look so sunken-in at only six months.

i am going to destroy you, Innerspring Mattress, we will both be bloody and guilty, but please let me make a home, let me keep some warmth, when i bury myself in steel.

[melancthapoetry]

YOU ARE COVERED

my vision is trembling but i swear i saw her, wrapped in rose gold, glittering softly and blurred out, as if i had been weeping. she was so close i could hear her smile and she touched me, covering me in star-bursting light.

i was blinded.

her darkness is a soft, wet pink. it washed over my hands, over my head. God was there as she baptized me. i crawled on scraped hands and knees, to the sinking, sacred place by her feet, my blood fusing with her tears, my fingers sliding deeper and deeper, digging and anchoring.

i cannot see her.

i open my eyes and feel the grains of sand forcing themselves under and against my eyelids. belly-up in liquid gold, wrapping itself around my throat.

i feel her here, but she doesn't want to be seen. i hear metal on pearls, i feel silk on hot skin.

if i knew her name, i'd ask for mine.

[melancthapoetry]

PLEASE DON’T LET ME DIE LIKE MARILYN MONROE

on the floor, where the smoke left me, dreaming about hands in glue and hands on bones and hands in hair and hands in my hands and and, oh god, PLEASE DON'T LET ME DIE LIKE MARILYN MONROE.

not just in the literal, but in memory. to be worn as a costume, to become a symbol for something I never wanted to be to be quiet and cold and dead, my grave a tourist attraction, while strangers theorize who I "truly" was, and why I was and oh my god, when i die, please, please, please, PLEASE DON'T LET ME DIE LIKE MARILYN MONROE.

if they reduce my legacy to a pretty face, with a loud mind, if they remember me with pity and sadness, please take a knife to the memory of me and gut it.

[melancthapoetry]

 come hide me | original painting

[melancthapoetry]

“THEY WATER YOU”

TINY seed, all cozy in dirt, unknown and safe here, THEY WATER YOU.

     NOW, seedling,      a first experience with true warmth      and bitter chills, but still      THEY WATER YOU.

        GROW, pole,         reaching for clouds, moon, stars         accepting you many never feel the realness of "out there",         THEY WATER YOU.

                          MATURE, stable, bright                           the leaves left you bare and bending                           a shedding is a chance for new growth so                           THEY WATER YOU.

     TIRED and splitting      the purity of novelty escapes you      at sunrise, you're dying, yet      THEY WATER YOU.

ROTTING angel, becoming one with dust, did you know they weep? they remember, THEY WATER YOU.

[melancthapoetry]

i’m not ready to be who i was yesterday

[melancthapoetry]

dirt

you dug yourself a hole, climbed into it, cocooned in dirt, suffocating. you called out asking for freedom but isn't it funny how death was so distant and now it's on your tongue and under your fingernails and the space bar won't work and the space bar won't work and it's stuck in the hidden parts and the space bar won't work and the space bar won't work and the space bar won't work won't work it won't work won't it you're making a home in a hole and it's calling it's calling it's calling it's calling out out side there are voices and they laugh and they twinkle and they fade with the brightening of the moon

[melancthapoetry]

my size scares me i catch its eyes in mirrors and dark windows

if i ever look at myself and see a familiar form, maybe i can say i know what i am

i forget my ends in gaps, on curves, because of protrusions i'd die to get rid of

i am dying to get rid of them, acknowledging a need for help, but remaining unmoved

i don't know where this was going, but, he pulls away and i feel myself shrink and feel the tears resting at the back of my throat.

and on the walk home, i feel myself diluting but erase the ugliness in what i've done and continue to do, convince myself it's beautiful, convince myself there's worth in weight.

[melancthapoetry]

i oscillate between death and rebirth while losing track of the seasons

who are, in the center, the same. fading layer, by layer, through layer. the city senses the spring, the thaw; exposing green growth lost to gray and white and gray gray gray. what other seasons are there? abandoned before the thaw hiding there, lost there. where the fuck have the birds been? look at everything that flies into existence, into faces, into focus.

promise me I'll still see you when the flowers bloom and the trees find their color again.

[melancthapoetry]

we hold ourselves between the ground and the sky

It is lonely in this cradle. The nausea comes in waves and I'm weeping again, this time from the heart. I hope it rattles the walls.

Rocking myself back and forth, in the center of the digital arms of my lover, who holds me to the sun, reminds me of how whole I am.

Or maybe will one day, show his sun to me and I show him mine on top of that mountain and feel very small, but proud to have a home in this way.

As we melt, become one with the snow and the ocean, he's holding me up to the sun and I'm smiling, proud of the beauty in my bones

I've never felt that here, in this cradle thrown against walls. Nausea washes over me, I am forgetting my size, remembering my fissures.

[melancthapoetry]

guilt-inflicted hindsight bias taking personal responsiblity for living the way i thought was right, and ending up with no justice, feeling something heavy and angry in the bottom of my throat. was it my fault? the weight of trauma and self-reproach keeps me teetering and uncertain in the moments i'm alone and muted. what have these hands done? wavering self-assurance fills me with guiltlessness, comforts with watery hands, and ends where remembrance begins, leaving me cold in the arms of creeping determinism

[melancthapoetry]

forsake me, father