zweisamkeit

[miiraage]

i’m currently looking into the legal processes behind buying up every acre of you: i’m staking a claim to the orchards in your hair and printing my name (in bold capital letters) across the moss of your chest.

i’ll find the money somehow – raise it and make it mine and walk footsteps like drops of ink down from the tip of your tree branch nose to your feet, two roots stretching deep down into rich, unclaimed soil.

[miiraage]

the other night, i almost didn’t think of you, but then i saw the shadow of your hand at the window and started to imagine your wrist, thin green veins softly pulsing; how lucky they are, to exist so close to your heartbeat

[luthienne]

Natasha Trethewey, from Thrall: Poems; "Mythology"

[miiraage]

you are my sparkling

champagne, so sweet to taste, so

quick to fizzle out

[miiraage]

“It is August. My life is going to change. I feel it.”

— Raymond Carver

[weltenwellen]

Margaret Atwood, from “Corpse Song”, Selected Poems: 1965-1975

[weltenwellen]

Richie Hofmann, from "Breed Me"

[miiraage]

I’m thinking about going back to university

and studying neurosurgery

so I might be able to crack open your brain

and figure out what’s going on inside it —

or maybe psychology will do

or the study of body language,

just to be able to read the expression on your face

the curl of your fingers into your palm

the twitch of your mouth

and finally translate it into a language

that makes sense to me

[miiraage]

I am a woman scarred:

by awkward table corners

and white hot baking trays

from broken wine glasses

and that one cupboard door

I keep yanking open too hard

from a misstep on the final stair and

from the curb that rose up to meet me

much faster than I thought it would

I like it when you press your finger tip

into the bruise on my thigh —

and I don’t mind that it hurts

I don’t mind if you laugh

when I tell you how I got it

(a drunken slip off the pub stool)

I don’t mind if it means

you’re thinking of me and

the skirt that got caught under my shoe

I like when you’re thinking of me

and I like when you’re laughing at me

and I like being your clown

I’d let a thousand more bruises bloom

if it meant your hands were on my skin,

if it meant you were imagining me:

upside down on the floor,

bruised and battered and laughing because

I can’t wait to tell you how I got this one

[miiraage]

do you talk about

me? say my name hushed amongst

just your closest friends?

[fleursdesmorts]

from "Tenebrous" by Georgia Rebecca

[miiraage]

i think you need to tell me something i don't want to hear i think you need to be cruel and callous and i think you need to stop looking at me when i'm looking at you

i think you need to not smile at me anymore i think you need to stop breathing too close to me and i think you need to pretend you've forgotten my name

i think you need to stop talking with your perfect mouth i think you need to change your name and i think you need move out of the city we're both living in

[miiraage]

how do i convince you to wrap your arms around me? how do i pull your vice fingers off my wrist? how do i not think of you when i wake up in the morning – how do i not pretend you’re in my bed? how do i convince these legs of mine that they don’t want yours tangled up with them?

how do i become unstuck from this picture of you: holding my hand in the park saying silly things you would never say, doing silly things you would never do, like putting your arm around my shoulders or kissing my lips, or plucking daisies out of the grass and threading them into the waistband of my jeans

how do i not think of you when i pass the bakery and how do i stop wondering what it would taste like to lick sticky bun icing from your index finger? how do i watch you absently scratch your chest and not dream of it bare in front of me, and how the fuck do i ever look you in the eyes again?

[miiraage]

i’m trapped between caring too little & judging too much, wanting everything & nothing all at once, dying to have your eyes on me & burning when they are, searing through the side of my head like a branding iron, white hot

[funeral]

D.W. Winnicott

[miiraage]

if you must break me, then at least break me open: a clean cut splitting wide one heart halved into two perfect pieces (a half for me and a half for you)

[miiraage]

inescapable

i washed my hands in the bathroom sink and caught myself smiling again -- eyes doe-round and lips curved like two lily petals: pointed and blushing pink with a glimpse of white teeth sunk into a fat pillow, expression all peaches and cream and  gingham picnic blankets and perry cider.

lately my cheeks have been hurting upon coming to bed,  worn out with the exertion of the exercise i didn’t know i’d been taking --  my arm, too,  from lifting my thumb to press its nail into the gap in my bottom teeth, as if to better appear dreamy and dazed to anyone who might have glanced at me during those quiet moments: during the stretches of time between each sip of tea, between the heady drags of a cigarette and the contemplative prayer sessions spent on unsuspecting park benches.

it’s creeping up on me everywhere, in the steam of the pasta water pouring down the sink and in the rustle of the blanket draped over my legs, in the very stitchwork of my jeans and  in the sound of a beer can hissing its relief after finally being cracked, as inescapable as the breath in your lungs; as inevitable as the sigh in mine.