Because I Have To

[mismatchedghosts]

Both Here and Nowhere

I am here, tears in a library—

Silent and abiding and heaving.

I am absent, dust underneath an empty bed—

Lonely and broken and leaving.

I suppose that my salvation will come

In the form of loud music and

Smoke-laden rooms and old poetry,

But I wish that it could arrive quietly,

By the ocean in the beginning of June.  

[mismatchedghosts]

2:13 AM Brokenness

I walked out into the spring thunderstorm.

I asked the lightning to bloom.

I asked Jove to hit me with his bolts.

I asked to be relieved of this burden of a heart.

I walked out into the dying thunderstorm and

It would not engulf me.

[mismatchedghosts]

When You Feel as Old as the Ancients

It is said that when Achilles heard Patroclus was dead he cried so loudly the gods at the bottom of the sea could hear him. And so my grief has been for you. I weep for you so violently that the spirits of the sea scream for us just as they did for Achilles.

You know how Virgil led Dante through the seven levels of inferno? I met them in each one: the unspoken torture for my paganism has been loss of you.

Right decisions don’t make me feel any better about making them. They still make me wish to tear at my clothes and don the sackcloth and ashes of old.

I wonder if Atlas found it more difficult to hold up the world or to resist throwing it at all of the things that he couldn’t fix. If I were Atlas, I would let the earth drop on me.

I have left this poem and come back to it many times. When I finish poems, I leave clouds of hope hovering at the end. Those clouds could hold Jove’s lightning bolts, but at least they appear benign.

For now, I feel like Orpheus, who turned around, and in doing so, lost his Eurydice for the second time, after he was so close to having her again. 

I’m sorry if you feel as old as the ancients. I do too.

I can only hope that one day I will be as Odysseus, returning home to his Penelope. 

[mismatchedghosts]

Of Things Written Before Explosions

I have never really gone a day without talking to you. It is the most peculiar feeling, now that I have. It is those types of things that you take for granted: the talking, the response.

We have only ever been a hurricane, of late. I miss the quiet pitter patter of rain outside my window that whispered of you.

This silence has made me realize what I have lost.

When you are surrounded by noise it is easy to make yourself forget.

I miss quiet kisses.

I miss quiet with you.

When I never see you, my existence is so loud. I have filled my life with noises to avoid the pounding in my head that speaks to the absence of your hand in mine. I laugh loudly and I cry loudly and yet you are never given to me.

We were soft lovers, consistent lovers. We were the moon shining down on the lake; the sound the water makes when dipped by an oar. We were never the river dams breaking open.

I want you to be my steady companion again, as we venture West: as we venture to the unknown.

Let us not be violent anymore, or we risk the sinking of our gentle boat.

[mismatchedghosts]

Definition: “Writing,”noun.

Writing is to have all of your feelings on the outside of your skin instead of inside. They say, “To love is to be vulnerable,” but to write is to show every passerby your heartbeat on the inside of your wrist. Vulnerable doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Writing is being ridiculous. It is crying loudly in public places because emotion is not meant to be hidden behind a locked door. It is meant to be shared so others can know that they are not alone in being broken.

Writing is tossing words down on paper and hoping that they mean something. It is realizing that you are alive because you can feel it in the tips of your fingers as they tap at a keyboard and words appear in front of you. Somehow the rush that you feel below your heart makes you feel more alive than any daredevil action at midnight.

It is breath taken and breath given and it has kept me alive like no oxygen ever could. It is a dying a little every day and wanting it that way, because a thick skin means the end of my blood-written words, and without them, I am nothing.

[mismatchedghosts]

I've gotten a ton of new followers today! Hi everyone. If you have a writing blog and you'd like me to check it out, let me know. Also, if you have any writing suggestions, please, send them my way. Have a good night. :)

[mismatchedghosts]

To People Who Try to Put Anxiety in a Box: You Can’t

Anxiety is not knowing that you are pulling your hair out until you’ve got a bald spot on your head and the other kids are laughing at you. It is eating when you’re not hungry because the repetitive motion of food to mouth, food to mouth calms you and you don’t know why. It is holding your phone in your hand when you don’t even want to use it, because its rounded edges and smooth screen make you feel safe. It is rubbing at your wrists because you think the motion encourages your blood to keep pulsing at least one more minute and maybe if you tell your heart to pump it’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.

Anxiety is realizing that your mind is a receptacle for every honeybee and wasp and hornet without a home and not knowing whether to accept them with open arms or exorcise them. Every bee has a name and their names buzz around your head without hope of relief. Their names are Your Next Assignment Due, and What If He Doesn’t Love You Anymore, and You Will Never Amount to Anything.

Anxiety is hearing news that the boy you grew up knowing died in a motorcycle accident and replaying that accident in your mind over and over until you swear that you died with him. It is always pondering the worst case scenario: it is driving on a highway and keeping your hands from driving you off the edge just so you can be sure for once what something feels like.

Anxiety is irrational hurting in places that don’t make sense but that does not mean it isn’t real. It is not getting out of bed in the morning not because you are weak, but because you know your limits. Letting anxiety go means that even if it won’t be okay, you will get up someday, and maybe you can help someone else get up too.    

[mismatchedghosts]

The High School Transcript my Guidance Counselor Never Saw

Ninth grade was innocence dressed up in a uniform that didn’t quite fit. It was over enthusiastic eye shadow and laughter at jokes scribbled on notes passed during class. It was learning that goodness doesn’t last and sometimes the boy doesn’t like you back and there is nothing you can do about it.

Tenth grade was studying how to lie and snatched moments in the bathroom to clean the gullies of makeup that forced their way down your face. Cleaning it off always gave you pause because the canyons were a sacred monument to everyone who told you that you weren’t good enough.

Eleventh grade was learning how to drive and realizing that your friends can be counted on an internet website. It was going a whole day without initiating conversations with anybody and wondering who would actually talk to you. No one did.

Twelfth grade was people copying off your tests and you not caring. Maybe if they copied off your tests they’d like you enough to want to be your friend. They didn’t. It was wasted study halls and poetry scribbled during class and it was you realizing that they could make you cry but they couldn’t take away what really mattered.

When you graduated, you didn’t know what mattered, but you knew that by someday, you could figure it out. One horse towns have a way of teaching you how to tie your own noose and how to choose the right tree to hang it on. They don’t show you that there is a whole wide world at your command and that you are good enough and that no one determines your happiness but you. 

[mismatchedghosts]

New post coming up! Major test this week, but hopefully I’ll have some new poems up afterward. :) Thank you all for hanging in there! 

[mismatchedghosts]

I’m loving the private messages that I’ve been receiving. If anyone would like me to follow their writing blog too, definitely mention it, and I’ll check it out! 

[mismatchedghosts]

Note to those who have followed my writing blog: (First of all, thank you! The list of followers keeps growing and I couldn’t be more thrilled), and secondly, if you’d like me to check out your writing/writing blog, just send me a quick message, and I’d love to do so. Any writing tips you might have, or that you might like to ask for, I’d love to talk!  

[mismatchedghosts]

To a Writer Who Can’t Leave

You need to realize that you have 

to be your own poetry now. 

You always relied on sadness and 

frustration to give you light to write by.

He has opened you up and turned you

inside out to find the source of your words 

and you wonder if he stays with you because

he hasn’t found it out yet.

He is wide-open eyes and he is 

too-long hair and he is midnight 

in the middle of the afternoon.

But you are fire on a cold day, 

and you are a forest growing tall and 

you are complete without his broken bottles 

and angry words and you can give yourself 

words without needing any of his.

My words to you: your fire can 

produce ink as well it burns pages.

[mismatchedghosts]

A Letter to the Boy with the Blue Eyes and Gorgeous Smile

I have always resonated with Marianne when she said, “When I fall in love, it shall be forever.” Forever with you would feel like a moment and I would live that moment over and over again just for the pleasure of hearing you breathe. 

I feel your love like a cloak around me. It is warmest when I’m alone. How could I find such strength in anyone else’s arms.

Your tongue whispers words filled with honey and sugar and I gulp them down absent of tea and coffee, because your love is the only caffeine my body needs to keep going.

I know your soul. I know on what shelves need lanterns and what shelves are best left alone to gather dust.

And of course, you know mine. You know when I need your love like a rainstorm in a desert and when I need it like raindrops on a warm afternoon.

You are the ache below my heart that tells me to write. Whatever lived there before has given up its residence and left nothing but old books and a little dirt on the floor. You shooed all my ghosts away and filled that dwelling with light.

There is no satisfaction like hearing you speak your passions. Your words are always so full of life that I could eat them for dinner and breakfast and lunch for the rest of my existence and never want for anything else.

I told you once that you are what home looks like. I have always been one for comfort. I have never really wanted to leave my familiar. But I could travel the world with you and my home would be with me. If ever you were gone, I would spend my life trying to find the home I know in your arms. 

[mismatchedghosts]

New post coming soon! 47 followers and counting. Thank you guys. :) 

PS If you have anything you think I should write about, please let me know! I love suggestions. :)

[mismatchedghosts]

I Never Thought That Stockholm Syndrome Could Happen to Me

I can feel your loving like

pine sap under my fingernails. 

You are forever present

but I never see you.

I feel both at one with nature

and divided from it.

You at once belong to me

and you don’t.

I feel your love like a rain cloud

surrounding my head.

I understand that rain is beautiful,

but it is so lonely.

My love for you burns my lungs

so that I can feel you

every time I breathe in.

It’s like an injury

from a type of poisonous gas,

the agony is forever present,

and recovery is the true battle lost.  

The burning means

that some part of you

remains in me.

I have wished that it would stop 

so that I can be reborn from 

those ashes like 

a phoenix rising. 

But I’ve become friends with that 

pine sap and those rain clouds and 

this burning and I 

had always thought Stockholm Syndrome was

a horrible thing,

but I never believed it could happen to me. 

[mismatchedghosts]

When The Butterflies in Your Stomach Want to Leave

Nobody has ever been able to describe for me that

ache, somewhere in the middle of my chest, 

the roiling of water and dirt and blood in places I 

can't reach. 

I feel it sometimes when I am alone in front of a 

computer screen and I realize that I have thousands of friends 

on the internet and none in real life. 

That pit in my stomach tells me that I have nothing

and I will be nothing and I should try for nothing because

nothing will become of it. 

I've been told not to trust the melancholy that hits me 

in the moments before dusk. Elusive emotions give you

nothing to hit when the pounding in your head gives up and

needs somewhere to go. 

But people tell you who to trust and then walk away when the 

brightness in your eyes turns into the flicker of a burned out light

bulb and then one day disappears entirely.

I'm sorry that your butterflies want to leave. I believe that our bodies

remake themselves just a little bit when we meet new people. I hope that

when you meet someone new you can smile and forget about the

butterflies that insisted on flying away. 

~b.k.

[mismatchedghosts]

I've Seen Trees Grow From Rocks and I Think They Can Grow From Hearts Too

I don't always understand hurting. 

It leaves cracks in my heart and makes my 

blood flow places it shouldn't. 

But lately I've realized that those 

cracks leave room for new roots to grow in 

the place of my withered dreams and

soon I'll be a tree able to withstand

any heartbreak coming like a hurricane

at my branches. That blood is fertilizer

and my organs are the dirt. It might

take a few years, but someday

there will be acorns at the ends of my fingers and 

green leaves in place of dirty skin. 

~b.k.