misplacedpens

telling a story

[tiredgalpal]

poem by @misplacedpens

[misplacedpens]

wow my favorite artist 

[misplacedpens]

there is a half moon in the sky and i think that love is not always easy. sometimes it feels like the other half of your heart is covered by clouds, or the dark, or whatever covers the other side of the moon on late march nights. and sometimes it stays that way. sometimes it stays that way.

[misplacedpens]

A Poem: For Everyone Who Asked Me To Write About Them

ask the moon what inspires a poet and she will tell you:

it is not the perfect curl of a girl’s hair, or the perfect curve of her waist, or the sound of her voice echoed off the backseat of your car. it is the scars that don’t fade. it is the permanent pain.

it is the boys who lie. it is the boys who mean well; who hold your hands over the fire to keep you warm, but do not listen when you show them the burns.

it is the boys who do whatever it takes, to get you alone with them. the boys who will break their own hearts, if it means getting you to spend one night in their bed.

it is the endings you knew were coming. the denial you drown yourself in. the maybe this time will be different. it is listening to your friends, when they tell you to trust someone. again. it is watching your heart break, in slow motion; a thousand tiny pieces; falling; it is being frozen; in love, or in trust; it is not being able to stop the breaking. it is not being able to wipe, from your mind, the sight of him walking away. it is watching him walk away.

ask the moon what inspires a poet and she will tell you:

it is the boys who tell you they will stay. it is the boys who do not ever stay. it is the boys who guilt you into loving them; the boys who disappear, as soon as you say you were built to do more than please them.

it is the boys who do not see me as anything other than a wife. or a body. or a body that will turn them into someone who is ready for a wife.

it is the boys who do not want to get to know me; they just want to feel me. to see if all the things they heard about my warmth, and my passion, and my willingness to give are true.

ask the moon what inspires a poet and she will tell you how she watched me fall in love.

how she watched my pen run dry; how i lost words, between late night facetimes and good morning texts. the moon saw every walk home and every long drive; every happy song and every fallingintosomething playlist; every moment of peaceful coexistence.

she will tell you how he asked me to write poems about him and how, for once, i was brave enough to tell the truth:

boys only get poems if they break my heart. because it is easy to write about people who love you like you are an afterthought.

ask the moon what inspires a poet and she will tell you how she watched me fall in love. or in trust.

she will tell you how:

i told a boy i could not write about him unless he broke my heart. after that he stopped calling.

[misplacedpens]

i want an existence i don’t have to open my eyes for

[misplacedpens]

i paint indifference on my face, like i know myself well enough to master a self portrait

[misplacedpens]

we walk out of the theater with our fists raised. no one can say anything. we have reclaimed our culture. we are standing taller. we have stolen back the crown; can you steal something that belonged to you in the first place? we are unapologetic. they'll tell us Wakanda is all fiction, all in our heads, all movie magic, all a figment of our imagination-- they don't know we've got vibranium in our veins. they should know by now: we are unbreakable. we are a mountain of wealth; the gift that keeps giving; a resurgence of resilience; they should know chains don't keep us; we are never broken, we do the breaking. they don't know, we've got cities stemming from our spines. weapons of mass destruction rest on our minds; they are lucky-- we chose sound booths and sun-soaked sidewalks to let out our aggression. we choose to grab hold of microphones, to pick up pens, to focus our energy on building the bricks of our bones until bullets will bounce off our bodies, instead of turning into our enemies. if you do not think that black minds are intelligent enough, if you do not think black minds are complex enough, to build a perfect city...you have not taken time to look behind what the world has told you we are. we already have cities, of strength and solidarity and secrecy, twisted into our veins. we do not need to drink a purple herb to get through the worst our bodies will endure, we just have to remember: our mother's voices saying "remember who you are." we just have to remember: what our fathers would have wanted; what our fathers would have done, if freedom was not ripped from their lungs. if the world was not placed on their shoulders; if the world recognized, we are not a planet floating, but instead resting on invisible men's shoulders. we walk out of the theater, knowing to raise our voice to say I AM THE KING NOW to kneel at the feet of the women who protect us, who feed us, who clothe us-- this is what it means to be Black now. to be a warrior. to go back home. to walk away from battle-- to be able, to go back home. to find your cousins, across the ocean. to sacrifice the protection of your body; to sacrifice the only thing that has not been stolen from you yet; to sacrifice all that you are, all that you have known, for your cousins who are suffering. we walk out of the theater knowing, this is what it means to be Black now. this is what it has always meant, to be Black. we walk out of the theater in awe, that it took Wakanda to remind us.

after watching Black Panther (misplacedpens)

[misplacedpens]

my depression comes to visit on a monday evening. she is uninvited, but that does not stop her from walking through the front door that is my heart and settling between my bones. she says hi, how are you, long time no see. because she thinks she is funny. she is not funny.

my depression comes to visit on a monday evening. she stares at me while i stare into the mirror. she opens my eyes wide, turns me into an empty cavern; ready for filling.

my depression comes to visit on a monday evening. she is not as friendly as i remember. she is a little more migraine headache, a little more aching joints, a little more pain in my chest than i remember. she is a little more wipe-my-mind blank than i want her to be.

my depression comes to visit on a monday evening and says it’s cute, the way you thought you could go on without me. i do not laugh; she lowers herself into the dead center of my chest and closes her eyes. she says gunshots will wake me up. she is not funny.

my depression comes to visit on a monday evening. my depression comes to visit on a monday evening and i prepare my body for an extended stay. i prepare my body for a week of not eating, and then a week of not sleeping, and then a week of nothing but sleeping. i prepare my body for aches and pains and i tell my body it is not allowed to give up. i tell my body, it has to relearn to breathe. again.

[misplacedpens]

it has been one year since i broke my heart. or since i realized that you could not hold it

[misplacedpens]

Your writings are lovely!

thank you so much x

[misplacedpens]

i imagine the poems my father would write, if he did not have a musical note in him.

i imagine him writing of disappointing his father, and needing his father, and his father being like the empty open of a grand piano; i imagine him writing of the lid always being closed and the keys always being chipped and the sustain pedal always being broken.

i imagine him writing of left behind. of the Disappear gene that runs in our blood. of the Disappear gene that his daughter inherited; i imagine my father getting up at a mircrophone and begging his daughter to come home; long enough to become permanent again.

i imagine him writing of not recognizing the home he built, because he never had one. i imagine him writing mirrors; reflections of how he ended up with a white wife, and four daughters, and a painted white fence, and no musical notes in him.

my father does not need to write these poems. his veins are piano strings, his heart beat is the hammers that keep them ringing. his daughters are the stand that keep him open.

my father’s father visits once every other year, and my father does not have to speak. he gives him a tour of the house-- every year my grandfather comes around you can tell he is surprised, that it is still the same house. he is surprised that his son is building, not destroying. not disappearing. my father gives him a tour of the house, every time (like it is not the same one he has been building for thirteen years) and he does not say anything-- just walks into the living room and stands next to the open baldwin.

just invites the disappearing man to stop running. to sit down at the bench. just watches in silence, as a closed man struggles to play, with the lid open.

[misplacedpens]

to my 15 year old self, who is about to fall in love for the first time:

it is July. you are sitting on a boy’s bed. you can hear his voice, climbing from the living room, up the stairs. and you do not know this yet, but in five minutes you will hear his laugh; and in ten minutes you will see his face; and in twelve minutes you will be sure of nothing except the fact that you are in love with him.

you do not know this yet, but you are not in love with him. you do not know this yet, but four years from now you will meet a boy who does not give you butterflies. you will meet a boy whose eyes are not red when he tells you he loves you. you will meet a boy who does not make your hands shake when he looks at you.

you do not know this yet, but there is only so much strong arms can do for you. boys will be boys. boys will say things they don’t mean. boys will say thing they mean, but they will not admit that they mean them. boys will look you in the eye and tell you you changed their life– you do not know this yet, but it will hurt; the way you will retrace your steps, trying to memorialize the moments he let you in.

in five minutes a boy will walk up the stairs. you will hear him laugh and it will hurt. to feel how far he is from you. you do not know this yet, but love does not have to hurt. love is not a secret only July remembers. love is not wasting your Saturday afternoons on the bed of a boy who is not brave enough to tell you the truth. love is not writing letters you are too scared to show him, love is not taking a boy’s bones and using them as bricks; love is not building a house out of a boy so you have something to go back to.

it is July and you are sitting on a boy’s bed. you do not know this yet, but five years from now you will receive an invitation to his wedding in the mail. and you will want it to hurt, but it won’t.

you do not know this yet, but you are not in love with him. four years from now you will love for the first time, and you will have your heart broken for the first time, and you will learn what it is to give every piece of yourself to someone even when they don’t know how to give back; all for the first time.

so now, let it be July. write poems about the color of his bedroom walls, but let them be just that: poems about bedroom walls. sit in the front seat of his car on a drive to the movies, but let it be just that: a ride to the movies. let it be July. let it be hot, let it be restless, let it be waking up on Sunday mornings to the sound of him cooking. but, in five minutes, when you hear his laugh; in ten minutes, when you see his face; in twelve minutes when the words “i am in love” are on the tip of your tongue – know that love can look you in the eye and say it back.

[misplacedpens]

she is quiet girl. pretty, soft spoken; black lines grace her eyelids every morning and i wonder what it is like to live in her skin.

i wonder how it feels, to be well-liked and well-loved. to never have anyone tell you to lower your voice, no one wants to hear all that, ohmygosh you’re so loud.

she is quiet girl. walks slowly, like she is floating. a manicured hand taps a rhythm to no-song on the table and i wonder what it is is like, to not have the whole world talk when there is a boy sitting across from you.

i wonder how it feels, to be given the benefit of the doubt. to be believed when you say “we are just friends”. to not have to feel the strange guilt that comes with being told you are ruining relationships, even though you have done nothing but sit down with a boy and look into his eyes while he is speaking.

she is quiet girl. soft lips, perfectly parted to release an apology.

i wonder if i, in all my loud and outspoken and need-to-hear-my-voice-bounce-off-the-walls-to-be-sure-i-am-alive-- if i struggle to fill my lungs with the oxygen to let out enough “no” for boys to hear me; i wonder how much harder it is for her.

she is quiet girl. all soft edges and soft spoken and soft lips.

i hope she has enough loud in her, to have learned “no”. because she is quiet, but she is still girl.

[misplacedpens]

“completely”, a poem by me

[misplacedpens]

home is where the heart is but where are you

(this is a poem for my heart)

i think i left you somewhere in january i think i left you somewhere by the side of my favorite highway i think you were in the middle of asking me why i have a favorite highway i think i left you when i remembered that i write my way out of misery yeah i think i left you when i realized i had piles of poems titled with your name

(this is a poem for my music)

i think i left you underneath the piano in my parent’s living room i think i left you on the bookshelf in the bedroom my mother says belongs to me i think i never got over the fact that that bedroom doesn’t really belong to me i thought keep you there would make the walls a little less bare; would make me feel a little more at home, but it didn’t really because i let you bleed in between the floorboards of a house with new locks on the front door and i left you there

(this is an answer to the question: why are you so sad)

i left my heart somewhere in january. i left it beneath a pile of snow, under hometown pride for a town that wasn’t even my home. i left my heart on the side of my favorite highway because my sister told me that listening to jazz on sunday, driving down the interstate 270, is her favorite memory with 5 year old me. i left my heart when i remembered that i write my way out of misery; when i could see every page in my journal bleeding.

(this is an answer to the question: why don’t you sing)

i left my music underneath the piano in my parent’s living room. i left it, for my younger sisters to use. i left it so my father would see my name, written on the underside of black and white keys, and remember i am still a product of his teaching. even if i don’t sing. i left my music on the bookshelf in a strange bedroom. i thought journals full of lyrics would give me something to go back to, but they’re not even finished songs; all the sheet music is buried beneath the floorboards of a house with new locks on the front door; every handwritten note has been washed from the walls; my key no longer fits in the lock of that front door.

home is where the heart is and i can hear the rhythm of my heart beating 500 miles away from me i can hear my heart beating 600 miles away from me i can hear it singing i can feel it bleeding why did you leave me why did you leave me why did you leave me

[misplacedpens]

Any resolutions?

no. i don’t really do new year’s resolutions. my attempts to drastically change my life usually happen around june

[misplacedpens]

remember how much love we had in our hearts when we were young and it was summer

[misplacedpens]

muse maybe it was the ocean, maybe it was a street sign, maybe it was a stranger you saw once and never again; but maybe, it could have been, a real live person. maybe you loved someone, maybe you craved them maybe they laughed at all your jokes and said the right things at the wrong time; maybe they said ‘i love you’ until you couldn’t stand to hear the words on anyone else’s lips maybe they haven’t called in a while and maybe you’re awake and alone now, with nothing else to write about