mori, unmoored

28 • 🇲🇾 • she/he/they • writing/stray thought aviary

[moriunmoored]

when you’ve only known home and blood as a place of strife it’s near impossible to let your heart rest easy. abandoned fight dogs circling each other licking our wounds and snapping and biting when we come close, no common enemy to bind us together, yet we stick close because we’re all we have, even if what bound us together was closed doors and thick skin. is it so unthinkable to believe i would stray? is it so unpredictable for the runt of the litter to want something softer, to be fed love and warmth without necessity, just for the sake of affection? to be afforded comfort without a deep wound to validate it? is it so unacceptable that despite being acclimated to a cage, i still yearn for a home?

[moriunmoored]

• “you should hate me”

i’m the mouthpiece of your demise / strung your self abuse on puppet strings and nailed an axe to my hands / mutual punishment in controlled doses / prescribe me a cruel role i didn’t ask for / watch me play it poorly.

[moriunmoored]

• hand-me-down mixtapes

sing me songs of love and sing me songs of loss / a child’s sleeping heart responds on instinct / faint muscle memory slipping from its grasp / but the heart continues to doze, unrepentant, a heedless escapist / how can you feel loss when you’ve never had it at all? / what is love and loss if you’ve never tasted it? / but oh / sing to me about crisis / sing to me about yellowed bruises / sing to me about collateral damage in the shape of a newborn’s cry / sing to me about complete devastation / and the heart wakes in recognition

[moriunmoored]

• redlined semicolons

every swallow a gasp, fluttering weakly against its hold / flapping your wings in a birdcage too small, overgrown and suffocating, biting at your feathers / i know you want to leave, i know you want to be free, i promise i understand, i promise / i’ll let you go i promise, i promise i understand / i tug on your battered shoes and cease to believe you lasted so long / i get it, i do / your soles have been beaten clean through, where else could they possibly run / i promise, i promise i understand

but can i see you before you go? may i slide my fingers under your noose, a one-two tug, a necktie not too loose / may i relinquish the knife when i’m done cutting us fruit? / may i feed you something sweet before the bottle drains? / may i have one last memory while you still remain?

[moriunmoored]

• faith, trust, pixie dust

i say i’ve begun plucking strings, begun writing words, laid chalk on grounds, paint on walls / amidst the various ways i’ve leapt into a pretty whim / to scream and shout and cry and ache / and for a moment shame colours my cheeks, bites at my ears / because surely it’s a testament to my unwellness / my incomplexities and incompletenesses / my eagerness to bleed on new novelties / neverland canvases full of runts and juveniles / painted haphazard by a has-been never-was / but she says of course, fond and unsurprised, warmed by our years / pride pulls at her gums as she smiles, an adventurer’s farewell / you and your artist’s heart

[moriunmoored]

• allowance

if i could buy myself the luxury of loving you out loud / the skin of my teeth, the fuzz of my skin, the white of my bones / greedily strip my soul down to nickels and dimes / even the afterlife takes change / would you?

[moriunmoored]

• by candlelight

as the darkness creeps in and footsteps leave the room, we scrabble quietly for one another / wicks bowing to share flame, respectful and wary yet desperate, eager embers hoping for a spark / lean unto me as i unto you / and that’s the tragedy of it all, isn’t it? / the only use of wax is that it holds / all we do is burn.

[moriunmoored]

• homesick but living well

i miss you the way you can picture a home in an empty house, the way vivid hypotheticals ebb and flow around you as you stay resolutely ashore / your heart aches to come closer, to come home, impossibly so / i’m right here, no need to miss me. / i can’t help it, i just do. / climb the trellis of my ribs and into the bedroom window of my heart, rickety from wear, paint chipping in the shape of your grip, and say hello / my love, / are you awake?

[moriunmoored]

the world could be on its knees and i’d look at you and thank god it’s upright

[moriunmoored]

• waterlogged

you left us stranded in the riptide of a white-knuckled grip, come loose / couldn’t you let us fester in still waters, couldn’t we mirror the dying sun

couldn’t you do me the kindness of loving me placid, couldnt you allow me the belief you loved me less

as your lungs flood with liquid doom,

must you still dig beneath the current for riches, fingernails cutting coral, and say, breathlessly

for you, for you, for you

[moriunmoored]

• you’re welcome!

pride is a sheer overcoat on your gratitude, thick and glossy and cloying, and you boast:

thank you for being small, thank you for being easy

thank you for your low whispers

thank you for your soundless tantrums

and my, thank god for the muscle memory of a head bowed low.

i dont remember my heart moving, i dont remember thoughts churning,

i dont remember childlike foolishness beyond a desperation to appease

i dont remember feeling little and significant and real.

i just remember being yours.

[moriunmoored]

you taught me to kill with milk teeth / yet still you flinch at their gleam

[moriunmoored]

hope is a four-letter curse i wield like a knife

knifepoint compass, north at your throat; guide me home

[moriunmoored]

• lost cause fallacy

time and time again, ever felt a joy so great / beneath the glossy sheen of gratitude / a desperate ache forms beneath my ribs for my lights to flicker out— for my heart to stop— keep all this joy snug within me like a time capsule. cookie tin treasure trove. let the autopsy show the laughter in my belly, the ugly snort in my throat, the sting of my sides. mummify my elation with the riches of a perfect day.