sois belle et tais-toi

Laura in Scotland

[nocommentlaura]

Wanting to hold something.

It’s complicated but

I think I might be ready to start a life again

I might not have a chance to get to it today, maybe next week

Maybe it’s hard, and maybe I will never be beautiful

In a way that makes these things come easy

I think perhaps I’m fated to envy the lives of those

Who can understand love, and hold it in their chest

Maybe it’s hard, and I know you know best

I have to believe that I don’t have to be beautiful

That I can mean well, or otherwise

But I think I might be ready to start a life again

Knowing that I have this great capacity for 

Empathy and joy

Wanting to hold something 

[nocommentlaura]

There’s no way out of Hell if it is your body

There’s no way out of hell if it is your body

If it is your bones, your fat, your veins

There’s no cure, no geography that can distance you from yourself

Your hate has become black ink in your blood

Spoiling you, poisoning you

You cannot set it free, there is no where else to be

There is no way out of hell if it is your body

If everyone you meet will see it, peeking out of your eyes

Pouring out of your mouth

Your words are unkind, dishonest, you wish

You could not be so lazy, be so honest

Wish that they could know, that this is not you

This is not what you mean, to say or to do

There is no way to explain, there is no excuse

Your body is hell and your limbs have no use

One day you will be better, better, better

Be glad

Better

Be glad 

Be glad.

[nocommentlaura]

She has my name, your woman

I was never for you

If you’ve guessed that’s hard to say

Because it is

I woke at 3am and thought how I should have to do anything

To leave this city for your side

But that wouldn’t make any sense

I need to heal from the idea that just because you once made me feel well, you mean anything

I do not feel well

But it is wrong of me to place any kind of cure in you

As who you are now 

Is not who you were

When I felt well

In fact, it has nothing to do with you, anymore

You, as an allegory

For loneliness? Something

If I had understood you then

I might understand you now

But that isn’t going to be

Wherever you are, there’s a steady stream of girls to interest you

I wish I had not asked, I wish I had not known

It would have been nice to think of you as alone, as well

I think because I am not nice

You are, of course

Which is why you are not alone

She has my name, your woman

I wonder if you knew her first, or if it was me

In your address book

The first of that name, to grow closer

She has my name, and better for it

I can’t imagine better news 

To whip myself about on

I have never known anyone else by your name

Sometimes I whisper it when I feel hopeless

It is easy to forget that you let me go

That you didn’t mind

I have never believed in love stories, but for a moment 

I believed in you

As a person who saw me

It doesn’t help that there has been nothing since but sadness

I perked up to think that you might be alone, too

But you have someone else, to look forward to

A twist of fate, she shares my name

I’m sure you did not think of that

For she, since you’ve known her, has been entirely new and wonderful

She has nothing to do with me

For I am gone

And I have nothing to do with you.

[nocommentlaura]

Handsome

I am not a handsome woman

One day, I will trade on looks alone

For now, I do try to be funny

It would be hard, to trade on looks alone

I’d have to be another sort of person

Who speaks for the women

The ones like me

Who are not handsome

But cannot reconcile it

I like to pretend, that once I was

But I think that I would remember it

And I do not

Everyone speaks for

Handsome women

There is not much space or air

For them at all

I’d ask, if I didn’t fear them 

If I trusted anyone with the truth

That I am not a handsome woman

That I have known it all along

Who have I been lying to, except myself?

I could not bear to lie about it

To anyone else.

[nocommentlaura]

One day my heart will not be broken

One day my heart will not be broken

I will have to appreciate what I have been given

It is hard to be anything other than a tragedy 

When you’ve been full up on anger for so long

All the things that you deserve, things taken from you

What was never ours is yours

To act out in solitude

One day my heart will not be broken

I will have to imagine his life 

As something ordinary, never mystic

I will have to stop dreaming of the Great Lake

How I might swim until I can no longer

It would be so very cold

I won’t

One day my heart will not be broken

I will be any other type of person

For longer than an evening

What was yours was never mine

To argue about

I will concede to you 

All of the beauty and power in life

I have no lust for it at all

One day my heart will not be broken

I will have to stop dreaming of the Sea

Other ways to disappear

I will have to be glad that what I have been given

I never could give back 

[nocommentlaura]

If I didn’t have to take my body with me

If I didn’t have to take my body with me

I would have been in love a hundred times

I would have been a more successful daughter, a gentler friend

If I didn’t have to take my body with me

I would have done all the things that happy people are meant to do

My mind is never jealous, but my body always is

It aches to be inside of itself, it aches for an alternative

Near the end now, or perhaps the beginning

It has always felt impossible to be anything other than a body

That beauty would be a prerequisite to success, because success is a public endeavour

It is hard to be a public woman, and not be a beautiful one

My body, as it is, is all that most will ever want to see of me

If I could do without it, I would, because it has just been an unloved distraction

Acknowledging my selfish nature and my selfish thoughts

If I didn’t have to take my body with me, perhaps just once my intention might matter

Might be how someone remembers me

Near the end now, or perhaps the beginning

It feels impossible to be nothing more than a body

To have them look at me and know my worth

To have worth to worry about at all

I just wanted to get my life on, easy

I never asked to be a public woman

Yet, that I am, every day

It seems that we all have to be 

If I didn’t have to take my body with me

If I could live some other way

I would, I swear I would

There could be no excuse. 

[nocommentlaura]

Ashes

When I rose from someone else’s ashes, a century ago

I thought to myself, a fine life she might live

She, with wind in hair, on any summer’s day

Atop a moor, I thought myself

The Yorkshire winds might carry

As I don’t live there anymore

I’m only half of them

I’m only half of anyone

Whose honest will I ken

So I’ll be half of everyone

As long as they allow

So I’ll be half until I die

And carve a life, somehow

[nocommentlaura]

Anticipating Nostalgia

I think I spent a lot of my life anticipating nostalgia

Because I had no measure of how it would hurt

To have actually lost people, to time and to themselves 

And to have consistently been myself

To have known myself so well and seen no profit

From such a blessing 

Anticipating nostalgia because

I thought there would be love there, somewhere In my record, in my lot in life

Because the day to day is so unbearable

But your future is so bright

I know my future was, or is, supposed to be bright

Because I worked hard, because I meant well

I had no measure of how it would hurt

To have changed so little by meaning well

I think I spent a lot of my life anticipating nostalgia

Because I thought that I would’ve saved one person

When it mattered, helped somehow

To have known myself so well 

And only been a futile runaway

To have known myself so well

And seen no beauty, in myself or any weathered face

I think I spent a lot of my life anticipating nostalgia

Because I would have met my husband by now

Or someone nice, at least, who I might remember well

To have known myself so well

And burned every trace I left behind because

To have anyone understand me would be such a

Temptation, that if I allowed myself to exist in someone else’s life

In their thoughts

How impossible it would be to find peace in severance

To find peace in shame

Better to be omniscient in matters

Better to be somewhere in the walls

I think I misunderstood nostalgia

Because I thought it would be in autumn

But no one would have died, and nothing would ever hurt so much

I thought I would have found some better way to process 

Express these feelings in an appropriate manner, and move on

I thought it would all be in autumn when the colours are good

And I wear jeans

But it never worked like that

And I have never worked

And no one wants to touch me

They never have

Because they think I’ll take offence to affection

That I’d be violated by love

What a cold piece of furniture

What a broken sort of girl

Best left alone

Knowing myself so very well

And being known to so very few

I’d love for them to break my trust, to hold me

Anyone

What trust is there without love

What nostalgia is there without love

Once you’ve burned every trace behind you

And no bright lights shine ahead

Perhaps you just have to live your life

I don’t know, though

I know myself, so very well.

[nocommentlaura]

Two pieces

What do you do When you’re one hundred pieces But you’re meant to be two What do you what do you What do you do When your illness does not manifest In outward success What do you do Do you die ? I don’t know I hope no Do you secede From true life Real life Where do you live Do you find a middle place Behind yourself In front of someone else I don’t know But I am sure that I Am sadder than anyone else has ever been before Aren’t we all sure Of that I’m one hundred pieces And everyone’s two There’s him or there’s you

[nocommentlaura]

I wrote my obstacles on the other side and broke it in half with an open palm.

[nocommentlaura]

How to be okay while not being okay

How to be okay while not being okay?

I don’t know and no one will tell me

Everyone rhymes “get better” with “easy”

How can I want so much and be too little

It seems unfair somehow

To have to feel this way most half-days

And still want things

People who want things

They go running

They bake bread and fly kites

They dance and flirt, they go out drinking loudly

People who want things 

Get things

It seems unfair. I want to rhyme “get better” with “easy”

I want to smile but all I can do is startle

Some days, most half days

How to be okay with not being enough- when you ought not to be

When you worry in your heart that you’re one of those dull people

That you don’t have enough wind for your sails

Stagnant, short of breath

I covered up my back with scars and took my breath away

Stitched up sorry lungs- forgive me

I mean not to complain

It seems selfish but I don’t want to be ordinary

Or maybe I do- the sort of ordinary that others are glad of

Easy love and pinot grigio afternoons

Setting suns on polaroids

How to be okay while not being okay

I am far too much or far too little- I don’t know how to be gray

I don’t know how to want things I am entitled to

Easy love and pinot grigio afternoons

I want something more- I’m something less

I don’t know and no one will tell me.

[nocommentlaura]

The House

I have lived here nearly all my life

-I think, it is difficult to be sure

Every once and then I find myself

Asleep, in a different corner of the room

And I forget, quite who I am

But once I wake, I find

The stairwell is quite where I left it

And beneath it are the same seven chairs

And in them sit all seven sins

Since I have lived here nearly all my life

As every cupboard holds another ghost

And every handle creaks a cautious tune

All but the attic door, which will not turn

I have no key, I have no memory

As to what lies behind its surface

Though I have lived here all my life

-I think, it is difficult to be sure.

[nocommentlaura]

The Best Way To Grow

The best way to grow

Is to never admit that no one’s loved you

To not accept that you know how to be the lover

Not the loved

The recipient and not the instigator

The best way to grow

Is to learn how to change yourself

Swim forty miles daily, train those

Aesthetic muscles

The best way to grow

Is to never get stronger

Get smaller, get wider, get weaker

Learn how to take a punch 

Learn how to lose

The best way to grow

Is to make life the antagonist 

And be the recipient

Ignore their actions, find their motives

There is a reason you chose to

Get weaker, become a shape

Swim forty miles across a lake

To float and stretch your

Aesthetic muscles

The best way to grow

Is to leave everything

To strip the flesh from your bones

To retire your habits and your desires

This is not the life you wanted, anyways

Admit

That no one has ever loved you

Not like you have wanted to love

Not even at all

To admit. 

[nocommentlaura]

Heyday

So what do you do when your heyday Is brief 7 years running you're left with his grief 34's young still, and 22's plenty But what do you do when your stomach is empty So how is it now that since 2010 You love him as well as you might have done then 7 years over and over again But what do you do when the sun tells you when So what do you do when in love with a martyr When you've got dreams left to pay but your dream's a non-starter 16's so young and 28's older But what now that you've lost your grip on his shoulder She's been cutting her nails so she could play guitar But she's none nothing since and she Hangs out in bars and she Glares often at strangers just forcing their hand But she knows you don't need her She does understand So what do you do when your heyday is brief 7 years running and you've swallowed your grief And he got so old and I never did learn How to be a woman, how even to earn Respect, admiration, love would be plenty What will I do now my stomach is empty.

[nocommentlaura]

Lucid

He tells me I should try to lucid dream That I should seek to control The inconsolable madness Of a dream world That I might walk better while asleep Might do the things I please, in real life Might come to misconstrue The truth from delightful fiction What he does not know is the sweat And the panic of every over thought And over-wrought, toss and turn That I should seek to control The inconsolable madness Of day time Of walking in the streets and being seen How dare they, claim to know me I have never met a single person Aside from he, my love My future Might be dictated entirely By my unwillingness to walk the streets And be seen The fact I find it far easier to send myself A hundred miles from here than outside My front door But all the sweet things they said Of madness How I should seek to control They speak of brilliance He speaks of me Whom he controls That I might love better while I sleep Might do the things he pleases, in real life Might come to misconstrue His meaning What he does not know is my sweat The layers underneath my skin Of soot, and scars The ugly idolatry pictured back at me This warped nature of my own What he does not know is my hate That I might be a hundred miles from here But always have to walk out my front door And be seen I have never been burdened with a desire for control I fear he will be.

[nocommentlaura]

A Girl

I've always wanted to be a girl

I still think I often do

Wonder why I've always felt

Why that might be a goal

Yes, born a girl

Yes, named a girl

Certainly female, wearing skirts

And lipstick

Long hair

Blue eyes

A girl?

Not really

Something more discreet

No list of regular accomplishments

A teenaged girl, once

Achieving nothing in her diary

And now I'm old, or older

And I am a woman now?

Still I wish that I

Had been a girl, once In all that that might mean

A scared child, certainly

Always premature, and left aside

Where was the promise of my first love or

The photos for my grandchildren

I want them to know that I was a great beauty, once

Like our grandmothers always are

Did I lose all that, to sadness?

Did I lose all that, to fear?

I don't know

I watch the hands move on the clock

Once slow, and now so fast

I didn't learn to be a girl

I think it hurt too much to feel

An object, to have been witnessed

I think it hurt too much to be a beauty

To be in love once, to make an error

So what will dictate my life if not my choices

If not my youth, if never my beauty

So what will I have framed on the walls

Or in my albums

What kind of stories will I tell when all I remember is the regular shame

Of inconsistence, of an inability to be

Ordinary

What a beautiful word

You always say, these are regular things

These are ordinary women

So what dictates these ordinary women

If not our youth, if never our beauty.

[nocommentlaura]

This place is yours and I live here instead.

I don’t like to think of all the little traumas

But I do

Time to time

Think of the 

Unromantic problems

This place is yours and 

I live here instead

I don’t like to think of all the little errors

But I do 

Time to time

Think of all the

Ways I’m sorry

What I was

By and by

You belonged here

More than I do

You took this place

Made it a

Romantic problem

Made me want to stay

But there you go

So current bound

So far away to sea

It’s not romantic to be landlocked

You were not in love with me.