[opetyr]

1.11.22 11:07 PM

ii. Your love, your pity and your indifference all speak with the same inflection, I toil to decipher the distinctions between them. But in the rare moments I do, I run from neither of them. Every paltry admission you give to me a paragon, like a stone, shining, a gift.

[opetyr]

1.9.22 2:22 PM

the young fruit split underfoot marks where, like a bookmark, we leave the rest of the story unread, unwritten. I wear rain boots because, for the first time in a long time I care to keep myself dry. premature rainfall softens and muffles the otherwise oppressive thud.

[opetyr]

1.7.22 1:55 PM

You showed me who God really was- Seven flames burning in quick succession,  Volant.  My stomach and skin protests- You can't lie here forever  Waiting to be overtaken by roots And dragged away, still wrapped in blue linen, Into that seventh and final blaze.  I can't bring myself to shower.  Every time I imagine  The scalding water rinsing away Another layer of you, I dig deeper into the  mattress,   Screw my eyes shut tight, Try to bring more color and sound To the memory of you.  I can't fill myself with anything Other than more emptiness: More red wine, because it's easier to sleep, Harder to remember the dreams when I wake.

[opetyr]

1.4.22 10:51 PM

The first time you came to me, you were young and had brown hair, curled with pale, full skin and you promised me nothing. I gave you the moon before you could ask, broke my back carrying it home to you. You forgot about me. The second time, You were older, but still younger, Your skin was deep bronze. You were quiet this time, and had more secrets and you were strong. I mistook your fortitude for a viable turret in the deluge, but it was really just barbarity, barely abated, and I almost let you cast me from the window.

Now, I know not what you look like. Your voice comes over on the backs of the armies, they come from the West where you are. You sound like them, your voice is theirs, when you call me and tell me you love me it is the tinkling of multitudinous throats, consonants ushering swords, Oh. It is the tinkling of multitudinous swords…. I knew you least of all three, but I threw aside my hair and let you seize me by the nape, let you carry me farther than you ever have before. I jived to your incorporeal caper, but you brought me to the edge of the water and finally dashed me into the trough of the wave.

[opetyr]

1.4.21 10:51 PM

You and I are an ouroboros. You’ve scores of faces, absconding and returning,  how do you deceive me every time? My heart is so desperate to trap you finally possess you this time press my weight into you and cut a ribbon  into your face so that you will always bear my name, my crest. I always thought it was an amuletum I wanted to give you, something to ward off the dark from us. But it is a malediction, instead.

[opetyr]

1.2.21 10:11PM

iv. When you turn your eye to me, I shrink And the utterance, in the middle of the night  when no one else can hear “I will always love you” throws my body, rathe and dolorous- onto the length of your sword. It makes a plangent sound, like music, as it runs through me, a current and the abrupt shower and subsequent, percussive drip marks the verses. I only wish you’d kiss me once before the epilogue. 

[opetyr]

1.2.21 10:11PM

iii. It’s lonely outside but the quiet of the dark empty that expands above and around me envelops me like you would have, it makes me feel held Like your words did. Even now when your words are terse, when you call me and tell me nothing is certain, you still hold me, in your now irreverent hands, refusing to put me down. I cradle your fingers around my frame desperately, like building a fort. Why does it feel like you are my enemy when I wear you like armour? Has it been your pursuant sabre- curved, the penetrating power of your heart- that I’ve been fleeing from? Is it your belly that I am in?

[opetyr]

1.1.22 7:36 PM

I twisted myself around the gnarled bark of the tree and felt my skin hum with the might of it’s quaking, The rain made it hard to hold steadfast and I offered my bones to you there in the eye, Praying you’d take me with you when it was over.

Now all that’s left, after the tempest has passed, Is a shrunken husk, it’s skin crumbles when I try to stroke it and coax it to life again, the dust it releases, like embers, is acrid and coats my palms like sacrificial markings. When you released your corporeal form and said goodbye you took all of its life with you, the single word ripping the moisture from it like a sword comes, glinting, out of a wound. The begonias, too, have wilted into black and flattened against the Earth in fear. I share in their fear. It was like you remembered yellow always made me happy, and in a last attempt to spurn me, you stripped them of their pigment. The sun is out again, but it falls dull on the lifeless brown and black that reflects nothing back at her. She is the only thing larger and realer than you, And though you cannot take away her ability to burn, you take her ability to shine.  

[opetyr]

1.1.22 7:36 PM

When you loved me, I could speak to you freely all the time. Now, in your absence, I write the words I want to say instead, yelling out dumbly into the binary. These days, I hold on to every small offering you give me like I’m wrapped around a thick tree in a storm. You were the strong tree half hidden, Emerging from the unexpected depression in the flaxen, sun-striped begonias- Like the curled hair at the base of you- When I found you and placed my hand on your knotted side, You seemed to hum back at me, resonant Like some planet not yet illuminated, Waiting just under the lip where the bowl of my universe dropped off and ended Waiting for me to expand just enough to include you. Inside, when I closed my eyes I could feel you Like some empyrean colossus, like the eye of a leviathan You blinked awake and looked at me, the muted light of your nimbus obscuring the cosmos completely from me. All I see is you. You looked at me and identified me, never before did I know The profundity of the loneliness without you, before you Until you filled me, like light that travels too fast to be contained, And I knew the immensity of being. You blinked in acknowledgment and startled me, I opened my eyes and grasped the bark with both hands. I gasped and the air stiffened and peeled down and away from around me like aged paper.   I could hear you now, as the zephyrs of dust and pollen curled around my ankles and up into my hair, the begonias bobbed and bowed. I spoke your name and the vibration of it shook the vale, the sounds of winged and legged creature alike paled and bent in obeisance, The frequency of it, 3, 6 or 9, possessed all life, a parhelion forming on the horizon, scintillating blues and pink and yellows. Despite myself, I was overwhelmed and yelled for you, came to be upon my knees before you as you whipped and shook around me. When I called for you again, the darkness of night fell in a moment, A sheet of rain followed. The air was shot out of the valley by it’s force and echoed away. I could still hear you over the howling, urging me to be calm. I twisted myself around the gnarled bark of the tree and felt my skin hum with the might of it’s quaking, The rain made it hard to hold steadfast and I offered my bones to you there in the eye, Praying you’d take me with you when it was over.

Now all that’s left, after the tempest has passed, Is a shrunken husk, it’s skin crumbles when I try to stroke it and coax it to life again, the dust it releases, like embers, is acrid and coats my palms like sacrificial markings. When you released your corporeal form and said goodbye you took all of its life with you, the single word ripping the moisture from it like a sword comes, glinting, out of a wound. The begonias, too, have wilted into black and flattened against the Earth in fear. I share in their fear. It was like you remembered yellow always made me happy, and in a last attempt to spurn me, you stripped them of their pigment. The sun is out again, but it falls dull on the lifeless brown and black that reflects nothing back at her. She is the only thing larger and realer than you, And though you cannot take away her ability to burn, you take her ability to shine.  

[opetyr]

12.29.21 11:30AM

My mind knows you’re gone but my body still jerks awake Trying to picture you out there, but failing, you’re fading, Like the red from my hair every time I shower because I spend too long underneath the shower head screaming over my speakers, I play the song to try and fill up the space you used to take But instead, it just personifies itself, takes the shape of your face and body next to me and turns to me, Horrifying, Because it feels like you, but doesn’t sound like you, Like some bad rendition, made years later by someone who never even knew you.

I try to make love to the black space around me instead, wiping my tears so it doesn’t see and calling out into it, Breathing out into the ether and inviting it in, It fragments into obsidian shards and creates its own light, reflects back onto itself, Almost makes a rhythm that sounds like the even breaths while you slept. I throw back the covers and reach for it’s phantasmal coitus, but it turns its faces away from me, a terrible apparition, It’s back, indistinguishable from it’s front, stares at me accusingly in the dark.

Bitter cold walks don’t work. I thought so, though, Wearing nothing but socks that meet the wet pavement, can’t feel my feet, I go out in my nightshirt, my breasts and arms goosebumped against the cotton To feel the cold, it hurts, the collar soaked while I sing the song to myself and ask for you to come back, -The dawn pressing down and around me, smothering me, its scarlet and blue coating and filling me like amniotic fluid- These first few hours used to be so full, dawn being the most pregnant part of the day, It bore you like a secret, But now without you it’s shoved me out of it instead, Splattered me out onto the New Jersey pavement, head cracks against the grey, Concussed and trying to find my way home with your name on my lips.

Already, this early, I’m thinking about it, The deep red glint at the bottom of the dark glass bottle, Seen through the pinhole, One eye closed in a grimace as I drink it down. I find her at night, the glint. She doesn’t make it any easier to miss you, But she takes up the space that you did better than music, fornication with the dark or physical suffering do.

[opetyr]

12.28.21 8:42AM

Why do they keep loving me And then becoming different people? Where do you go? You always disappear, And leave me with a stranger, A shell of the person who loved me, And I’m left trying to coax your love out of that lump of flesh you leave behind. I try so hard, I just know that if I whisper the right things, Make the right confessions, Call at the right times and Sacrifice enough That I can bring you back to life and make you love me again. But i was wrong the first time and it nearly destroyed me. This is the first time in half a decade I have felt this way. You had trauma and I had mine, I told you my story from the beginning, When you were just a combination of numbers on a screen. I trusted you that much. Did it take you that much trust to tell me yours? How do you lay before me bare and tell me your name, And then just walk away? We know each others names for life, We wrote them on each others skin. Did you erase mine? I want to rip yours from me and fold it away, keep it hidden forever So only I really know you. Did I ever? It doesn’t feel like I did. It feels like I loved an illusion, Like I am chasing a ghost, again. I love you so much, please don’t be a ghost. I can’t do it again, I will fail like I did before, And I don’t know how many more of these I have left in me.

[opetyr]

12.27.21 4:58PM

I look to you to see the truth, But I know that you keep it half obscured, It’s crueler than giving it all, even if it’s just indifference. I cannot help but hope it is not, that you long for me despite betraying me, And in the absence of your feelings, In your silence’ place, I put this hope. I feel it eat me up inside at night, When I’m supposed to be sleeping but am not, It wraps a phantom body around mine and tells me that it is you, Though I never knew what it really felt like. Long limbs, strong hands and long hair, warm breath in my ear? I’ve no idea. I will never have any idea. But my mind lies to me and tells me that’s you, Tells me that you’re laying in your bed, feet hanging off the edge because it’s too small, Thinking about me, too. Wanting to hear my voice again; I’ve spent my whole life convincing myself I was more important to people than I really was, than they showed me I was. My mind tells me you call out for me, maybe touch yourself to me and that it means more, That you really did believe we could love each other, That although you forgot our fantasy of meeting, you meant it. That you told me I was a good girl and you meant it. It’s easiest to believe in the dark, when I’m cold and I can still hear the way your voice sounded, Raspy from your coughing fits and deep from your desire, Calling me and waking me in the middle of the night to tell me you wanted me. Or that one time you said it because you knew I expected it, loved to hear it, And then took it back. Which one were you? It’s hard for me, even now with your sword in me, To ever believe you were that cruel. You would not be the first to toy with me. I would never have minded being used for your pleasure, You gave me mine as well. But I expanded my mind to include you and your dreams, Admired you so openly for your individuality and your art, Your anger and love alike, I accepted and protected, I took what you gave me and ignored what you didn’t, Gave you what I knew would make you feel good and then occupied myself when you disappeared shortly afterwards. I expanded myself to grow a new consciousness of the world, of your universe and mine, Your history and story inspired me to redefine my experience and seek new answers. I didn’t think this would be your answer.

[opetyr]

12.27.21 4:58PM

It’s still early, Still not yet even congealed into thick dark brown and black It’s still angry red, too slippery to brave standing and fleeing, Too loud, still, the sound of that melancholy song I played every morning ten times while I tried, failing, to lift myself out of bed, Fade Into You. It’s too soon, The skin of the gash still not yet done curling away from the wound My face is still pink, excited, adrenaline, Your words striking me like blows, each syllable, Every message. It’s too soon To pretend to forget who you are, Pretend that I don’t still want, so completely that it fills my mind, nearly blinding me with thunderous, firing neurons calling out your name, That it makes me hot, flushes my skin and gives me goosebumps, burning up my neck and behind my ears, Down my back and up my thighs, wrap around them tight and warm enough- strong hands- Presses up against me like you would have, insistent but gentle, in the early morning, Makes me sweat and squeeze my legs together, screw my eyes shut and put my hands up my shirt, Sigh into the dark, under my blanket, Trying not to move an inch and ignoring the pathetic need, the vivid memories I have about how much I love you, telling myself not to pick up my phone or I’ll regret it until I’m so tense I can barely breath and I just need to. Lying to myself that it has nothing to do with you. Hoping I can just finish it quickly and that I don’t imagine the sound of your voice too well, Or else I might just cry instead.

[opetyr]

You were almost as if written by me, Uncanny, Even your imperfections felt familiar Like you lingered on my tongue after I tasted you Only in my imagination, In a secret part of the night where we whispered to each other across miles and miles of empty space. You made space and distance feel like an illusion, Or like it was the first time in my life I ever really noticed it was there. You made time stretch and coil like taffy around me Entrap me until I knew nothing but my feelings, gnarled and needy and explosive You made me… explosive.

[opetyr]

12.27.21 3:48PM

You once told me “You can write a story for me anytime.” We were sensual and careless, then, I don’t think you’d have offered that If you knew where we were headed. I feel like I wrote you. You were almost as if written by me, Uncanny, Even your imperfections felt familiar Like you lingered on my tongue after I tasted you Only in my imagination, In a secret part of the night where we whispered to each other across miles and miles of empty space. You made space and distance feel like an illusion, Or like it was the first time in my life I ever really noticed it was there. You made time stretch and coil like taffy around me Entrap me until I knew nothing but my feelings, gnarled and needy and explosive You made me… explosive. It nearly felt like talking to myself, honestly.. Same words, same time, same needs, Words of affirmation and validation, Desire, How could someone else want and need as badly as me.. I would honestly believe it if it turned out you were never even real, Part of everything that’s happened still doesn’t feel like it.. I can’t tell if its been a good dream or a bad one, Or maybe it’s neither, maybe what we did is just.. done. I hate leaving things done, Concluding things always felt so cruel. I always think about people after they’re gone, and the older I get, The more desperately and fervently I make these connections The hotter the fire every time I reach my hand into it, And the longer it stays with me afterwards, Rapidly claiming parts of my mind and life like a disease. Before, I gladly let you. A three hour conversation held hysterically in the bitter cold, Wandering around for hours, anywhere but home, with you. A puzzle too ambitious for me, A hastily created song in the middle of the night, But it’s so good. I try to remember it so badly but I cannot, I can’t try desperately piecing together pieces I never committed to memory anyway, I never thought I would need to. I’ll hear it again someday, Over the radio when I’m just about free of the overwhelming guilt and longing, I’ll hear your voice, the sound of your laugh and your cough Hidden in the frequency- 3, 6 or 9- Of the bass stem. It’ll make me feel the same way I do now when I get a phone call, before I see who it is, When I feel the need to steal a glance at the time at 6:00 am or at 3:40pm every day, Trying to astral project to Colorado Just to see you for the first time, I thank you in a way for never giving me your face, So I could not be tormented by you fading slowly away in pieces So that I didn’t have to cope with forgetting what you look like. But you could pass me on the street, And I would never know the difference, Perhaps only if I happened to hear you say Excuse me.

[opetyr]

12/13/21 10:44AM

Move on? I have to rip out every piece of me that isn’t you? What will I be left with? I have to replace them with new pieces that don’t fit right, squeeze together too much or are too loose to ground me? It feels like we’ve been together so much longer than we have I don’t remember a life before you, I feel I was a different person

Now I am A screen gone black in conclusion too soon A book spine with it’s pages taken out I was a full story before, when you filled me up and gave me meaning On my own i am just irrepressible tears at 3 in the morning, yelling out into the dark of the room for an answer Hastily scratched out poetry for the first time in years I would happily give up my pen, my voice forever for you I only ever wrote about lesser people than you and it is more fulfilling to feel you than to write you You come to life only in my arms, Otherwise, as a memory, You are altogether different, a shadow Your hand reaches out and touches me only in my mind A perfect, static tableau of love

[opetyr]

12/13/21 10:30 AM

I wish I could gift you my head I don’t want to have to choose anymore I choose you, The rest follows I trust you so much more implicitly than I do myself You are so strong and I am so weak beneath you I have never felt that way about anyone else in my life, nobody It feels, then, like you were meant for me But it cannot be true for you To be destined to be with someone weaker How will you lean on a broken arm? I want to be stronger for you, more reinforced My love was a thick, aged trunk that got split and splintered, Ripped apart by a lightning bolt Wood fibers catching sparks and disintegrating into the rain like dust I am still that trunk Torn in two or three pieces, still standing, mouth agape towards the sky, vivisected and splayed open in this forest A gaping gash down the middle, singed black by that atmospheric heat I am, laid in that provocative position, laid out for you Like an omen

I was always that way You walked into the forest and saw me there, Shredded wood pulp and giant splinters of a tree and you decided to cradle yourself inside me Crawl into that lowest part, my jagged edges framing your vision, jutting out into the grey, almost blue And you let me close around you like a morning glory flower Heard the snaps and whines of tired wood contract and clamp around your body, you thought it was warm and loving But eventually it grew cold and hard, unmoving Stubborn, you always said- But with love, with a small smile always- Eventually you started to feel the weight close in, you reached up and placed your hand on me Asked me with your heart to let you out, lower my unforgiving wall, rip it down and release you. I did. And I’ve closed up again, like a carnivorous plant instead, bitter to have lost the blood, never to attempt for another prey, I was only ever waiting for you The space is too small, too big for anyone else But you didn’t belong there I just closed you off and made you small If I wither and falter, return to the earth in our original form as the force that drives growth, It will have been for losing you.