Root Beer, Pulled Pork

[rootbeerpulledpork]

Three raps at the door as the morning nudges me awake, she asks me now,

“Was it everything you had wanted?”

The house on the hill with red brick and blue shutters has all but been ruined and I swear the memory of your breath in my ear feels just out of reach.

The cellar is flooded, what of the box of my things? Did you ever remove the backing from our photo? Did you find the pieces of me left behind?

To make it true you have to see if for yourself, open the storm cellar, take out the shovels and dig.

Throw my words in the mud but promise me darling you’ll plant something useful on top.

Allow me the peace of knowing something comes of the love I gave so freely.

Three wraps at the door and I’m almost finished my mourning.

I’d like to go home, I think.

[rootbeerpulledpork]

[brennatwohy]

Zig-Zag Girl, by Brenna Twohy

[sunabovesciatica]

TikTok

If anyone is wondering how I’m doing: this is it

[rootbeerpulledpork]

I lost everything all at once

The clouds brake open as you pour honey into tea

Heavy with expectation

smoke, thick around me, obscuring the view.

This is the place where I layed down my heart for you.

I don’t dare speak too soon

burdensome on the kneeler, my eyes cast above me

I bargained into the empty air.

There is this silence that I can’t contend with

the way my bones settle into the mattress beneath me

Singular yet also a litany- a light at the end of the hall

How many ways are there to describe solitude?

[rootbeerpulledpork]

Always.

[rootbeerpulledpork]

Linoleum Tiles

1.   Linoleum pressed around my skin,

 it’s stickiness, it’s honeyed footprints-- 

an eagerness from the kitchen to my

empty bed, the buzzing [I am unrecognizable]

I press the linoleum back, urging

it’s tenderness, it's laughable grieving.

One thousand days ago, your eyes lingered

staring, all coke-bottle glasses and hair I longed to run my fingers through. A quivering below my breastbone, a chest you used to stare at so.

I remember thinking, “finally, someone finds me more than just fuckable.” 

 don’t you dare forget that you were the greedy one, who pried my chest apart.

Hold me close,

 no- not like that. 

Everytime.

2. Before you I was alive. 

All green eyes and collarbones, scraped knees and shin splints, neck kisses,  the taste of smoke at the back of your throat,

Gold paint dripping from my fingers

a lightness swimming in the dark

3. you never wanted me, 

you wanted what I represented.

I can no longer remember your voice but I do remember the way it feels to be lonely. 

I’m standing alone, feet pressed firmly against cold tile

Thinking --God, you were so unkind. 

[rootbeerpulledpork]

Oct 17, 2019

1. The engine is running-- The phone is pitch black.

 I turn the key, the car shudders off. 

The screen lights up:

“You here?” 

I was hoping that I’d pull up to this house, 

that your name would appear on my phone, 

that you’d call me and say: 

“Baby, I’m sorry, I made a mistake, come home.”

I’d roar out of the driveway- drive 320 miles to you-without so much as stopping home for spare clothes

 2. Another  Friday night and I’m in a bed I don’t want to be in

My head hits the mattress hard and I hate this

I don’t know where the bathroom is and I hate this

he doesn’t smell like you, certainly doesn’t love like you.

I keep coming back here, hoping for something different.

I shouldn’t have to spend so much of this life wishing I was dead. 

3. Maybe in another life, I was a deer. Ornery and cold teetering on the edge of the road, waiting for a car to hit me fast. 

The way you loved me was not like a hit and run, it was like a cigarette, still lit, searing my skin, leaving me different than before. You’re never coming back for me, are you.

5. My phone lights up: “you here?”

I go inside because I’ve prayed too much for someone who no longer wants me in their life.

[rootbeerpulledpork]

Twilight sickness

So I grasp at death like a lover

it’s face in my hands, like your face once was

it hurts so deeply, down at the bottom of where I imagine my heart once was:

it didn’t shatter like glass, no, more like necrosis. It withered away, sloughing off bit by bit, until I was too sick to stand, to get out of bed, and I just hoped it would take me in the night, but it hasn’t yet...

I wake each morning, sifting in the twilight, wrapped in the blanket that no longer smells like you. 

Are you happy now? Did you get everything that you wanted?

I feel like the sky, liable to crack open at any moment and drown everything below, wash it away, scrub it hard, with steel wool and lye and just one hope:

that by the time it’s finished that hole eating me up inside will finish the job.

[rootbeerpulledpork]

A New Day (rough draft)

Day comes, I have overstayed my welcome.

outside, I run until my shins are bruised  

my lips chapped, socks damp with blood, or I’ve stopped

thinking about you- whichever comes first.

I only feel God when I am outside.

is it odd to say I only felt God 

when you were inside me or did I mean

when you were holding me or did I mean 

I’ve forgotten the way your body looks 

or that I miss your smell, but that’s gone as well.

How could you possibly think I wanted your hands around my neck

after everything I’d been through, after everything you knew.

time moves impenetrably slow

first came the rain and then the rot

or was it the other way around.

[rootbeerpulledpork]

Burden/finally free.

This is the starting line--

weeks ago I would have said a precipice.

This is a gift, not a failure, but not a victory either.

You forgot how to show me that you gave a damn at all.

You forgot how to say I need, I want, I feel. 

instead you made me into a burden, but darling, 

I was not put on this earth to be burdensome. 

When memories of lying beneath you 

Cause already dampened eyes to cry once more

I think of all the nights I wanted you to come to bed

But the flashing screen proved more desirable than me. 

The screen always seemed to be more desirable than me.

Your friends, so kind, but I always hoped you’d find me kinder

I wanted to wake up next to you without feeling like I needed to thank you

for carving out time for me, regardless of consciousness, 

I was not put on this earth to be burdensome.

The precipice was nothing more than the sky reflected on water and

I’ve cried enough for this, for

now I am gone and the memories are just that

like water under a hot sun.

I was much too kind, I gave far too much and all too often. 

I am finally free.

[rootbeerpulledpork]

My Garden, Oh My God, My Garden.

Sunlight is handed down in tablespoons, 

hold me under the weight of water, I don’t fight back.

Broken glass, brown sugar and tea: spilled over the counter top,

artificial affection fattened by a dopamine drip.

A pasture of sunflowers stands tall;

they watch me and snicker: 

“What a shame, she’s wilted away.”

I tended to the garden only to light it on fire the very next day.

The rounds of lettuce, the rows of strawberries

swollen with sweetness. 

The ground swallowed all of it whole.

[rootbeerpulledpork]

14 months

And it’s not the fact that I am an afterthought.

Well, maybe it is.

My leaving seems so omnipresent and …..

….  at the same time filled with silence

And it’s not that I thought my leaving would help the feeling

That there’s nothing inside me that grows from light

but it’s typical that I’m trapped in this little glass house

Watching the outside bloom into spring

Knowing that I will always feel winter wrap its arms around me

When all I need to do is put on my shoes and step outside

and I cannot because I’m afraid it would make me even sadder to be in a beautiful place

alone

because, I can’t seem to fit into the free moments of others and it’s always something else, someone else, packing that could take place anytime else, an old friend stepping into view in front of me.

And at the end of the day my things will be gone for

dust settles and so do I.

I’ll be driving to the east listening to that song you hate

and you’ll never have noticed a thing

[rootbeerpulledpork]

Three Thousand Miles

Under lamplight, under you, under waves

of breath dancing across this quilted flower sky.

The weeping willows watch as I run my

fingers through your hair and trace the border of your chin

like the puckered line between these two worlds

teetering on a tightrope, too calmly, I follow

freckles flying down the bridge of your nose,

I follow them down,

down to the shy, bloated bruises that live

above your collarbone.

The trucks outside sigh and my mind wanders

and I wonder who is walking by our

house,

I’m finally free as you’re slipping away,

and I’m tapping the glass like

soft summer rain but  you’re under our quilt

with some other girl

while I’m three thousand miles away.

[rootbeerpulledpork]

Catatumbo Lightning

I love the way you get up in the morning

Swing your feet over the edge of it, the precipice

a mountain of sheets and covers where my scent still resides

but you don’t ever look back

because that would be tragic and full of teary eyes, or is that just me?

I’m not coming up for air--

and I’m not thanking you for saving me either.

Our room is on fire, I’ve left a towel on the radiator again

I am a can filled with kerosene and you are my smiling boy.

I’ve not felt how I’d like to in ages.

I love the freckles scattered across your shoulders

I could have sworn they were angels feathers freshly plucked.

When I count them in the dewy morning and console myself.

No one knows what to say when it’s all a pile of ashes

and the wind picks up

and you and I sit on the curb and watch

(-- much worse than a sunrise--)

our home, scattered across the neighborhood

This was our bed

that was your book

the set of chess is melted together like a disfigured lego set.

It’s gruesome, the look in your eyes

I want to take you to my mother’s house and draw a bath.

I want to wash the smoke out of your hair.

It’s raining now.

The wind blew damp leaves over the front window of my car

but you taught me how to fight

and all I want to do is run into the church

and sing of your eyes until the stained windows shake.

[rootbeerpulledpork]

Conversation

I’m too large for the room.

This feeling makes me cry.

               *

You’re getting caught up in things that don’t matter.

               *

Give me love but not

the hands equipt to receive.

               *

Your words are my war.

               *

where did you hide the pieces of me?

I have to cope with my body.

                *

Commit to change, a quieter morning.

                *

This love is constructed

like steel beams, like containment.

                *

It’s horrible, it’s beautiful, I can’t look away. 

[rootbeerpulledpork]