S

[snbcwrites]

Quarantine Poem 1

In another world, I am fourteen again 

       But this time 

I am aware of the length of my shorts 

I do not wear walk down the street

barefoot in a bikini

to get a cigarette from someone's

father who is just as

ill-intentioned as his son

When the dog snaps at my calves 

I leap over the fence

and run faster this time 

Just so your grimy hands don't

ever get the chance to

latch on to my hips

and throw me over your shoulder  

And the first time I see

you're hard from looking at me

I announce it aloud

I jump from the bed

and never return to that house again 

When you comes prowling later on

I hide behind the washer

and don't come out 

In the other world

you aren't fooling anyone

We aren't fools in the first place

You are never close enough to kiss me

 

When you say you'll be my dad now

Since mine is gone 

I punch you in the rotting teeth 

In that world I am consistent

I believe my eyes for what they see 

I believe the girl I grew up with

who says you molested her

in the middle of the street 

I understand you don't have to be

small and blonde

for any man to sink their teeth

into your unscathed flesh 

[snbcwrites]

Things a Girl Should Know When she Becomes 1 in 4

[snbcwrites]

Childhood Lessons

06/01/2019

Friday

Snbc

[snbcwrites]

Saving Face

06/02/2019

Saturday

Snbc

[shakysaturday]

[snbcwrites]

[shakysaturday]

“You’re repeating yourself over and over with pointless questions and you just won’t stop until I slam my open palm onto the glass table. 

I tell you I can’t break someone this way that I never wanted in the first place, and you say that you loved me too much to give me a choice. Really, you do… Did your mother teach you no better? You shoved your heart into my closed fist and wouldn’t let me go when I tried to throw it back. You just wouldn’t take it so instead it shattered; I’m still picking shards out of my skin but don’t dare think that I’m going to construct a mosaic. I’m plucking them from the insides edges of my fingers and my blood is such a brilliant yellow as it drips onto my black jeans and I smile at my art. I’m sitting here with a lump of curses in my throat and my head is pounding because you’re so ugly when you cry and damn, I just need a cigarette. 
You’re begging me to love you but you know it’ll never come and you accuse me of not trying hard enough. I remind that you that I don’t need to, I can’t change that your lips taste of stale, hardened candy from 17 halloweens ago. Tears drip from your eyes, always crying eyes, and I stand to leave. A sob leaves your throat. “17 halloweens, did you hear? That’s longer than my life.””

— S.

[shakysaturday]

MORE THAN ONE FIRST TIME

He wants to sleep with me. That much is very plain and clear. It is not my arrogant interpretation of what his silence stands for, what his lingering stare and late night phone calls mean. He wants to peel me out of my clothes like the skin off an apple, taste things he hasn’t before, he wants to see the primal side, but who will dress me when it’s curfew and I’m rushing? I will. Tugging my pants back on, tight thin leggings I knew what I was doing when I put them on the first time. Pulling my shirt over my head, easy to pull off an on. If I didn’t want to do it why did I even come? Why did a moan echo in my throat when I felt his desire poke me between the legs? Yet, why did I have to be wasted? Why are we in a park, where children play by day but now we are wild animals in their meadow? Why do I wonder what he’s thinking?

This isn’t the first time. It was in the kitchen when my dorky first boyfriend and I were home alone, and I let him kiss me hard. I didn’t even want him. Then it was in my car with the boy I loved as a child, snow falling and my foot slipping off the brake. I didn’t even feel anything. It was somewhere on a mountain, my mouth burnt of vodka and promises of this will change not a single thing. We will be the same best friends when you wake up. Promises of coffee in the morning and he’s on speed but he won’t move all night so I can be comfortable. It was in a movie theater, recliner seats and he’s bending his arm unnaturally just to feel my fingers with his. His hair is too long, his jaw not sharp enough but he’s smiling at me and I know it’s admiration.

This time I’m in lust. I’m in shock. A boy so beautiful in front of me, beside me. Underneath me. On top of me. I’d be so stupid not to kiss back, even though he uses too much tongue. I’d be foolish not to do it once, just maybe a single time, so this time next year when he’s away at college, I can still say he’s been inside me. It doesn’t taste like hope this time, it doesn’t smell like ideas and romance, it tastes bitter. Like metal. Like lust. Like a shallow grave I’m digging for myself every time I kiss another boy. But this is the first I’ve ever kissed with blue eyes.

[shakysaturday]

“I’m 17. My sister, 13 and never kissed, predicts my future is that of drug hazed years wasted and continued sexual adventures into dark places with sworn enemies. Its hard to dissolve a reputation, especially one this well earned. Even I have to admit that the way it was etched into stone was honest, it wasn’t secretive or slippery, it was straightforward loud and open for anyone’s eyes. Everything was simple. I smoked until I could no longer see straight and drank until I had to crawl back home but I didn’t let itching fingers touch me. I was unopened. I was pure while not completely innocent. Then, I was ripped like a label on a grocery store product. Split in two and stuffed with things which prodded, poked, stabbed, forced. An evil grin biting my neck, calloused hands all over me. “Shhh” in my ear next to a faded grunt, blood on the bedsheets. I heard the pop. I forced my face straight. I slipped out the backdoor to find solace in a cigarette. Convince myself it wasn’t too bad. Check the clock, curfew was minutes ago but the door opens, he’s back and he’s hungry. The wind blows through me and I curse God, just another man who let me down.”

— S.

[shakysaturday]

“I had never seen such a composed person collapse. Even when she did so, there were no tears or sobs, no heaves in her throat or pills taken by the bottle-ful as her best friend took to. The shock came in that I had never seen a person howl. I had never seen a person drop to their knees in mercy of a Universe which they felt did them wrong, howling to the World to give back what had been taken away. She moaned in the night and burnt her lips on cigarettes, she threw up when the nicotine stained her and abandoned the idea that others could be listening. She shrieked to the moon and I couldn’t help but watch. It was terrifying but she was alive. I could see the fire in her soul, then, and I could see that she had a monster inside of her that was not evil but powerful. She was more awake, more intact than I had seen her in my whole life. Than I had ever seen anyone.”

—

S.

Drafts of what I dreamt PT.1

[shakysaturday]

“the darkness screams and rips at the corner of her bedsheets, and in comes another wave of remembrance. the way he felt on top of her, the weight of love, or what he called love to satisfy the hole within her. the way he smiled and it was like she became fluent in another language. she loved him and he her, until there was no more. now she has no heart to shatter. but she has a body. the slur of a million nerves begging for connection. she can go without but she doesn’t want to. it’s cold outside now, and it’s been years since she was shivering by herself. she takes them in, one by one, they’re all different but boys are always always the same, somehow. the way they love cars, the way that they touch her. it’s electricity all the same, even if she doesn’t have a swollen heart for them.”

— S.

[shakysaturday]

“the thing about happiness is that it’s entirely unpredictable. the least expected situations may glow in the soft, quivering light cast by nostalgia and even bad times become tinted golden. happiness isn’t always alluring vacations or the free reign to swipe a card someone else will pay off. it comes in bits and pieces. it’s Friday nights in the car, burning up back roads singing your heart out with your best girlfriend to your favorite music. it’s a spontaneous road trip, even to just the next town over, on a Sunday afternoon. happiness is the unity that you feel when you study with friends on a Tuesday night, to go cups and papers littering the ground while you laugh about physics. it’s in the bitter cold wind that whips your face when you run from the car into the house, it’s birthday dinners at your favorite hole in the wall restaurant. it slithers out beneath the cushion of a futon in a trailer where you sit with a boy who is too nervous to come closer but blurts out how pretty you are when you grin at him knowingly. happiness spills over the sides of the steamy bath you ran to calm yourself after a hard day and it pours from the sky when you’re laughing in the rain with a boy who studies you like a lost language he’s determined to speak. happiness is coming home to a southern meal cooked by your grandma’s hands, tan and weathered, grease cracking and popping inside of a skillet. it’s the spark in your mother’s eyes as you tell her about your life, you finally trust her now, and she craves to hear your stories more than any friend.”

— S. // Happiness is embedded in me now.

[snbcwrites]

The Second Boy I Thought I Loved

His big brown eyes grow serious as he says he will not allow me to teach myself to love drinking because I will never stop.

I tell him I really am fine, why are you always thinking you're the boss of me? Give me another damn beer because if I have to ask again, I'll be finding a boy who will always satisfy my demands.

He says I will never find a boy or anything at all that satisfies me unless it's deadly and I better not touch those drugs ever again.

It always comes back to that.

I tell him I believe in finding what you love and letting it kill you, but I'm not at risk anymore.

He says I am an addict until I die, there's no undo button in real life.

Fuck yourself. Really. You're not getting anything tonight.

He laughs and 3 white ovals disappear beneath his tongue.

I try not to remember the lovely bitterness. I try to resist the urge to slip my tongue in his mouth just to taste it.

He says he is immune to things like depression and addiction, he is the man his father wanted him to be.

But at 3 am on a Wednesday when he sends me a document entitled, "last will and testament", I read it with one eye and fall back asleep.

You were going to kill yourself, weren't you, asshole?

He grabs a frigid beer and presses it against my inner thigh.

And just what the fuck would happen to you if I killed myself? I'm immune to selfishness too.

-- Excerpt from THE BOYS WHO TAUGHT ME LOVE

[snbcwrites]

I am 14, restless, too tall for my age and too experienced. He’s blonde, he’s not sturdily built. He’s got a too-crooked grin plastered on his face, scary enough for me to turn down a stick of spearmint that he offers. “That might have drugs in it. I don’t know you but you look like someone who would do that.” He laughs hysterically. I can see he’s sick inside and his hair hasn’t been washed in a while. But when he’s just staring at the front of the room a few moments later, I notice there’s something solid about the construction of his jaw and the gaze he looks upon the world with. I imagine him a horse with his ears facing out, listening. I imagine him a lizard with eyes on either side of his head, seeing everything. He winks at me and I jump. I’m out of the room before I even realize I’ve stood up. My mother enrolls me in the school the next day and when fall comes, the creature of a boy is nowhere to be found. I thank the Universe and forget him quickly.

I am adjusted and friendly with every person in the building. A new kid walks in. The other students perk up and seem to recognize him, nod their hellos or fist bump a welcome. I only see him from the back but the first thing I notice are the strong muscles rippling beneath the surface as his shoulder blades move. He runs his hand through his fashionable blond haircut and his biceps bulge. He faces me, familiar, but how? Smooth skin with freckles sprinkled across his nose, green eyes watching me with arrogance. Jaw square. He smiles at me and I jump. Fuck. An optical illusion, I think to myself.

He is not a look alike because he is the real thing. Not regularly attending now but he drops by in his shiny gray sport’s car when school lets out. The boys I have befriended all excitedly yell at the top of their voices when they see him. I don’t follow, even though they are my ride home. It is late spring and nearing the end of the year when he whispers something to the guys and they leave me behind. I linger near the front door of the school until he approaches me. Easy, calm. He grins at me the way that the boys from public school did and pulls something from his pocket. He extends his open palm toward me and in the center sits a stick of spearmint.

“Still don’t want my drugged gum?”

I take the stick, unwrap it quickly and toss it between my lips. He stands to full height and I try not to notice how he towers above me, the tallest girl in my class.

“I’m your ride. C'mon.” There is no one left in the parking lot. I remind myself how much worse I’ve done as he closes the passenger door and strides to his seat.

-- Excerpt from THE BOYS WHO TAUGHT ME LOVE

[snbcwrites]

Wine Isn't All That Ages Well

He shows up at my backdoor mid-morning with a smirk and a joint, says, “Been a while, huh?”. I’ve moved towns twice since the last time I saw his face but he found me. I let him in because I've known him the majority of my life and he remains the most hilarious person I know. He isn't disgusted that taco bell and getting high are nightly rituals here, he calls it inspiration for my "harsh, aching prose"; I don’t judge when I learn he always gets drunk before playing on stage because after all these years he has yet to defeat his stage fright.

I am still three months older and unimpressed with his physique, but now I’ve devoted myself to literature professionally and miscarried an Italian child and learned how to love each day for what it is. He’s grown taller than me and his hair is longer than mine, he makes money for music now and his gaze is much softer than it ever appeared in school. We drink wine from real wine glasses because I say so (even though I know he prefers whiskey) and play a violent game of scrabble and he tells he's going to university for a fancy degree in the fall. When the second bottle is empty, I tell him we’re playing truth or dare. He chooses dare, says he isn't taking a chance because he remembers how nosy I am and I’ve got that look in my eye. I dare him to tell me whether or not he had a crush on me in school. His laughter comes from somewhere deep within him and something twitches involuntarily in me. “I take that as a yes?” It’s a rhetorical question because his face has made a split second transition from pale pink to burgundy. “You could say that.” He doesn’t look me in the face but he’s smiling to the floor. “Your turn asshole, truth or dare?” There’s a challenge in his tone, a voice deeper than I remember.

“Truth. Because I’m the brave one.” I am warm, comfortable, loose, so I wink at him and pull the cork from a third bottle, nearly spilling it all over me. “Is it true you’ve thought of what it’d be like to kiss me?” I gape at his bravery. My mind rolls back to high school, where all my conventionally pretty, wild, vivacious girlfriends giggled at every word he said while I wondered how anyone could be attracted to him. My best friend, the class clown and party boy from a wealthy family even though everybody thought he was poor because he never took anyone to his house but me and liked to be seen as edgy. “One day, I almost thought about it.” His eyes seem to teeter more on the blue side than green tonight and I try to keep from cackling at his anticipation. “On the day you showed me the library at your grandparents’. I was so full of lust for those dusty old books and antiques, and you just happened to look charming in the afternoon light.” He grabs the bottle and swallows audibly. I don’t move away when he sits it on the table and leans into me. He laters says he's been infatuated with me for a decade and it's never threatened to fade; his fascination ages well, he says, like wine. I wonder why I never knew.

-- Excerpt from THE BOYS WHO TAUGHT ME LOVE

[snbcwrites]

"A has a wild mind and has yet to find a way to silence the buzzing - even their sleeping body dreams in splotches of neon curiosity. A has a passion for literature, traveling, photography, and loves to hear others speak vivaciously of their own differing interests. B admires A from afar, likes to hear them ramble and romanticize things that are unfamiliar, calls A poetic and complex and astonishing. B mistakenly becomes infatuated with A too early. A feels certain this time so they leave the front door cracked, as to invite B to have a glimpse into their bouncing thought process. B explores the uncharted territory without a map and becomes as horrified as they are fascinated. B is far simpler than A thought; B surrenders to fear of the unknown and separates themself from A. B goes back to what they know, back to open but simple minded people, back to predictability and routine. Eventually B again becomes antsy with redundance, restless with the familiar, embarassed at their fright. B revisits A with an apologetic voice and soft eyes. A recategorizes B as innocuous but opens only the window this time, giving a narrow view. B loathes the restriction and tries to break in, failing the test. B bloodies their arms on the glass window. A favors antiquity but installs a security system."

-- No Trespassing Sign

C.B.N.S.

[smspoetry]

“i leave my psychiatrist appointment and tell my mother that i was diagnosed with ptsd. she responds with, “my hair dryer broke” - unconcerned with my broken mind. it was in that moment i knew i needed to run like hell in order to stay here.”

— smspoetry