#hlfitzgerald

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

Malleable and fresh, I handed you the clay to mold me into what you wanted the remnants of which show through today. All of the paint that I've chipped away, reglazing myself time and again but I can never change the jar beneath. The jar that your hands sculpted, touched and twisted, prepared to please, conditioned to care, a perfected picture of dysfunction. -H.L. Fitzgerald "Groomed"

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

I never asked you how you felt about being a poem but that was you from the start—poetry. Sparkling eyes, deep and crystal blue a smile like a child awakening to snow a voice I’ve known in every lifetime and will undoubtably know again. We were a slow burn—Austenian in nature, months of messages and books stolen smiles exchanged with only eyes until one day, there you were, embracing me over a cup of coffee. How quickly a fickle heart finds relief hope that love is more than hurt that I could begin again, healthy and new that maybe I could be that for you too. I wore a smile home like a stolen hoodie, not wanting to shed the warmth of you, fingertips playing notes across your seashell skin that I scoured the beaches for surprised how quickly you became something to miss something to want to return home to and unfurl all the hurt I had grown so skilled at hiding. You took the jagged edges of me and ran your fingers along them while I mapped out the constellations on your body, adding cartographer and astronomer to my skillset. So now I ask you, was it love that blinded me or lust that did you? Your casual cruelty took what I thought to be unapologetic and warped us into a clandestine love painfully familiar and known. I suppose we both lucked out in that I know how to be a secret. I know what the inside of closet doors feel like and am skilled at making sweet with skeletons. The difference is that I have grown from my mistakes and I refuse to repeat that pain. I am tired of clinging. I shall let go and let the current take me. I shall call this a lesson learned.

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

I wake up in the morning,

so utterly destroyed

devoid

desperate,

that given the chance,

I would drive a dagger into my sternum

Just to pull the pain out.

I would tear my heart from my chest,

broken and beating,

and present it to you

like a kid holding a broken bird;

sad and scared,

pleading with you to fix it.

And I would ask

With trembling hands and salt stained cheeks

"Is it enough?"

"Will it ever be enough?"

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

"How old were you, when you first fell in love?"

And, god,

When was I not in love?

With the sun,

With the trees,

With the flowers.

When was I not enamored?

With the moon,

The stars,

The seasons,

The boy up the street.

When was I not dreaming?

About her lips,

the shape of them when she says my name,

About the feel of the ocean salt,

licking its way down my spine,

About the caress of overgrown grass,

tickling my cheek,

About the rain on my face,

peppering my skin with gentle kisses.

Oh, god,

I want to rake my nails down the back of this life,

To grind my hips into the sunrise and scream into the night,

Relishing in the sheer pleasure of being alive.

When did I first fall in love?

When did I take my first breath?

I fell in love

With being in love.

~H.L. Fitzgerald

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

When we met, I told you I didn't believe in God.

That I hated God.

That i wanted nothing to do with God.

You smiled gently and asked me

to let you show me your God.

And it took some time, but I did.

I let you show me that God is in the world

in nature

in the flowers blooming in my garden

in the whisper of the wind through my trees

and the rain, gentle or torrential.

God is in the faces of those I love

in the laughter over one too many margaritas

in the gentility of my friends, their hands on my face

holding me tightly in the pain we share.

Like an oath. Like I love you.

God is in my dogs

in the way they love me

in the undeniable soul in their eyes

in the way they teach me how to take every day as a gift,

gratitude for too little time.

God is in me,

in the strength and determination, unfailing,

in the feel of my skin

fingers dancing over the evidence of survival

white, pink, purple, yellow

in the breath from my lips

the mussed hair

the crying and the laughter and the human.

God is in you

in your crooked smile

in my fingers in your hair

in the curves and slopes and ridges

in the muscles and bones beneath the skin

that cartographers have drawn.

You asked to show me God and I let you.

You showed me God.

You showed me your demons.

I found my religion.

I lost you.

~H.L. Fitzgerald

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

I'm in my twenties and I sit and read self-help books until they're tattooed onto my eyes but not my brain somehow. I'm in my twenties and watch videos on the internet to feel validated in my trauma. I'm in my twenties and time is measured by the distance between psychiatry appointments, by the changed medication and appetite, by the patterns of sleep and whether or not the night terrors have ceased because even in my twenties, I apparently still have chronic bad dreams.. I'm in my twenties and my friends are few but everything. Each one a funnel of love. I'm in my twenties and I have been to a club only three times. Most Friday nights are my dogs in my bed with Friends on in the background. I'm in my twenties and I know my body will likely never look better than it does now and yet I criticize it; the folds of fat that sit beneath my breasts when I put a bra on, the cellulite I've watched grow on my outer thighs, how I now have two chins when I smile. On the other hand, my cheeks are rounder and my smile actually reaches my eyes now. I'm in my twenties with forty years' worth of baggage to unpack and muscles that ache from carrying it far longer than I have needed to. I'm in my twenties and want to be wild and free and make love to strangers in foreign lands but go numb when I feel a man's hands on me. I'm in my twenties and I wonder if I am meant to love a woman. I'm in my twenties and play mancala with my pill box on Sundays, dropping each one into the slots, like day of the week panties, and I'm taken back to the clear glass marbles and wooden board and my grandmother's contagious laugh all of whom have turned into antidepressants, an ugly green plastic pill box, and sitting alone on my bed, playing a game I did not sign up for, one that I do not want to play. I'm in my twenties and for the first time in my life, there is a future beyond twenty-seven. I don't want to belong to that club anymore. I'm not excited for the future, necessarily, but more--curious. That's a good first step, isn't it? Curiosity. Maybe, when I'm in my thirties, I'll be excited and not just curious. I'm in my twenties and I'm learning a lot about first steps. I'm learning how to admit I've got a problem, that my life is unmanageable, that I am powerless, which, to a control freak, is no good, awful, and very bad. But here I am, being okay with just the first step. Like I said, I'm in my twenties, and I am learning. And for that, I am grateful.

H.L. Fitzgerald

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

Day #3, a poem where there are white spaces instead of punctuation marks

[hlfitzgeraldwriting]

"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter—and bleed." -Ernest Hemingway