#jacquimccarty

[be-stilland-know]

your lips taste like home and I have been travelling for far, far too long

[be-stilland-know]

it took two walks around that same lake to realize (1) I am angry (2) at myself   keeping the rhythm with each step (1) fuck (2) e (1) ver (2) y (1) thing   repeat   and now my knees hurt and my face is hot and every minute shifts   maybe if I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care (1) I don’t (2) care   maybe if I go there and don’t care and don’t care   but the wind or the breeze and the light through the trees   tell me I’m fooling (1) no (2) one

26/04/21

[be-stilland-know]

I cried for you

again tonight

but the tears did not fall

three years later

and I've accidentally

found videos from

the good days

and my heart reopened

as I watched you

smile at me

kiss me

hold me

sing to me

and my heart refelt

what it was like to be loved

poorly and deeply

but with everything

you could

and did

and I wonder

how your heart has healed

and I wonder

if there's warmth

for me

like there is

for you

from the ashes

of everything we burned down

there's a residue

of the time we wasted

together

19/10/19

[be-stilland-know]

do I not have anything else to offer but poorly worded poems about the same loss the same lovers the same uncontrollable urge to make sense of moving forward   do I not crave the love the pit of despair that holds the hand of happiness to remind it that forever is not in the cards so hold it tight while you can   I want to tell him I wanted to tell him I will want to tell him probably but might never probably never will because I don’t know how to move anymore   yes, the past heartbreaks let’s just let them fucking burn— I’m writing this poem without capital letters because I like to break the rules but there were no rules when you broke me   and I can teleport myself back to the exact moments the exact biomes where the walls broke down where God hugged me the night I thought my heart might finally die   how dramatic how cheesy to use these words that don’t make sense just to feel like I’m actually painting a picture with letters of a feeling that doesn’t own colour   what does this mean I think you know because you have the exact same attic hidden upstairs in your heart where words don’t work where words are worth nothing where only the photos stored in the archives of the flesh complete with smell and touch can adequately revive the dead   you think you’re ready? how can you ever how can you dare

5/12/19

[be-stilland-know]

in the movies they come back

after breaking everything and walking out the door

they come back knocking

a few weeks later, portrayed by a few minutes of hopeless waiting

today he did not come back

and today is every day since the first day

he did not come back

in the movies

he would’ve realized his mistake

come to my door with a single rose

asked to re-enter

and we would’ve ignored the broken pieces still on the floor

like he wasn’t the one who left them there

but they don’t show what happens after he comes back

that a few weeks of vacation

from a relationship

don’t make a man of a child

that missing someone out of lack

is simply benefit withdrawal

that the broken pieces will stay on the floor

crushed into a powder

to keep us high on the notion

that we’ve made it

in the movies they come back

to break some more

[be-stilland-know]

I came to that realization in Toronto that the love was there for you     it jumped out of me at me knocking me out with a blind confession ‘I think I’m in love with him’   shock came within the moment confusion afterwards and then admittance that yes, the love was there for you   like nothing I’ve felt though so maybe I’d never been in love before, though I had told it at least twice to at least two   but the love that was there for you was not the same is not the same as what I had felt for him or him or him   it was is a quiet love a deep love a sleeping love that will not mourn if it never wakes up   the love that is there for you is more of a comfort not a desire it’s a warmth not a fire   it’s a love that doesn’t need and doesn’t want and doesn’t learn and doesn’t haunt   this love will cradle itself within my veins and pump in and out and in   and out   and the love that is there   will bleed   out

the love that is there

[be-stilland-know]

let me withdraw from you from all of us for just a moment turned into days, weeks let me gather the particles of myself that I've spread over the earth to fertilize it and you let me bathe in serenity laced with silence and loneliness before daylight comes and I am pried open again let me lie to the clouds and the rain that I do not understand the depth of their storm

05/07/18

[be-stilland-know]

I know you are not what you seem   I know sometimes you are a shell and fragile and empty   and sometimes you are so full that you leave yourself burning red hot   I know you try to inflate your chest with expectations of concrete   sometimes you will be small and when you are less than   I will be more.

28/12/17