#potry

[white-zane]

poetry time

Sometimes, it feels like your name is starting to slip my mind. 

And I’m happy, I celebrate, I congratulate myself on misplacing another memory of you, 

but at the same time, I can’t help but be scared, 

scared that one day, I won’t be able to tell the story of you, 

that I won't be able to explain myself to someone new 

without mentioning you. 

And if I’m being honest, I’m so scared of everything now, 

scared of keeping you in my life, scared that you’ve scarred me more than I ever could, 

scared that without you, my story will never be whole, 

that you’re a dirty puzzle piece I don’t want to add but that won't be complete without. 

I’m scared to see you again, to even hear your name,

and I still wonder if you ever think of mine. 

I’m scared that I’m incomplete without you but added nothing to your life, 

that you’ve slashed my tires and blinded me with your sharp words, while I haven’t left a single mark of you. 

I’m scared that my revenge rang hollow, that you don’t regret, you don’t hurt, 

that you’re so much more healed than I ever will be. 

And still, I write another poem about you, knowing you never deserved a single word from my mouth, 

but I cannot live my life without uttering it. 

[fianne-0123]

My sisters do not look at me as much as I look at them.

She thinks that I am my mother’s favorite but they are each other’s favorite and I have nobody if not my mother. But my mother does not listen to me, so in reality, I truly have nobody.

My elder sister will not know how I make my fried rice. She will not know about my 6th grade unrequited love, about my favorite authors, and my talents. She will not know.

But I will know her like the back of my hand; I know how she loves watching true crime, I know how much she adores dogs and how particular she is about her stuff and I will take all of this to the grave.

(I do not want to, I think, but I feel more than that.)

I know how she’s still hungry after, in a fight with mother, she says she isn’t. 

I know she is so I will stay behind and eat a little bit slower. I’ll whisper to mom hushedly, “I’ll wipe the table and wash the dishes” to get her off my back, even if I don’t want to, but because I want my sister to eat.

I see her and she doesn’t see me. Or, she does see me but she doesn’t understand me. She looks at me like I’m darkness looming through her and she looks at me like I’ve somehow ruined her life and I don’t know what I’ve done. 

I haven’t done anything but it’s almost like I’ve died in my mother’s womb, and I am now just a ghost haunting them for when I speak they respond but their arms dig past my heart and instead of feeling through me, they feel past me.

I’m here and they’re choosing to ignore me.

I’m here and it’s like I’ve never been. 

I stand on my right foot and contort my body into a woman when I am barely a teenager, and I would do so again and again just for her to see me.

I would tear my body in half for her to see me for me.

I am afraid that she will only do so when my body has long decomposed in its casket and she receives my folder of files just like this one, detailing how I’ve felt.

Shivers may pass through her veins, and instead of satisfaction, she will feel guilt. She will feel rotten and disgusting. I do not want that.

I am torn into bits and pieces and my lungs have been removed and yet I am still breathing and I am already inexplicably dead when I feel shame for dying out of guilt for living.

[ramyeongif]

I keep starting poems with "in the interim" as if I’m waiting out a period of time so that life may begin

LUCY DAN

[hi-avathisside]

Shayari

कि हाये ये हमारी कमज़र्फी , कि हमारे पास वो लफ़्ज़ ही नहीं,   जो आपकी बेइंतेहा ख़ूबसूरती की वजाहत  कर सकें ।।

written by : me

dear, it is my inability that there are no words here with me, to describe your beauty.

[maslimanny]

In today's rush

we all think too much,

seek too much,

want too much,

and forget about the joy of just being.

[revmeg]

I. When She Takes My Body into Her Body ...From her bassinet she wakes with a squall, her mouth impossibly huge, her tongue aquiver with anger the baby book says she doesn't have, aquiver like the clapper of a bell. Her passion I wasn't prepared for, her need... No one ever mentioned she's out for blood. I wince as she tugs milk from ducts all the way to my armpits... Let me get it right so I remember: Once, I bared my chest and found an animal. Once, I was delicious... II. First Night Away from Claire ...I'm near-drunk from my first beer in months. We've got a babysitter, a hotel room, and on the horizon a meteor shower promised. We've planned slow sex, sky watch, long sleep. His hand feels good on my lower back... We're tired. We fall asleep. I wake predawn from pain. Those meteors we were too tired to watch-- it will be thirty years before they pass this way again. III. After Weaning, My Breasts Resume Their Lives as Glamour Girls ...Aren't you glad? he asks, glad, watching me unwrap bras tissue-thin and decorative from the tissue of my old life, watching, worshipfully, the breasts resettle as I fasten his red favorite-- Aren't you glad? He's walking toward them, addressing them, it seems-- but, Darling, they can't answer, poured back into their old mold, muffled beneath these lovely laces, relearning how it feels, seen and not heard. IV. It Was a Strange Country where I lived with my daughter while I fed her from my body. It was a small country, an island for two, and there were things we couldn't bring with us, like her father. He watched from the far shore, well meaning, useless. Sometimes I asked  for a glass of water, so he had something to give.... We didn't get many tourists, much news-- behind the closed curtains, rocking in the chair, the world was a rumor all summer. All autumn.... ...Soon, the milk stops simmering and the child forgets the mother's taste, so the motherland recedes on the horizon, a kindness--we return to it only at death.

from “Latching On, Falling Off” by Beth Ann Fennelly in The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood edited by Emily Pérez and Nancy Reddy, p. 47-51

[awful-amateur]

iT's GuNnA bE mAy

[onlyasiluette]

<<[i]Artă-mă>>

[i]Artă-mă diseară când luna își va face loc în dormitor

Și parfumul crinilor îți va ucide sufletul.

[i]Artă-mă când lampa se va stinge ușor

Și patul îți va fi acoperit de visele de mult pierdute.

[i]Artă-mă când îți vei aminti cât te iubesc

Și zâmbetul meu ți se va întipări pe retină.

[i]Artă-mă când soarele va răsări de-ți va acoperi chipul

Și amintirea mea te va ucide, cu fiecare clipă ce-ți răsună în gând, cu fiecare ecou al buzelor tale, cu fiecare val ce se sparge de malul mării învolburate a sufletului tău.