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Resentment

You planted a little hate seed between my cracked ribs

And sprouted dead leaves and barren soil

Nothing grows here anymore,

Nothing but winces and snarky words

I open my mouth to speak flowery romance

But my breath smells of death

and my tongue is poison ivy

From my ears dead vines spread across my face

I don’t look like the girl you loved anymore

I’m a crow in your world of sparrows

I gave you a dry Winter

when you wanted a lush Spring.

#resentment #the poetry notebook #love poem #love #poetry #poem #spilled ink #heartbreak

Secrets

I want to hold them close and keep them to myself

I want to build them around me like a protective shell

I want to use them to soothe the burns,

rub them into my skin like aloe vera

I want secrets to help me love you with all of yours

I want “friends” who are boys I used to cling to

Drunken nights with men I used to sing to.

I came to you naked with the truth of me

and I shared your lies with someone else

Still now, there is so much of you I have not met

I want to take back all the pieces you’re not done with yet

and spread them across someone else’s skin,

Don’t you know that I too can be weak?

#infidelity #relationships #poetry #the poetry notebook #love #marriage

Butterfly Women

Butterfly woman, I look at you

I see your wings fluttering effortlessly

With the hum of the wind

You sway eyes in your favour

Your aura beckons hearts

I am envious,

A mere worm I am

But I never wish a crawl on you

But a cocoon on me.

#poetry #the poetry notebook #poem #fragment #writing #happiness #butterfly

Excerpts from an imagined therapy session.

It was all built on idealizing an everlasting bond between the two of us. At first I thought I had found my match, but then, I felt something for her that I wouldn’t typically feel for a friend.

“You were in love with her?”

No, it was contempt.

#poetry #prose #writing #words #poem #the poetry notebook

There are now ellipses where I left a full stop.

There are scars where I ached for you,

hush tones where I screamed at you,

And open doors even though I told you to get out.

There are memories where I put my shoulder shrugs

familiarity runs deep in the silence of the room

You look at me and I see into you like I never stopped knowing you,

Oh but I wished

I wished some days that we never did it

You never hit it

I never tasted

You never wasted

one good thing after the next and after the next

never left me stuck between this and you

And still, I want to finish this sentence

I want to read two different books

Lick my wounds and run from you

I don’t want you to leave me sore

Close doors but curl up next to you

Shrug when people speak of you

You beg for me with a stare

Brown eyes that beckon

I want to turn away when you say my name

Forget your body

My dark lipsticks

Your beard

My tongue

Your mouth

My hair braided

Like our intertwined legs

Like my laugh and everything you say

Have mercy

Please don’t ask me to stay.

#poetry #the poetry notebook #writing #poem #love poem #relationships #spilled ink

A shadow of me forms in the places I used to lay

In our bed

In your arms

Beneath you

I used to breathe you in deeply and feel you pulse through my veins

You are essential to me

I tasted fresh air the day I met you.

I basked in the sun for the first time.

You are my light

I soak my face, my shoulders, my shell in you

Your awayness is heavy

And I’ve been feeling dark

scared that when I see you beam again

You would shine overcast

And affirm the dullness that echoes through the wires

Your spaces grows further from mine everyday

I’m begging you to come home.

#the poetry notebook #poem #poetry #love #relationships #long distance relationships #ayanda magagula poetry #ayanda magugz

Growing up they teach us to be terrified

that someone was going to touch us down there

and then shame us for our loss of innocence

and then shame us for our lack of freedom.

All a woman needs to do is be a woman

to be called a tease,

to be asking for it,

to be a distraction.

And so girls can’t be girls

can’t be children

can’t be innocent

can’t play in the sand,

dirty face and shirtless,

because the monsters watch from the shadows of their titles:

Uncle, friend, father, teacher, neighbour.

We shame her,

We teach her that her open legs are a portal to her damnation

She needs to be more quiet and less monumental

She’s the reason for her lack of protection.

Her body speaks too loudly of men’s desires.

So we grew sorry girls into sorrier women

but I’ve learned to stop using my body as an apology

for the things they couldn’t teach me.

#the poetry notebook #feminst poetry #poetry #writing #art #poem #womanhood #feminism

There we go again with words we don’t mean

I give my biggest fight and my smallest fire

And you give your best denial.

You say there’s nothing wrong

With stars falling from our sky.

It’s gotten dark outside

And I won’t go alone.

I’ll collect them one by one and give them back to you

I’ll paint a picture of the moon

Spread miles of fairy lights from me to you.

Don’t stray from the long road,

Lay with me under the night sky.

#poem #poetry #love poem #love #relationships #the poetry notebook #fragment the poetry notebook #fragment #us #jp

There’s no love.

There are miles of empty spaces

Filled with he said and she said

And someone feels some type of way

And none of those people are us.

#admin #love #planning #difficult #heartsore #poetry #thepoetrynotebook

There was something vaster than 8000 miles Something wider, deeper, and wilder That tore through the earth And the ocean split You created waves, then rode them But you can’t split your heart in two Without causing a Tsunami in me. I was waiting in silence, My lips sealed, my legs shut, In love with rose-coloured delusions I was a tranquil body of water, assured by fantasies of faithfulness that I should deny the tempt of my body and love you with chaste not to taint us with the kiss of another man My yearning on fire for a touch Craving hands and tongues Awaiting our reunion But your 8000 miles were farther than mine. Far enough for another woman Far enough for another hand to hold For you to excuse yourself from the truth with your fabrications You were crashing tidal waves with her While I was holding it together taut across the distance Snug over time. And you snapped it for a fuck.

#love #the poetry notebook #long distance relationships #unfaithful #heartbreak #poetry #poem #writing

By the time tomorrow comes, today will be the past.

The Poetry Notebook

Growing pains.

Growth is painful It is bone twisting Fist clenching Teeth grinding Cracked feet It is hard fight Sore knuckles Bursting at the creases of your skin Coming undone Tearing apart Withering away Unravelling This is the Winter of your life, Searching for ways back to Summer Growth is waiting Growth is change It is upside down Backwards moving A hard thrust A jerk forward A push back A sudden halt It is whiplash Growth is saying goodbye Growth is learning to pray It is warm silent reassurance It is a slow song after a fast life A kiss on the forehead from The Universe A hand held by its own It is returning to the self you’ve left behind Growth is become infinite This is the Big Bang of your life See yourself in yourself and say “I know her” “I am her” “I love her”

#growth #poetry #the poetry notebook #poem #becoming

How do you let go of a man you never loved? You hold on so tightly to a thief He's still alive but you lay with his ghost Every night you breath with him Some nights you let him in Some nights you cling to him Some nights you tongue kiss razor blades You dance in fire You flirt with the devil You silly girl, Forgive yourself for the way you heal, Recovery is not always pretty.

#the poetry notebook #recovery #survival #healing #rape

"Do not hold your breath for anyone, Do not wish your lungs to be still, It may delay the cracks from spreading, But eventually they will. Sometimes to keep yourself together You must allow yourself to leave, Even if breaking your own heart Is what it takes to let you breathe" -Erin Hanson #ToxicRelationships #abuse #love #selflove #lettinggo #putyourselffirst

#lettinggo #toxicrelationships #love #abuse #selflove #putyourselffirst

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