My Portal

I'm Cheryl. 21. Writer.

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

I turn you into a flood of metaphors piled on each other to toppling. Still nothing suffices but you.

Marge Piercy, from “The Poetry of Flesh,” The Crooked Inheritance (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006)

[watercolorliberation]

February Under the weight of a black moon I lay my head on the concrete And hum a tune that sounds like Redemption, Amidst the raging storm of a relapse. It always starts with a steady rain The preface to the pain Thoughts pulse from my brain through my veins And then horror strikes Full and ripe And I start to think I'll never change. I'm left reeling every time – My mind pirouetting, The sun setting and the monsters shifting and the curtains lifting and my senses drifting And I'm tripping over the honesty Falling into what's haunting me Cascading down into these insecurities Ready to swallow me Whole. It's nothing new, It would almost be relieving if there was some novelty To the things that bother me Maybe then I could try on some new coping mechanisms like a fresh spring dress Without feeling this hopelessness Wrapping its fingers around my neck But it's always the same And I slide on the insanity like an old pair of sweats, Trapped in this perpetual cycle, Fulfilling the prophecy again and again like I've stopped writing the words and I've become the pen and the paper and ink, tied myself to the bind and let myself sink Into the storyline A depth from which I may never rise Again.

[watercolorliberation]

Isn't it wild How I can be so intertwined with you Completely enmeshed from head to toe And yet Feel so very far away Like I'm shouting to your soul from across the void As our bodies spell out the words we just can't articulate Drowning in each other's flesh to compensate for tongues run dry But here I lie six feet deep in my mind Wondering why talk just isn't enough this time.

[watercolorliberation]

Some mornings I wake with the taste of lead in my mouth I must have swallowed it down In my sleep My eyes peel open, screaming objections at the gray For being so bleak Against the tapestry of my memories. I wear them like a millstone around my neck And, anchored to a desolate hopefulness That sweetens the poison, The restlessness becomes more palatable And slowly I feel the anxiousness grow malleable. But the truth always lingers like a shadow, Insistent and infallible– I miss everything about what we used to be, And I’ve grown so tired of trying to fit into your priorities, How is it that the more you cast me aside The more you mean the world to me? Am I really such a masochist For your love?

[watercolorliberation]

The future is a fever dream Polychromatic color schemes And amorphous shapes Shift into the gossamer clouds of absolution Smudging the outlines of fate And I pray to be spared the retribution I'll prostitute my soul to pay my restitution I'll harness a solution and pull it down from the stars and the moon And I'll tie it to my promises That I've always made a moment too soon.

[watercolorliberation]

I am not a machine Screaming steam and pouring out dreams from broken pipes Leaking down through the floorboards and saturating ceilings Heavy and black as the night. In a protracted absence from my absinthe, I fall into the illusion of healing This is the way bones mend themselves back together, and flesh breaches the gap and cataracts clear But I'm still here, As human as I was before you left, Bereft of the color and the anger and the violence we could only express In the darkest shade of our emptiness. My love for you is written on my to-do list, I'll get to it – I just have to find it I'm sure I put it somewhere I know it's gotta be around here somewhere I must've forgotten it 20 years ago Maybe it's crumpled in the car that you drove home drunk in every night Maybe it's in every room where I watched you and my mother fight Maybe it's in in the scars that climb my forearms like ladders Maybe it's wedged in between the way you made me feel like I never mattered. And now we're settled in this detente, We've laid out our arms on the table And I sit across from you spinning these fables Playing the part under the guise of these labels Dancing around the truth that we are unable to come any closer than this.

[watercolorliberation]

How well can you lie? I measure this in the skin cells that fall off my body each second, the suit I wear in the face of a thousand faces. I feel it in the tight fit, my organs threatening to burst out of my body in the midst of a paroxysm. I feel it in the lungs that are built to lift the walls of my chest, but freeze and fall into catatonia. I get home and step out of that skin suit; it always grows two sizes two large and the rest of me shrivels and drags it across the floor. It trails behind me like a wedding dress, I walk to the altar where my cosseting sheets await, a fleeting palliative for the pain. I recite the words through whitened teeth, "in sickness and in health". The prospect of these vows is to ensure an absolution, of which I could never be certain. But as I fall into the comfort of this bed, I know the one thing I could never dispute is the truth that overwhelms me in the moments I am completely and utterly alone. Let this be my god, for I have nothing else left to believe in.

[lifeinpoetry]

Once I learned how to talk, I did not stop. I drew blood and licked my teeth with language, English spilling down my chin. Later, I learned how words can wound without touching, and I tucked myself in a bed of silence. In the garden of my body, a bud began to sprout in my throat.

Tiana Nobile, from “‘Lost’ first language leaves permanent mark on the brain, new study reveals,” published in Hyphen (via lifeinpoetry)

[watercolorliberation]

Saturated and saturnine I spill over the rim I drip with apologies I've never spoken At least not yet I peer inside those dark, damp places Caverns where the unresolved Echos off the walls Barrels from ceiling to the floor In loud, reverberating circles inside circles Concentric chaos They roll up through my esophagus And whisper through the halls, "your love may never come unencumbered" I count the numbers on my fingers because mental mathematics was always just out of reach Maybe i should glue my phalanges together Force myself to become What I never thought myself to be how encapsulated we can become In our self proclaimed identities How intricately we decorate ourselves Like a Christmas stairwell Like a painful farewell Adorned with tears, symmetrically aligned on each cheek Eyebrows meet in the center Fists pound the door Why was this so convoluted before? It felt like the flight home Touching down in the smog I'd let the faucet run and drown in the screaming heat I taste the bittersweet And say the words through sullen teeth.

watercolorliberation.tumblr.com

[watercolorliberation]

You are the aching The wanting The untapped aquifer Then the breaking The shaking The .45 caliber The collapse The flames The smoke from this gun Turquoise and tumultuous In the setting sun Beneath my ribcage You fill up my lungs You spin me around And skate across the unspoken We crash through the floorboards As it glides off our tongues You settle in my center And build a fire Blue flames climb the ivy Spread across the walls of my chest And I feel so alive When I'm burning like this.

[watercolorliberation]

You sit across the darkened room Your eyes black clouds atop the blue We float across the empty space We etch out marks we can't erase Feels like the years have shaved us down I reach for the words, that damp cellar where you still trickle down from the ceilings My feet peel off the ground I can't utter a sound Without Crashing into these feelings It's not our history that keeps us in this retrograde It's watching our planets spin so fast past each other Every moment Of not knowing Only wondering From behind the glass But then there you were And there I was And for a moment, our celestial bodies slowed We hung in a suspension An unspoken tension Our blue eyes met When the golden lamp rays Hit them from the periphery We kissed the sides of each other's faces Shallow formalities to Dry out the ink Sketching the lines of our history I drive home and I wonder — Will you and I always dwell within the boundaries Of our parallel realities?

[watercolorliberation]

Loving you gives me almost as much sustenance As hating you — What would I do without your chaos Etching hieroglyphs into my chest? How do I stand here at the edge Gazing into the void my father left?

[watercolorliberation]

I love the ones who love just like me — from afar, I love the way we shout to each other across miles of untrodden soil, I love the way we waste each other's time, A mixture of flour and oil — My sopping, saturating infatuation and your bone dry, barren core, Soak me up because my cup runneth over, You need an adorer and I need to adore, But I wonder if we could ever admit — We will always have one foot out the door.

In a parallel dimension

[watercolorliberation]

I feel deep shame D e e p shame about My voice Speaking Projecting myself Outwards Inwardly Salt stings the Deep wounds I was Too talkative as a child Too much I was Too unfocused I needed to be Silenced Subdued Sat down I shaped myself into What everyone else needed me to be Not Who I Was I was the sounding board I was mother's therapist I was daddy's trophy girl And when I did speak I was Weird I was Awkward I was Too aggressive I was T o o much Always too much So I became too little, Little enough to shrink myself into a corner And fit my body into my locker So small You could've squashed me beneath your shoes And I would've crawled to the side Without even crying out Then it was decided for me That Small was no longer my invisibility cloak Small was a target My flesh was laid out on the bullseye But once I used my voice The darts were plucked from my skin.. My voice began to grow After that And I began to expand But then A blonde haired hurricane spun onto my shores And once again I shrunk When I did speak I was Wrong I was Assuming I was Too young I was A catalyst For great big explosions So I shut my mouth And opened my body It was yours to play with as you pleased, Anything .. To keep you from hurting my voice That part at least belonged to me. I left you, And my voice still wandered about Inside my body Like a nomad Making an appearance here and there But usually subdued Behind my teeth... A slew of Thunderstorms swept in and lusted for my lightning, One in particular, He made me believe that he loved my voice, It was my voice that attracted this perfect storm, So well spoken, so weather-worn and wise, I let him between my thighs but even more sacred, I let him dive inside my mind, I let my throat open And my voice uttered words I had never spoken. He was my living, breathing proof That my voice was something Important, For once in my miserable life. But to him it was all a game, And he left all the same. My voice would never bring you back, And I had myself convinced for months That it could, And I envisioned you as my own Personal guru Your voice echoed through the undercurrents A pitch My voice could never match, But I'd die fucking trying.. Here I am now, my voice is being beckoned To the surface Air pumped into it I feel it's buoyancy For once there's direction A brand new intention, It is the only way I can move forward And I am terrified. I am terrified to use it — This thing.. This thing that's given people leverage To harm me That gave the world permission to scar me, This powerful, beautiful, terrifying vibration That also makes people believe in themselves That eloquently strings words together And brings new perspectives, Drops bombs and shakes the earth and reverses cycles and punctures the sky, This voice that teaches and gently guides.. this voice that has many faces Many angles and sides This voice that I've always felt compelled to hide, It's coming out like a tidal wave, A swell too high to ride.

My voice

[watercolorliberation]

I am dark and dense as a star My matter filters down to my spine I stare at the ceiling Feeling That if I could only just crash through my ribcage I could cough you up out of my lungs I could speak in tongues And set you on fire And you’ll scream like demons In your funeral pyre -release on a bedroom floor

[watercolorliberation]

I want to write about something Anything That isn't the ache of missing Something I've never known Point me home The map is tucked away in my bones But I've grown too lazy to pull it out It's wearisome work to dig through your skin And turn your organs inside out -dry spell

[watercolorliberation]

Her ghosts meet mine in empty hallways We touch the walls with wary hands The past chips off like ancient paint Flecks glued to the palms of our hands Maybe hers will come to know this home In a way I never could Maybe her love will expand past the size of your body And revolve around you like the sun itself Maybe you’ll sweep my dust from your floors And take my pictures down from your shelf, Maybe if you don’t get around to it I’ll just have to do it myself.

Somebody else