words from me to you

write hard and clear about what hurts. twenty-three-year-old with too much to say, finally taking papa hemingway's advice. http://ohsostarryeyed.deviantart.com/

[writers-sickness-blog]

should I add further organisation to this blog?

if so, what would you like to see?

[writers-sickness-blog]

I am faulting, just above the meetingplace of tectonic plates, holding outstretched palms for a promise that this can be something. I know I only see this in my sleep; especially in the nights and mornings that I find myself naked in your bed, where my hair is still wet from the shower, sweat, and lovemaking, and my skin bears the scratchmarks and palmprints from hours before. I know you will not stay; for the night, I know you will (I can feel it in the way you hold me, and pull my hips backward into yours), but there is a southern skyline calling to you even louder. I can feel the earthquake building beneath my feet. and when the tension breaks, with the glass of the buildings and houses right by me crashing like a violent storm, or our bodies in those nights, when the ground begins to tremble (and me right along with it), the faith in my bones keeps whispering that you will be safe from the cataclysm, thousands of feet in the air, flying beside a lone star.

melissa elbee, “texas”

[writers-sickness-blog]

names are so intimate; I feel naked when you say mine, I am bare, air-chilled, & vulnerable in your hands, tripping over your tongue. I flush royal red as I say yours-- we are in public, & the ambient sounds drown out the strumming of my vocal cords. I say your name. it is like we are undressed, set up like a bedroom, but staged on a bar table. I am taking off my clothes. I am taking off your clothes. I am welcoming your warm hands to cup my gooseflesh, I melt under your touch & press my chest (shallow breath) into your body. you whisper my name-- I cannot stop trembling.

melissa elbee, “names”

[writers-sickness-blog]

IT IS GROWING,   MY GOD   IT IS GROWING AGAIN.   IT'S MY SADNESS, MY GOD MY SADNESS IS GROWING TEETH AGAIN. I CAN FEEL IT, FEEL YOU PUSHING YOUR PATH  FROM UNDER MY GUMS. YOU ARE A CORPSE, YOU ARE. YOU ARE SNAPPING THE LID OF YOUR COFFIN BECAUSE YOU DO NOT HAVE THE DECENCY TO STAY BURIED. I AM SCREAMING, MY GOD CAN YOU EVEN HEAR IT? MY SADNESS, MY GOD I THINK IT'S BLEEDING. DO YOU HAVE THE HEAVINESS OF GRIEF SITTING ON YOUR CHEST? MY GOD, I DO. I DO, I DO, I DO.

melissa elbee, “these feelings are going to kill me”

[writers-sickness-blog]

Keep telling me that it's a Lie, whisper to me that you're the Only one to calm the frenzy; tell me it's No lie that One extra dose will steady my hands, Plus another so that when I mellow, I might Never panic again.

melissa elbee, “klonopin” (prompted indirectly by @immuner)

[writers-sickness-blog]

I can feel the streets talking again. the headlights are eyes, so angry, they glow with hateful fire, scowls furrowed into their grills. I know they are mad because every car on the opposite road has trampled a dead cat  without a second thought. the glass keeps me safe, it may cut me, but I cannot hear the whispers of the highway. I am thinking about the possible outcomes of throwing myself outside of the car: would I die, or be skinned but my heart keeps beating, pumping blood out into the fast lane. some days, I am the windshield; some days, I am the cat.

melissa elbee, “july 2015 writing prompts: 2/31″

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I am already naked. you still have not seen me. my body is robed, but there is no flesh beneath. I am raw and flayed, and I am so afraid to be touched, and also never touched again. inside, I am hiding. you see me, eyes all honey and grass from a bird's eye view; I am crooked and wavering, my lips are bare and I feel so exposed. why is my body, flushed from a blood rush and the unexpected presence of the rain and springtime, so bare? and how is it that I still feel my shirt cling to my back as your hand presses it to my skin? the ghosts of the building behind us have begun to run their fingers along my frayed nerves. I am feeling everything, I promise though that I feel nothing.

melissa elbee, “the emperor’s new clothes”

[writers-sickness-blog]

I am tired. my legs are heavy, strapped to a hidden pair of hipbones one thousand inches too wide. today is a day to fuel this body. today, I am giving it grams of macronutrients, thousands of kilocalories, and milligrams of micronutrients. I am counting every taste that comes across my tongue. I am counting every flaw that stares at me with eyes different from mine in the shallows of the mirror. tomorrow is a day to improve this body. I am sad and hateful with every mouthful of nothing, but this is not new to me: every word I say is nothing, every thing I do is nothing, and if I do well, and if I do my best, even I can be nothing, too.

melissa elbee, “almost human” - (a prompt from a set for july 2015: 1/20)

[writers-sickness-blog]

Hey, I just wanted to say that I love your poetry! Keep writing, it's amazing :)

you’re fantastic, thank you so much!

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how do I taste, dear I know this is what you've hoped for, I know you wanted me back in your arms, and you know I want your tears. and don't I feel good that it's been six months and you still want me, flesh and soul; that you have been stuck in mud and stayed where I put you, while I could taste the many flavours of love you couldn't give me. it breaks my goddamn heart. it's me, it will always be me, I will always be the woman in the thigh-high stiletto boots stomping on your sore skin, digging my heels into your wounds until I've beaten you down hard enough that I can sweep your pulp into a pile with every other man I've made lose their faith in god.

melissa elbee, “schadenfreude”

[writers-sickness-blog]

dreamer by day, insomniac by night.

melissa elbee, “about me”- six word story

[grunge--lord]

Click here to support Masaneh Goes to School by James St. Vincent

My name is James and I have a friend in the country of Gambia, his name is Masaneh Yafa. He works his butt off to support his siblings. As he puts it, he is the elder and he needs to support them to help his mom. Because of this, he cannot afford to go to school any longer. I have known the...

homies, please help my homie’s homie. this is 2016, and the thought that someone so hardworking, intelligent, and caring has to choose between school and the survival of his family, is ridiculous. if all of my followers donated basically pocket change, Masaneh can go back to school. personally I am passionate about education, and absolutely want anyone who desires to have formal learning deserves to have it. I know what it’s like to want school so badly and not be able to go due to circumstances out of my control. please don’t let this happen to someone whose only obstacle is how much he loves his family.

[writers-sickness-blog]

I first read your poems close to 5 years ago, and I still think about them sometimes because of how much they spoke to me. You do really amazing work, and I am glad you are keeping poems alive.

you are amazing. seriously, I am so thankful for wonderful people like you <3

[writers-sickness-blog]

me @ me: you are not going to shed your ashen, breathless skin by slipping against smooth currents; you are going to have to slough the rough edges (sensitive and tender, hardened and mean) to reveal the raw freshness you've been looking for. me @ me: your weight does not dictate your allowance of joy, nor your deserving of love. me @ me: you are not happier in your sickness. you are just as sad, but more fragile and afraid. me @ me: when your bones are aching, long sinews in your thigh shaking, and feeling heavier with every step- listen. stoke the fire in your body, remember to eat, and turn your face toward the sun. remember that warmth when the sky turns dark.

melissa elbee, “me @ me”  (structure inspired by tumblr posts)

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you cannot destroy yourself into love.

six word story, melissa elbee, “but I try and I try and I try”

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I am seeing faces in the headlights, (I am seeing your sadness in their eyes) you are still too little to satiate me & every nook & curve my strung-out body (my soul, too small for a figure so full). the snowmelt is everywhere,  or at least in my insides. it is cold & isolating, pooling in veins standing stagnant. I am now a lynx, snared & lashing at everyone who is not me- I lash out toward myself, an absent reflection in a quicksilver mirror, a simple shadow of a passing djinn promising to encroach on me still further, hissing yellow maw & eyeless. I am not me, not me not me how can this body with its scar-puckered skin & rolling hills be the same self as the mist I once knew? pale, thin, & evanescent- & how solid it seems this vessel of mine has become. the silver metal digs deeper into derma, what I thought had been my hide is (in true) my flesh, so bare & exposed- I feel the way I was as mist (just as lonely & empty & wishing to be more & less at once) but much heavier, with more scars, & nothing left inside.

melissa elbee, “at a loss”

[writers-sickness-blog]

I studied (your) anatomy, like I had an exam to prepare for: this, I say, is your masseter muscle; it is so strong. (my words turn inward- like the firmness of your arms; they are biceps and triceps, deltoids and trapezius, unshaking shelters for my own trembling body.) my fingers trail with a forced slowness to spite the fervour with which they vibrate. I'm whispering now. this is the proximal diaphysis of your humerus. it touches the edges of your clavicle. did you know it takes seven pounds of pressure to snap it, and only a stroke of your finger on my cheek (along the zygomatic arch) to break the cage around my heart? my lips are barely moving. and inside your ribcage, just below the manubrium of your sternum, is the place I want to be. the metal of your pacemaker was left unknown to me for months, but I am so glad that it is keeping you alive. this is the organ within you that I want to reach, your hands in mine (metacarpals, carpals, distal radii and ulnae of the wrists,) and give you a touch of how I feel for you to your own heart so that you can, maybe, learn to love yourself.

melissa elbee, “the smallest-scale war on a human body”