Something like Poetry

lyrical scribbles

Unstamped letters

White envelopes with no return address.

Turn to the person next to you, ask your neighbourhood immigrant why that puts the fear of god in them.

What-was-the-name-of-that-song?

The one where the white man on stolen land feels alienated by way he speaks and his preference of jam and scones?

I think he calls himself a legal alien.

Unstamped letters often determine the legal part…

I can only watch as my people are massacred,

I must say please and thank you,

I burn my curls into submission,

I roll my tongue to make sounds like them,

I know how to be here better than I do on my homeland,

Though I don‘t hear the sound of my language or feel the laughter like I used to,

I haven’t tasted my food in years and I miss my mother,

Have you read the research on double disadvantaged populations?

People of colour and Women,

double whammy if you are both…..

I earn every breath I take up in this space,

somehow we still end up begging for forgiveness.

Parallels of publishing and romance

Will they want me?

Is it enough?

Will they get it?

Is it too much?

Will they notice me?

Is it too traumatic to share?

Will they care?

Is it anyone else’s story?

Will they deem it (me) worthy?

Is it just showing off?

Days later

Crispy red curls and ocean droplets, 

Glistening through the way they groove and sway in the ozone,

On our list of dreams:

Sun baking without ever having to say goodbye 

And certainly not days later.

I watch your skin blister brown,

I adore you. 

I want to let my hair be wild, dunk it in the ocean, shake it vigorously,

freely,

more like you… 

The freedom of your soul trapped in a life we both don’t understand. 

The neurosis of our anxiety.

Of the planning 

Of the day dreaming 

One day…we say, and we never know when.

My soul dwells in your body anyway.

You carry me wherever you go.

Soon the moon illuminates a sparkly path across the ocean for us, and we twinkle toes across it and dance on it. Are you with me?

You’re always with me.

Flip first, that sweet burn in the back of my throat,

Not hot tears this time,

Just your favorite booze and choking back of ‘I never want to let you go’ 

I’m sorry I ever let your hand go, it was so little then too. 

Had I not let it go, will we have survived? 

I’m not sure anymore because I don’t know what hurt more,

Both meant being without you and I can hardly breathe even speaking those words…

______________________________________

Moonlight 

Moonshine 

We dance, we laugh and it’s intoxicating. 

I miss the way I could hear you so clearly.

I adore you, have I said that already?

Because the music is so much louder than my thoughts and we drink and lose ourselves, 

Dancing amongst people who just don’t get it, 

When I say you are my everything,

I can not and will not do life without you 

We forget about him and him and him and him and him,

Yes, we count five… 

It’s so easy even it’s just you and me,

I find a home in you each day,

It hurts to open my eyes because I don’t want the image of you to go,

The way I miss you bruises 

And I want to give it all up just to have my fingers intertwined with yours,

Never to say goodbye again days later.

Sometimes I feel like a blob in the ether…

I imagine myself floating away in a pristine bubble,

I do not care if it pops.

The checkered rainbow reflection on it is so fresh,

I can almost smell the soapiness through the misery.

…‘almost’ guarantees that I have nothing left…

You tell me that your eyes expand to take all of me in,

So I let myself be the most enjoyable, the most important thing in your world,

So much so that you want me locked and guarded,

A prisoner to the love you hold over me.

A prisoner to the pedestal you placed me on,

one-footed,

On the edge….

Why is it that I am at ease only when you feed me our sins?

And I know that the only way to captivate you is through sultry eyes and that loud performance that brings the house down in a roar of applause…

It is light today and I can breathe.

Though the looming threat lays in that dark, rain filled cloud to the left of my periphery.

It looks wispy and unsuspecting.

It will open and drain and teach me never to let myself breathe easy again…

Limbo feels purposeless because the only silence I know is the one with a forced, shallow inhale between sobs.

The urgent need to escape feels like the most familiar place for me to exist.

I don’t know what to do with myself when I don’t wake up scared…

It is inherent that pain exists in the way we love.

How the fuck else can I explain where this tension in my chest needs to go?

I want you to punch it out of me…

It is no longer in the sea of sorrows that I search for my identity.

Rather, it is in it that I keep losing it,

And I’m tired…

Will you help me rest?

I love you,
In fragments and in shards.
Barely held together.
Gently…
Shakey hands, and in the absence of glue, I promise to even use my teeth…
- No strength, all endurance.

Obey.

You?

Them?

Me?

Then the space is never filled by anything more than those busy butterflies that fly towards my wriggling fingers,

Through my throat,

Gliding out looking like yesterday’s meal.

- The unspoken reprieve of Bulimia