Posts for June 10, 2021 (page 2)

I awoke a shipwreck, a shoddy woeful vessel,

splayed before me

i rummage through his corpse

to find a scrap to mend

this void i feel

absorbing lust

to suffice for security

i let the fire rot through

my bones

how jaded i must feel

to imagine you pressed

against me

the stories I’d make up
          once upon a time
               there was a princess
silly little make believes
just between us
before we said goodnight
she loved them
and so did I
if only for the opportunity to share something
and now
all these years older
brink of her birthday and I wish
I wish I could make up a story or two or three
one for her and one for me 
which would come to be
a happy ending all around

What I didn’t do today

1. Laundry
2. Edit any of the scholarship essays I’ve written
3. Cook dinner
4. Come home on time
5. Clean my room
6. My last workout video
7. Yoga

What I did do today
1. Finally moved my comforter upstairs
2. Ate a salad
3. Wrote two essays
4. Reconnected with a neighbor
5. Cleaned and organized a friend’s bedroom
6. Two workout videos
7. Slept in

And one day I realized,

They don’t love me

Like I imagine they love me.

And I never accept that,

Because I crave that dream.

That they love me as much as I wish they did.

I’m not saying they don’t love me at all,

I think they do— but who knows what’s true.

They don’t love me

How I dream every night they do.

They don’t memorize every word of our song,

They don’t embrace every hug

They don’t take a ridiculous amount of photos when we’re together.

And there’s nothing wrong with them.

I just romanticize my entire life,

To the point that it feels like a coming-of-age movie:

Like seeing the ocean for the first time

Or standing in the pouring rain at two in the morning.

There’s a certain feeling you get in those moments

I get those same feelings when I love people so strongly.

The feeling I have towards life is like no other

And I can’t beg someone to feel that way too

When I can’t even begin to explain what I mean.

I want so badly for someone to feel this euphoria,

And live it with me

So I show them how I live and love

And hope they’ll catch on.

But the thought still lingers everyday:

They don’t love me,

Like I imagine they love me.

The old trash basket stands in the corner, alone
beneath the spot where the land line once hung.
Mute, it remembers everything thrown in its oil-stained maw:
newspaper headlines – like the day after John Lennon was shot
when I sang “Imagine” to our baby. If the can sensed
I sung off-key or that Lennon was a god who decided
to stop being a god, it didn’t say – just like it didn’t tell on me
when I stuffed kid-forbidden snack wrappers under the daily refuse,
didn’t judge me when I pulled a half-smoked cigarette
from the creases of a greasy take-out bag (three days
after I quit for the umpteenth time). It didn’t tell the kids
when we sacked half their halloween candy.
When grandma came over, it kept its counsel, didn’t say
most of her chintzy Christmas toys broke before New Years–
wound up among the dirty diapers.

If it had been up to me, I’d have dispensed with that bin long ago.
I coveted one of those MoMa modern stainless-steel jobs,
a sleek spaceship, but it too would get scuzzy and dented.
Our kids, now grown, when they’d come home would grouse
about the change. So, it will stay, empty of newsprint, aging
in place and will finally leave for good when we do,
an apt urn for what remains of us.

three bent trees
velveted green
weep berry red

I like to imagine

but when the field is back to corn
burning even in the morning
glass up to my lips but not tipped back
stomach so full of those nameless moths
wooden teeth, snapping twigs, broken breaths

when I live in the wildfire but the
wildfire’s far from town
so only I hear the screaming, crying
in the confines of the burning cell
watching row and row of farmland shrivel

when it’s metal bars and fading scars
instead of what reminds me of the summer
and the stars aim for my head when they fall
panic breaking windows through lifeless arms
I can’t understand.

people overestimate me

they place their faith in me

when i fail i am not disappointed 

they are