Posts for June 28, 2022 (page 5)

I miss you so much.

I miss when you call me out on my bullshit.

I miss you making fun of the romance novels I read.

I miss you listening to me rant about the newest Conan Gray single.

I miss you talking about the college basement movie nights.

I miss your voice when you read your writing.

I miss reminding you to take care of yourself over cafeteria food.

I miss listening to you.

I miss you listening to me.

I miss your critiques.

I miss comparing anxieties.

I miss complaining about spanish class.

I miss how you keep me from hating myself too much.

I miss how you have nothing and everything figured out.

I don’t want classes to start back yet.

But I also kinda do.

Cause I miss you so damn much.

It might be wise 
To realize
That window smashes
And tic-toc dances

Don’t impress
create a mess
and no success
Princess

Nothing was earned
Common Sense unlearned
dissidents spurned
and boiling pots churned

Pick at culture
Like a vulture
and the opinion
all is lost again

As I was walking home

Truth is. I still need my mother. 

Me and Grandpa eat Salisbury steak,
the neighboring mounds of
mashed potatoes
hold gravy in their
cratered tops.

We eat off TV trays in front of
The Wonderful World of Disney.

Grandma brings apple slices
baked with cinnamon and
brown sugar.
They rest in cream.

Afterwards, I wipe my chin
with my hand.
Grandpa tucks snoose
in his cheek
and Tinkerbell’s wand
dances.

I have rendered myself boneless before you,
held nothing back and let you see
how ugly a year can leave a man,
how close he can teeter on the edge of a cliff.
I have not been afraid of the dark,
nor have I feared showing my transformations;
frustrations and ill desires
somehow kept in check.

I have done this unapologetically
for I believe in the complete beauty of being
emotionally naked in front of somebody else
And in this journey, I have discovered how crucial it is
that I learn how to strip myself before another person.
Some have you have learned things here as well,
new ways to look at things, like tiny sunrises,
but that’s because I’m trying to write beyond you.

For you are my choir. I look to you
to make more purpose from poetry.
If you have gained something from my insights,
use it to call out evil or save a human life.
Do that with any truth you find because I know
not every secret will be uncovered by me
and maybe, together, we can be catchers in the rye
for an entire world wavering on the brink.

All those middle years,
we never talked. 
Once we whispered 
in each other’s ear
about the boy
in the red bathing suit,
then squealed
when lake grass
brushed our toes.
We knew each
other’s thoughts
in a backward glance.

Then we slipped,
pushed downhill
in middle class neighborhoods,
backhanded compliments,
piles of laundry,
grass stained knees,
wet from the fall.

we picked ourselves up,
our voices,
aged by bourbon 
fell from soprano 
to alto 
ragged.

(For a second morning in a row I find a potato in the sock of the holiday.)
I need to reach the sea,
to leave the bicycle in front the sharp cliffs,
the way you did the previous year…
You, the light above my name, the wave in it,
with two small fish.

Author: Marin Bodakov
Translator: Katerina Stoykova

thirsty gardener
takes her first sip in the dew
cup of early light