An Ode to My Love

 An Ode to My Love

I’ve tried to muster every word

Search in dictionaries

Look in thesauruses

But I can’t find the correct word

To describe the way his nose is a thick

Ledge that my eyes cascade down,

Freckles, as if his canvas was dotted

With perfectly placed stars

A snapshot of space

Lips like a limp cupid's bow, an arrow pointed at me

And a taste like velvet tangerines and

Dark chocolate marshmallows 

Hands that handle machines 

Fingers that pull apart rose petals

Is there a word for his smile?

The way his nose creases into thick lines

The way it’s warmth pools deep into my belly

How I will gladly let his summer become a permanent

Part of my bones

There is no genre for his voice,

A broken accent that rings with honey

Tired eyes that devour me

That drip autumn

That shine like topaz during a thunderstorm

He is a deep maple forest that overflows

Into the ocean

The smell of wet asphalt and thick humidity

Infinity

Forever and always

Everything

Those are the only words that seem adequate for him.

Obituary of an Older Brother

 Obituary of an Older Brother

There's a lump in my throat

That scratches and bites

She calls it bitter and vicious

I call it love

It makes her cry when it uses

Its hoarse voice and spits on her sympathy

I wish it could crawl out and shriek 

Until everything turns bright blue and beet red

It could tell you that you're a bastard,

Living in powder pink dreams

Longing to find the next spirit

To inhabit your bed

To infest your ribcage

To break your bones

How I gave you the highest honor in my head

Crowns of ivy and robes with stars woven into them

I met you

I burned the portrait I had painted, the robes and the ivy

How you left and came back,

In a purposeless race,

A grand prix with no prize

Searching for caramel cigarettes

And love from a consignment store

50, 20, 10 percent off

How you found comfort in white porch steps,

Silver seas and fleas;

You called them home

Can you feel my teeth in your side?

The anger that swells and pools at your feet;

how it burns and blemishes

Or should I keep that lump in my throat

Push it deep down, let it not make a peep

Blink away the pain on heavy eyelashes

“Could you come home?”

The lump whispers

 

How to Make a Cup of Tea (Poem)

 How to Make a Cup of Tea

1. Boil the water

She used to watch the metal kettle boil

Told me to listen closely for sweet melodies

Whistling through the air

Watch the glass as it steams

 after a flick of a switch

Fill it to the brim she said

As she lay sick in bed

2. Choose your mug

Thick metal mugs,

Tall mugs and mugs from Goodwill

Her mug sits perpetually on the cold counter

She has two shelves, one Disney

The other, everything else

Always told me I had too many

And I was wasting the space

But she still made room

3. Pick your tea

I’ve always preferred black tea

She likes peppermint and teas from

Wholefoods

I told her in steaming arguments

I’d never be like her

Her pain is a neat box of tea

My pain is loose

We’ll never have the same taste

And that’s okay

4. Pour your boiling water into your mug with the tea bag or loose-leaf tea

You never got angry

When I poured hot water on my hand for the first time

You told me to learn and grow, to try again and again

I said the same thing to you, over

And over

And over again

Even now, while you're cleaning up your spill

I’ll keep making a cup of tea for you

5. Let the tea steep

Rotted white porch steps

Tables made for pretend

Painted desks and bedside tables

Kitchen counters and wicker trays

Tiled bathroom floors

All great places to let tea steep

6. Enjoy

In the morning, you make your cup of tea for work

I make mine for school

Stained cups, continuous use

A list of sticky notes, a specific mug,

Shower at 8 and makeup at 8:30

The most beautiful women all have routines

And filling the tea kettle for you

It is my favorite part of all.

poetry

         Maybe this year I'll post my poetry

        Or maybe for my own sanity

        I will not participate in vulgarity

        and I will not post my poetry.

I wrote this trying to fold my laundry

    I've rewritten this at least 5 times, and every time my delusional thoughts get in the way of any eloquence I have left. To sum up my rambling behaviors, I'm so scared of people leaving me that I don't know what to do with myself. All of the things I worry about come from this fear and I don't know how to deal with it. I don't want to be left alone again, I don't want everything I've worked for to be for nothing, and beyond all that I'm scared the people I love will look at me as if I am nothing but a monster. I can't do it on my own anymore, I keep trying to, hoping no one will see me in my weakest state. I'm far too prideful and my refusal to ask for any kind of help or say something I'm scared to say in fear of being abandoned needs to end. I can't live like this, how am I supposed to ever be a good daughter, sister, or wife if I can't ever let myself need people. I'm scared, so scared. The kind of fear that you felt when you were young when you needed to turn off all the lights in the house or anything like that. I don't want to be alone, but by expecting myself to be perfect and to figure everything out on my own, I'm becoming the worst version of myself. I feel selfish that I need the people I love like I can't consider anyone else's life. I feel like I'm at the worst crossroads, be selfish or continue to be a sacred dog. I don't want anyone to leave me and every day I fear they will if I do one thing wrong, I'm not perfect and that's terrifying. I want to hide and forget I exist, only for a bit though, I need to finish my laundry and hope that no one will leave, because I think it's time I fully stop being reliant only on myself. Fuck leaning into it, I need to be held.

If I were a fruit, I'd be a pomegranate

         Whenever I start feeling anxious again, I always feel compelled to write. Like some creative, or maybe something worse, digs out of my ribcage and covers me in a mix of bile and blood. The feelings I feel have always been visceral, or at least how I describe them. It feels as if I almost see myself as an animal of some kind. When these feelings emerge, I shed some innate part of myself and become what I have always been: A dog that bites when scared. Recently, I've pinpointed where this stems from, this bile fear that seeps from every part of me. Shocker, it's hormonal. Currently, I'm on hormone pills to try and regulate myself, but recently I've felt the same as how I used to feel, completely frayed at the edges. For the first two weeks of a month, I'm fine, I feel happy, but for the next two weeks, I feel utterly destroyed. 4

    All I want to do is apologize, cry, curl into a ball, and be forgotten about. I can't think straight and I know I'm being annoying to the people I love. Every word people say to me I want to scream at or overanalyze. When I feel these emotions I feel like the rational part of me, is like going on vacation. 

    I don't want to ask for reassurance, that feels pathetic to me. I know, I'm trying to be more vulnerable and ask people for help, but I don't want to be needy. Maybe I already am though. I know I'm a clingy person, but I feel like being needy would just make me feel worse. I don't want to need people, I want to be able to handle things myself, I have before, so why can't I do it now. I feel so weak for needing reassurance and needing to be held. I don't want to feel like this, I'm supposed to become an adult and I can't handle a simple thing like hormonal anxiety? I don't want to feel these things. 

    Usually at night, I dream simple things, not many nightmares, but sometimes, I find anxiety creeping into my head while I sleep. I don't like to talk about my nightmares, they usually involve some sort of abandonment and death. I have the same dreams over and over, and I keep them to myself. I guess even if my blog acts as a cry for help a lot of times, I hate pity, I don't want someone I care about to pity me. So maybe that's why I try not to talk about my dreams often. 

    Frequently, I feel like all the feelings I feel now make me unlovable. Am I worth the mess I make? Do I add enough to people's lives to be worth all of this? There has to be a point where I'm such a mess that I'm unlovable, right? Will my boyfriend keep loving me even if I'm a mess? I don't know, I fear that a lot. I just hope, the feeling I feel doesn't get in the way of me living life, because beyond everything, I fear being left behind more than anything, I don't want anyone to leave me.

            I think If I were a fruit, I'd be a pomegranate



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