allthecolorsofourlove

[allthecolorsofourlove]

i will sulk downstairs with a look on my face, not quite angry but not quite there,

a vacancy sign, or a forecast for rain. my mother will ask, are you alright? and i will have to say,

just having an off day,

even though there’s nothing off inside of me. every light is on.

the sirens don’t ring anymore because of my medication, but the flashing persists, hot and red,

like blood or pomegranate seeds, unmoored and unshackled from their white pith,

and they will plink to the floor of my hips. i don’t bleed anymore

but i almost feel moody like i should be,

small and hungry and wanting, trying very hard not to be wanting,

texting my friends and getting back; it is a bad idea to be wanting,

but of course i will still love you anyway.

i’m a live wire for no reason. i don’t know what i want and i don’t know what i need,

but i can feel desire threatening to take a meaty bite of me,

wrapping his fingers over my thighs and sinking in.

he’d skin me if i let him and i almost want to let him—

at the only holiday party i went to this year i took ten shots,

woke up drunk the next morning. i’ve got nothing to show for it.

i’ve spent this december trying to press my broken family into diamond,

avoiding sickness, feeling vague. it’s sucking the life from me. i am carrying weight

in places i didn’t used to, and still trying hard to find beauty in the people that raised me,

still trying hard to find hope up north. i’m just so tired, feeling like

there’s nowhere to really belong;

nowhere that i carry no one else’s housekeeping,

doing no labor but my own. yes, there is love abound and

i feel it rubbing against me, butting its head against the door. it’s comforting. it’s terrifying. and it is not enough

this year. i want to succumb to something,

even if i don’t know what. i haven’t decided that yet. i haven’t decided whether

i’d let desire have me. i haven’t yet figured out

what he desires from me in return.

#writing #poetry

[allthecolorsofourlove]

Summer is charged with something. I don’t know what it is or why, but all those years of summer being the last gasp of a self have given it a beating heart. The cadence matches mine. Its breaking warms my soul. We are growing back together and it feels charged with something too. This is why I stay away from him: put much more than an arms length between us to keep the wanting firmly at bay. But he comes back to me. Every time, he comes back to me. Waits patiently, hugs me drunk. Hugs me drunk again. And again. And again. Slurs, I miss you, we need to hang out, I’m so happy to see you, and then tumbles out onto the patio. I won’t let myself think anything of it. I don’t let myself linger on things you throw at me, pasta on drywall, seeing what sticks. I peel it off and let perseveration die. At least, I try to. You’re shushing me during that show though, where best friends turn to lovers, and kiss in a museum—but when first rejected, the boy says, I’m fundamentally unlovable. He gets told, You care about your friends so loudly. The air thickens. Charged. I’m trying to talk through it. I’m joking about his haircut. I’m mirroring him. He deflects. I do the same. But you’re shushing me. Gasping softly at the way she looks at him. Saying that I truly am the worst person to watch this with. Why? What’s hard about seeing best friends fall in love? Why do you care? The girl says to friends, I’ve just liked him for so long, it hurts. My mouth seals shut. I keep you at arms length. I don’t tell you why I do. And you won’t tell me why you miss me so much, will you? Summer closes her doors on us, just as she has before—over and over and over again, when we shared beds and I’d kiss you on the forehead goodnight, or when you crawled into my lap in that nextdoor parking lot, or now, this time, where I almost think I catch you looking at my lips when I ask when you’re free. I don’t know what to do with you. I don’t know what to do with all this energy.

#stream of consciousness #prose poetry #poetry #writing

[allthecolorsofourlove]

Pull my lips back and let it all hang out: white canines, twitching gums. I think when I’m home I’m a worse person. It’s easy to retreat back into what I know. The pack wants what it wants. It’s hard to say no to family. With every day that dies easy and bloodless at the hand of the moon I am dreading my future more and more. I don’t know why existence feels so hard. Isn’t there a diagnosis for that? My ears flatten against my head at the sound of the scrape of metal on metal as the morning is forged in the foothills. I scrabble for purchase on the turning wheels of time and wonder if I hang on to too much. One friend says to me, tenderly, that it makes sense. Another says they’re done giving me advice. My sister says I’m allowed to be upset. My mother wrinkles her nose. It’s aching inside me, all the emptiness, threatening to open its own stinking mouth. I feel like a child again. I feel like a failure again. I feel like, if I really let the valleys and the rolling green of my life sprawl out in front of me, I can pick out every burn scar, every burial site, every broken branch that signifies the places where I am far too much or not nearly enough. I am trying to change so desperately and nothing comes from it. Tomorrow I will wake up early and go for a run and swim laps in the pool and lift measly weights and still no one will love me. I will build this body, hair and whiskers, teeth growing long, brooding their way out of my mouth and into the world, and I will look just as intended. And still it won’t be enough. I’m not the girl I was when I first lay claim to this house. I don’t slide sweetly in between my siblings at my mother’s belly like I once did. And this could be okay, really, if someone loved me. Isn’t that pathetic? Like ribs kicked under the table, this bruise softens me. Betrays me. I don’t need this approval. I don’t need the approval of my family, clearly, so surely I don’t need the approval of a hypothetical lover, wooly and sweet. Despite the logic I do, and I crave it, and I hunger for it. I want to be cotton-mouthed, satiated and full. I want to rip my teeth out and never use them again. I want to rip into someone and have the scars to prove it. Sure, fine—I’ll be pathetic. I’ll hate my family and yearn for false perfection. I’ll pretend that a scratch behind the ears could heal what ails me.

#writing #poetry #prose poetry #stream of consciousness

[allthecolorsofourlove]

My family’s garden hasn’t provided fruit this year—not the kind I’d like, anyway. The green beans are velveteen and the squash is bursting and abundant and the parsley is beckoning swallowtail butterflies that can’t help but rest eggs in the crooks of the curly leaves. I’m waiting on tomatoes though. We got some from the farmers market yesterday and my mother said they were the first ones of the season. The flooding this winter ruined their cycle. The sun, it’s just—it’s coming too late. The tomatoes were delicious regardless. We ate them with soft cheese by the pool.

If I think about it I think I’m always waiting. Something is always wrong—the time, the momentum, the feeling. I like to ignore and I like to hold on. Every way you slice it, I’m waiting for something perfect to happen to me—the perfect sign to treat my body kindly, the perfect apology from my family, the perfect internship for my haphazardly planned future. The perfect lover.

Is there a perfect lover? Surely there isn’t, but my brain hasn’t caught up to that yet. I’m waiting for someone who gets it but I look at my family and I look at the way the rest of the world sees my family and I feel paralyzed. Does everyone see me like that too? Could anyone love me with that kind of film on my skin? They are not quite good people. Not bad enough to demand reproach but not good enough to be invited back for dinner. I worry that my self image is so distorted by the people I confide in that I’ll never see what’s wrong with me—and then I’ll never fix it. And then I’ll never be loved.

I try to give myself grace. I am young, like the garden. The sun had disappeared for a few years there. It was dark inside. Now it is not. I am waiting for the perfect fruit, the first sun gold of the season: small, orange cherry tomatoes that burst like a gusher under teeth. Sweet. They carry the sticky, green smell of tomato vines. They remind me of love.

I want to burst love between my teeth. I want to eat my seeded heart out again. I think I’m waiting for someone that doesn’t exist, but I don’t know how to stop. Am I too old in this young body? Like heirloom seeds? Like dirt? Do I demand too much? When I told a friend that I need virtually no reassurance in a relationship she gawked at me. I didn’t know how to explain it. If someone loves me then they love me. I have no doubt. I expect problems to sprout between us, and I trust that we will pull them out. Relationships don’t have to be hard. We don’t have to let them be hard. Love can be easy. Isn’t that what we all deserve? I think it is. I want to give that to someone. I want to take it from them too. We will trellis our vines for strength and clarity, untangle what is complex and scary. Is that too much? I don’t know. I can’t stop asking. I can’t stop wondering. I don’t know if I’ll ever find out.

#writing #poetry #prose poetry #stream of consiousness

[allthecolorsofourlove]

#aestethic #aesthetics

[allthecolorsofourlove]

#aesthetic #aesthetics

[allthecolorsofourlove]

I told you to ignore me and if you’re doing that, thank you.

In any case, I just don’t quit. (Doggedly yours, etc)

You should know this by now.

I don’t think I want anything from you; even if you’re the hole in my chest that I can feel but can’t see. Which is hard and strange to admit, and maybe not true. But it feels mostly true. So I guess I’ll say it anyway.

Frankly, I don’t know why I’m writing at all—I know you’ve made your peace and I know that in most ways I’ve made mine. It’s not easy to feel the gaps between my ribs and know what used to lie there, especially in spring, which used to be my favorite season. It still is, I think, but it just hurts in the way that fall used to.

I feel safe telling you these things because I’m sort of assuming you don’t check the lock on this door anymore. If you do: hello, I’m a little ashamed. To which you would probably reply, hello ashamed, I’m Charlie, and I would smack you upside the head.

Do you think the anniversary effect exists for relationships? I think I miss you because I know we are both twenty this month and I know we once spent that together. I feel stupid talking about you like I didn’t break it off (which was the right choice, inevitably, even if I hate that it was, and even if I still bleed from time to time), or like I haven’t been happy since you. I’ve been so, so happy since then—not because you were gone, but just since. And right now I’m not. It’s been hard, and I am feeling messy and soft. Maybe that’s why I’m reaching towards you. That really sucks if that’s the case.

I want to say I’m sorry and I want to hear it back. I don’t know if I deserve to hear it back. I want to believe I do.

More than anything I think I’m back in that house where you miss the exact thing that was once in your possession; like the way you miss the sun when it’s cold or the rain when it’s hot. I miss being loved by you and I miss loving you but we can never be those people again, and I know that. I know you know that too. I wish we didn’t. Do you ever wish you didn’t know better?

I complain about something missing and not knowing what it is but the something I’m missing is love. Not just yours, but yours was the first I ever really knew. I’ve already said it but a content adulthood looks like that weekend in that apartment, seldom wearing a shirt and having lazy sex and kissing someone I love with the blinds wide open. Thanks for showing me that—opening the blinds on what life could be for me. I appreciate it. I appreciate you.

And I’m sorry. For this, for that, for everything. Both times. I’m sorry.

You don’t like to hear me say it but I’ll always say it to you. Even when I’m mad and even when I feel wronged and even when you’ve made things harder for me, in some ways, I still want to tell you I’m sorry. I think I always will. I feel like I come into your life and pour myself into your hands and then run through your fingers as quickly as I came. I honestly don’t even know if that’s true. I think it just feels like that, to me, especially right now, when I am feeling this dark and hungry. And tired. And aching. I’m back in therapy. I’m finally talking about romance there, which I’ve never done. I’m trying to be better. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, especially if I think you’ll never see it, especially when I know you’re trying to starve me out.

Which is what you should be doing, by the way. I’m just sentimental.

It’s April and I’m sentimental. But I promise I’m letting you go now. I swear it’s the truth.

These are the last dead birds on the porch. It’s April and I’m leaving you one last canary and I swear, I promise you, I’m letting it go. I’m letting us go. I’m letting this go.

#the herb garden #poetry

[allthecolorsofourlove]

To Whom It May Concern,

I am home the 20th — 24th.

I’m pissed you’ve written me. Subtlety has never been your strong suit and I knew what you meant immediately. Get better, hide better, choose something other than beasts or jackets. Glad you’re still wearing it.

I’m sorry about your roommate by the way. That sounds like shit. I want to ask about it. I won’t.

I hope you’re okay.

I want nothing to do with you and the fact that I miss you makes me want to rip my teeth out, methodically, leave me nothing to wedge in you like a parting gift. Or perhaps leave me no way to hurt you ever again.

I’m home the 20th — 24th, just so you’re aware,

And it makes me furious to miss you at all, frankly, and it makes me even madder to write you back. It’s humiliating, really, and if I was wrong and the idea of enneagrams wasn’t the right motif for me then this is going to be twice as embarrassing and I’d like you to ignore this. Like, really. Fucking ignore it. Pretend I’m as smart as you thought I was when you said I wouldn’t call.

Really, I’m maddest that you’re saying girlfriend online and writing me still, if that is really what you're doing, because I cannot be that intoxicating and she can’t be that divine, if you’re still writing me, and it’s cruel to her too, so this better be good, or your door better be half open even if she has a key. You better be thinking this through. It better be the smell of the ocean or the sound of piano or your old dog, if he’s still around (and I hope he is), and it better not be feeling big, just feeling desperate, if you’re linked to her still, because this would be round two and that would be so, so fucking cruel. You did it with me to the first and then to me with the new girl and you cannot do it to her. I’d hate you, genuinely. Learn to be alone a little bit, for God’s sake. It's not your heart not knowing when to stop. You're just fucking scared of yourself. Breathe with him and learn about him, dude. Christ.

…Once again, I will be home the 20th — 24th.

So happy birthday, early. Because spring makes me soft and stupid. I’m walking through my city and I don’t think about you in yours but my heart hitches when I walk down the street our temporary apartment was on. The cherry blossoms are bursting like rosy sea foam and that pastry place will have their monthly apricot special soon. I’m kissing other mouths and it’s fun and I had other sex and it sucked. I’m making a mess. It feels like your fault even though I know it’s not. That week with the food festival is hazy and sticky sweet in my memory—your hand on my thigh and sharing a Korean corn dog or a joint or something else phallic and feeling like life would never be better than it was right then. Sometimes I think woefully that that feeling was right.

I don’t want to see you and everyone will tell me to run with that but I do want to see you and that makes me realize I’m impulsive and cruel. I have other hands I’m holding but I want you to fuck me and I want you to rub the knots from my back with gentle square hands and I sort of hate that I want that. It’s really pissing me off that I want that and I don’t know how real it is, whether I miss the idea of you or I miss you in reality. After writing this initially I went to bed and had a dream about you, all over me, and it freaked me out. I woke up and stared at the floor. I wanted to go back to sleep. Did you dream about me that night too? Fuck. I sat on this poem for a week. And during that week I dreamed about you twice. I’m 20 this month and I’m deciding that just don’t want to think about any of this that hard, though, because I’m turning fucking 20, and I don’t give a shit anymore, and I shouldn’t, because it’s all stupid. So take anyway. Fuck it. I’m mad. I’m sad. I’m horny. I’m tired. I'm... whatever. It's whatever.

You have to be chill about this by the way. Like, I know this is insane but you’re the one who started it. And at least I’m being honest with mine. I’m being flat and messy and honest. And my honest is saying, I don’t really think I want to date you, but I want to have sex, and I want to kiss you, and lay in your arms, and I miss you when I shouldn’t. I hate missing you. It’s second nature. I don’t know what to do with it. I feel like it’s rare for it to sweep over me in great waves, but when it does, I drown in it. And I’ve accidentally painted a version of you that doesn’t exist, to the people around me, or at least, they never really saw how much it hurt me to cut us in half. I did a good job of playing the strong one. So I just don’t say anything. I can’t say anything. Everyone tells me to move on so I want you for brief stints and then I move on. I try to. I wonder if I cut it off right on time or far too soon. Kitchen scissors always end up in my bathroom for some reason but I have to keep them handy, for some reason. I’m always quick to the jump, so I guess it I’ll never know. Whatever. Whatever.

(Hey, according to you it was right on time, right? I mean, you sure moved on quick. Hah.)

(Sorry. That was mean as shit. Ignore it.)

I’ll be home the 20th — 24th,

Which is weird because my childhood home feels like a prison sometimes, but I’m back for theatre again. My mom called me her son on the phone. I’m breaking down my current kissable escapades because I keep freaking out over how mundane it feels to be a man. Transitioning is easy if I let it be and if I don’t let it be then I’m sobbing in my room over stickers that praise transsexuality and declare the joy of being a faggot. I hope you’re doing okay. I hope surgery prep is okay. I’m looking into mine this month. I have to up my HRT dose, again. Fucking again. I keep getting periods. It’s criminal.

It always sort of felt like you treated me like a woman. That’s stupid to say. I know your dysphoria made sex weird and mine made it weird for me but I didn’t know how to phrase it. But I just felt infantilized sometimes, like it was easier for you to feel secure in your masculinity if you woobified me or made me fragile. It’s probably a me problem. I’m just airing my grievances anyway. If anything happens here, note the time I told you this drunk, and then my best friend whisked me away to bed.

By the way, you have to tell me when the sex is bad, because you never did, and it really fucked with me. Like I feel like I’m doomed to suck forever now. Because you just sort of would take my hands and go “Okay, you’re done,” if you didn’t like what I was doing, and you’d never moan, and I just felt like so embarrassed and weird about it. I have so much shame. Like, before you I had so much shame, and now I have even more. So if you take into account the fact that I am home the 20th — 24th you’re obligated to do the one thing I ask and communicate with me, if the dates that I’m home are something that interest you. At all. I’m just saying.

I know you aren't the only one at fault. I'm not saying that. I'm just howling at the moon. Biting off fleas, which have bothered me for seven months. I'm sure I have been restless and rude and ruthless even, and I'm sure I was back then too. I delayed it when I shouldn't have. I never spoke my mind. I'm sorry for it. I didn't always know how to speak to you—or how to get through to you. You're stubborn as shit, you know? You like to repress. It was easier to run with it and swallow discomfort and I shouldn't have done that. It wasn't fair to either of us. I'm trying to be honest, because I don't know how much I really was last summer. I'm trying to say it. Even when it's mean. Even if I don't know how, and

Even when I don't really want to.

This concludes the bulk of my letter.

Thanks for your interest in my proposal. If you have any at all. But you haven't blocked me and I'm watching you add songs to that playlist again that don't say that I'm the worst in the world or whatever, which are fair to add anyway, but you're just not doing it. I don't know why. (I scream-laughed when you added that Blink-182 song though. God, you're corny.) So I'm guessing you're interested. Once again, I am home the weekend before your 20th birthday. Which I understand you do not want to spend at home. It’s why I’m here that weekend and not the next, cause I really don’t want to spend my own at home.

It’s not lost on me that it’s the same weekend, a year apart. I’m just letting it be. I make a point to not think so hard about themes or narratives sometimes or else I’d lose my mind. But my majors won’t allow it, two versions of the same analysis, so I’m thinking about them, and I’m thinking about you. Which I also try to avoid. But I just don't do it.

Fuck. Fuck me. Jesus. Everyone will tell me that this is a bad idea. But I just thought you’d like to know. You have a car. A train. And a mind of your own. Whatever. Whatever. Whatever.

Honestly, I don’t even know what I’m asking for. I don’t know what seeing you would change or fucking you would change or kissing you would change. Nothing, really. I don’t even know why I’m writing this. Do you know why you wrote yours? Surely, you have to know that rekindling this permanently, seriously, so soon isn’t a good idea? We’re finally both settled in our cities. There’s no way this makes any sense.

Why did you even write in the first place? What… what’s making you come back?

What compelled you? I don’t understand. I thought we had both moved on.

I’m begging for an answer.

Maybe I’ll change my mind. Ask me again just before the aforementioned dates (the 20th — 24th, if you don’t remember). And if I do, change my mind about all this, I mean, let this be all the things I always wanted to say but never did. If nothing else at least it’s closure, right? Real closure. Like, not cloaked in poetry. It’s written alongside. And it’s not being written in the mist of that initial fragile night of, where I poured myself a double dorm margarita (two shots of tequila and organic lemonade) and watched my favorite TV show with friends, and thought I was fine. (For the record, I sort of was, until the end of October. Shit hit the fan after that. You really don’t want to know. I’m still cleaning it up. I’m still reeling about it. It's a long story.)

Closure has to count for something. …Right?

But right now I’m aching. And I’m seething. It’s 1am and 2pm and fucking midnight, and I hate missing you—I can’t get it to stop. Maybe I’ll quench it, somehow. Maybe I won’t. I still want to tell you these things anyway.

If I’m wrong, destroy this message immediately. Have fun with her and your dog tattoo (I actually, seriously mean it. I’d rather you be happy with her, even if I’m feeling whipped up and hungry, on occasion, because it’s truly better for both of us that way.)

(… Even if it’s fucked up to steal my motifs for your own tattoo, and I laughed when I saw you punch the string of my own pulled teeth into her skin, because I still remember that you were going to get that on yourself in my city.)

(Sorry. That’s mean.)

(I’m trying to be nicer... I’m trying to be clean. I’m trying to mop my mess up and tuck my corners in. I don’t want to keep hurting others, or myself, but I can’t quit it. Whatever I’m trying to do, it’s clearly not working. Or else I'd never write this message.)

Best wishes (sincerely—I really, really mean it, no matter what you do),

S. V.

#poetry #the herb garden #because im a fucking train wreck i guess

[allthecolorsofourlove]

Richard S. Johnson Ariana - 30 x 24 Giclee on Canvas

#aesthetic #aesthetics

[allthecolorsofourlove]

i.

i am finding myself with a newfound clarity that i don’t think i’ve ever had before; in other words—

more poetic words—the words i want to use, pull from me like dandelions, push seeds out into the sky—i am

focusing binoculars on the ship on the horizon: i am twisting the microscope’s knobs, zeroing in on the boy in the petridish. honing in, like a missile or a hound, on someone who makes the right choices and

studies what he loves—someone with a future that is both wet and dry, a person whose lives that feel so split and casually divided don’t feel that way anymore. there’s a balance, and a mirror, and a haircut that makes me tip my chin up,

just a fraction of an inch. it makes all the difference.

ii.

i’m formulaic, i think,

more logical than i realize: find it harder and harder to react in ways that don’t just fall flat. i want to do things without passion,

touch a body without meaning anything by it,

but i find that the part of me that builds mud houses in the roots of trees is too caught up on the norms of it, the way that sex escapes a place of convention makes my stomach turn,

and i have no way to know whether or not i’m playing the role of human right when someone is six inches inside me. i wish, not for the first time,

that my mouth was not only full of canines.

iii.

they played Fleetwood Mac, not for me, just in front of me—and the way they bumped to the tune, bass in hand under gentle fingers, made my heart turn in my chest. i haven’t felt that sort of feeling since i was 15. i don’t remember

what it is to like someone from afar with no guarantee of reciprocation. i don’t know what to do with my hands. i wonder if they ever noticed the scratching stop when i froze,

warming,

sketchbook open on their bed, just to watch them play. i do really like them. i do hope this is something good. she tells me to go for it. she tells me to say something. in therapy, last month, my therapist asks me what i want in a relationship and why i get into one. i freeze, chest tight—and stutter when i finally answer; something

half-hearted about being able to take care of and be cared for. i think i just like to feel special. i think i still don’t have an answer for him.

iv.

when we fuck he asks me if i like to have my chest touched, and something in me compels me to say no, even though it isn’t necessarily true. i think my body

knows the answer to this question that chases me better than i do—i want to listen to it, but the whispers i catch through a quarter of a joint scare the shit out of me. i know where i will end up inevitably and where i am now do not necessarily line up, but i don’t think i want

to live in the now. i want to skip to

wearing makeup again and wearing skirts without wanting to throw up. i want to skip the hard part. i don’t think i’m allowed to.

v.

i’m finding these beats in my life stick with me, linger beside me in a way that i find hard to shake. there are the binoculars, there is his apartment, dark and warm, there are their sneakers on my floor, lopsided in their rain-stains from the way they walk.

they drive us to mcdonalds and i let them take a bite of my mcchicken in the drivers seat. he passes me two fries even though i broke his heart. we are friends and we are exes, in his mind, even if it’s not in mine, but the other is a perfect mirror of me in my head, just less white and maybe a little more traumatized. there is the way,

hours before this, that they text me across a not-so-crowded room for support. there is the way they

sit close to me, right against the wall, and grab my hand before the opening credits even begin. there is the way they are, and the way i am, and how

these things meet.

i love this life, the one i am building, and it’s difficult to remember how i could’ve ever wanted any of this to end. there will be days where i wish

i was not here, or wish i had done something differently. but more often than that there will be hours, days, weeks, of this life,

where i will dance with the campus coyotes against the din of the city and smoke next to the fountain before taking a flash photo of my shoes. and of all of these beats,

more important than anything, there is the way that this life breathes, and

this world means something very dear to me. and there is the way

that yes, it’s true: i missed the first red sunset of the year. but there will be more. another. and another. and another.

+ vi.

there’s also the way that i bumped his nose before turning my head to kiss his lips the other way. i am confessing that to you and for once i honestly don’t mean anything by it. it sort of broke my heart when i realized, finally sober the next morning, what i had done. it was also deeply embarrassing to know that i did something so tender during my first one night stand. if i think about it too much i feel mildly sick.

it also relieved me when i realized you have truly moved on. it made me feel relieved again to know that you have done to me exactly what you did to her, the thing that made me so nervous about you, and i am not particularly sure what to make of that feeling. but i am proud of both of us, and i mean that. i miss you deeply and i do not miss you at all. it feels particularly naked to tell you these things sober. i think i am going to do it anyways. i think that’s a part of the new me: i think this is a part of the change.

#poetry #poem #creative writing #writing #ohhh there’s so many different things happening here #rare that i write about being autistic but ive been thinking abt that one a lot recently and im glad i got to verbalize it the way I wanted #the herb garden #for the ending:)

[allthecolorsofourlove]

Wilhelm Nagel

#aesthetic #aesthetics

[allthecolorsofourlove]

up to my elbows in paint, i find it harder and harder to mix color without muddying the pot;

there’s a piece inside of me that’s fighting its way out—some masterpiece, magnum opus, pinnacle of 19 years of loving—12 months of change:

here lies before you a version of myself, splayed out on drop cloths, flecked with pigment;

and here is the canvas, sheepskin of the flesh, scraped down to the quick of a boy unclean;

and here is the hole punched through: 13 fists in metaphor, unlucky at best and cursed at worst—the accumulation of an existence,

a singular year whittled into a cadmium white flag.

stare into the face of the last year of teenage boredom, make your final excuses for teenage love:

in the studio, i’m laying naked on plastic fucking with someone who doesn’t care about me, and all i can think of is the way i want to be wanted: i’m trying to make art out of the worst of things

because the cup is overflowing with blue-black ink, water from dirty brushes / stained fingers / dirty hands that grabbed my body when i thought i knew what was best

and i don’t know how to tell them that this won’t just end if i give it another year, even when i know it’s true: trust the process, echoed faintly,

breathed through me like a prayer, whispered through the wind when the paper shuffles against my walls;

it’s like gospel, or knight’s code, and i know it, right around that hole through myself,

i know that it’s true;

so i’ll trust it—or at least try to—and

step back when i have to—and

mix color, even when the white runs grey.

in my head i look down at my chest / at that canvas, and all that runs out of that gaping wound is gold: bright and clear as the sky—

that brassy-colored ring around my own pupils, when the light hits just right

#poetry #poem #happy new year #same shit different sandwich

[allthecolorsofourlove]

i’m lingering by the door—can you tell? do you see it? do you see me now? did you ever, really?

i tried to tell you, tried to warn you of this greater beast tried to tell you that beneath this i go

blind—you’ll go blind—trying to see through it all.

better yet, don’t look at all—i’m ashamed of this all

ashamed of the tangles in the yarn in my hair

i’m brushing through my coat and

i’m standing watching you put your shoes on—pat yourself down. i know that they all think i know what i want—i don’t, really, but

they don’t have to know.

i’m lingering on you again, on some sort of protector and on rabbits and on cats,

on bears too, sometimes, out of guilt, or because of the way your hair falls right against your eyes

really, don’t look too hard at the space between the lines—a three letter words—three word

sentences

there’s a light inside of all of this

struggling to get out

but i won’t let it

i wouldn’t dare

my professor tells me to refine the imagery and tighten my grasp—i’m sweating bullets over here trying to make this woman understand:

these poems will never meet the addressed, because when they do,

it always goes to shit there’s no such thing as someone i love

asking if i want my eggs a little differently today—

there is no warm weather holding;

i’m making a menagerie,

zoo full of lost loves

tigers and lions, big cats,

house cats,

the snowshoe hare,

(and the brown bear, i guess, even though it was sent to the wrong address,)

itchy jackals a big-mouthed wolf—

all caged next to

avoidance, distance,

that sticky piece of rice on the bottom of your sock, the one you’re

jamming into the boots i let you borrow for the rain

i’m clinging onto you, the way your jacket slouches over your shoulders, your fidgeting legs

or washing my mouth with a margarita too strong while i

look at the prey animals.

we sit on my floor and watch the dog show together. i throw my legs over yours. they each get rated, out of ten, on fur length, on silly trot:

is this what its like to see me from afar?

don’t answer that. i told you to close your eyes.

close them, for me—

tell me when the animals cry

#poetry #poem #AHHHHHH

[allthecolorsofourlove]

cut the shit.

cut the shit, cut me up, cut it out—cut my body clean down the middle, perfect symmetry, let it all spill out,

gore the floor—cut the shit.

don’t swing your hands, don’t poke me across the table, don’t let yourself linger on me when we are alone. the gears churn in my head at this ballet. i realized in the audience today that if you kissed me right now i’d still feel my stomach drop. it would be like nothing’s changed.

can you believe that?

and truthfully, nothing has changed, really, if you think about it, so stop it, seriously, don’t look at me funny, don’t act like things are fine, i know that, really, now,

i am not the person who knows you best, not anymore

—but you can’t hide it from me, this thing you’re doing—

what the fuck are you doing?—

the overcompensation, the ignoring my jokes, the minimizing my presence: i hate you, don’t you fucking get it, that i hate you for this?

i want to cut you up. cut deep, i want to drive a knife through the place where you let me tuck my chin all those months, like it’s nothing, let the blade run like butter through your heart,

and still, if you kissed me

i wouldn’t raise a fist against you.

in the car, my phone showed me a photo album of nothing but you, you. i was sitting next to your girlfriend. in the cruelest honesty:

it made me feel a little smug.

until you said it, why do you have so many pictures of me—

like it was insane, like we are strangers, like i’m anyone but who i am, someone you’ve called your best friend, other half, something like a brother on occasion, like i’m anyone but someone to you,

someone,—

and i felt the truth crash through me once again: you’ll never learn, you’ll never get it. she said to me one time,

he was in love with you.

she heard the full story, all she had to say after was he was in love with you and he fucking fumbled the bag, isn’t that crazy?, and it catches me off guard, makes me feel like i have a screw loose, pushes the wrong buttons and makes me laugh and laugh and laugh until my ribs burst, bleeding, and i tell her, wet-faced with something unspeakable masked in joy,

cut the fucking shit.

look: i’m not your mom’s favorite anymore. i don’t know you the best. and every time you show up at my door, you arrive with a sword. i still let you in every time. it’ll be like this forever, i think, when i climb out of the car and offer no goodbye hug. i’ll let you in every time.

#poetry #poem #do you ever think you’re over something and then all the sudden you aren’t anymore. fuck me #his drunk ass really said ‘uhhhhh yeah I just thought you were a lesbian and there was no other way things could be’ #i will never forgive him for the aftermath of this hahahaha #yeah its been a full year. sue me. #happy one year anniversary to my insanity!!! hahahaahahah!!!!

[allthecolorsofourlove]

1.

yeah, fine, i’ll admit it:

i don’t know what you want from me: and to be honest i don’t exactly know what i want from you either. i’d like to think that this time it’s different, but

i always wish it’s different,

until it’s not. so my expectations are low. my hoping is low. i assume, which is the worst of me, and

it’s getting me knee deep in this thicket—roses scrape my knees, until i’m thrust to them, and from down here i see you—

i see you. and you know it.

isn’t that terrifying? aren’t you enthralled?

2.

this thing we do,

where you send me videos of the books you bought,

[51 dollars spent, you told me]

and i smile wide and silly when i see it. this thing we do, where

i want to buy my own copy and you say

no! you can use mine i’ll even put some thoughts in it i usually don’t do that because i feel like it pulls me out of the experience but i think i’ll have thoughts about this book

and you leave me to discern whether you’ll have thoughts about the book for me or whether you want to have thoughts about

me,

and that’s why you’ll break the immersion.

3.

i kick my feet, childish, rosy, when you say my name. i do that thing where

when i know i’ve won,

i stick my tongue out at you, and you yell back,

no! stop! you are terrible!

and i can’t help but laugh, because i’ve made you laugh, and i’ll tell you so. you tell me you’re going to stop laughing at my jokes. i say fat chance.

she tells me that facetiming the two of us feels like intruding on something. i stare at my dried flowers and

think of the one i gave you when i called you mine. i don’t think i could be so bold now.

[would you call me yours? i’m just curious. let me know.]

4.

i won’t ask questions and i won’t look so hard for answers. but when you’re a mystery to everyone else, and you

send me someone’s video,

i’m truly madly deeply in love with—

and caption it

oh be so serious with me

or some other variant of words we created together in my room i really can’t help it,

i just can’t,

i can’t help but stoop to sow the seeds of something new

#poetry #poem #they would be so embarrassed if they knew I was writing about them lol

[allthecolorsofourlove]

felt you doze off beside me, just a smidge—felt you laugh a little harder. i ordered you a ginger ale because i remembered.

“you have to stop laughing at the things i say!”, and i ask you why? why? if everything you say

makes me laugh, bursting til full. i shift when you need to adjust your shirt and tumble into the corner when i say something silly and you whine,

“come back”;

while that woman on the show i brought for you to love says,

“i need to be brave enough to let someone wonderful love me, without fear of being hurt and without fear of being… safe,”

and that person on the show you brought for me to love says,

"i've been with good people, really good people, people who love me, and i lie next to them and i just feel so restless… and then when i lie next to you, i feel…..still, and quiet, deep inside."

you tell me, offhand, that spending so much time with me makes you want to write—that i send you poems and we talk about words that make us squeeze hands, [and earlier today i said

something very poetic, about the way we sit, with your left hand trapped in my right,

how

this configuration shackles us, but we do it anyways], and i find it so funny;

because the more time you spend orbiting me and the more time i spend

orbiting you,

the less these words become poems:

the more i want them to become real.

falling in love is a slow and lonely process; brutal and ruthless and unkind—i never know

what bones i’ll break when it all comes to blows, or when the

ground makes contact—but i do it anyways. i do it anyways. and i’ll choose to do it, today,

now. on the phone she asks me how many people know. i shorten the list for her concern. i know it’s more, but i can’t help it—

you breathed so softly on my shoulder. and while you slipped between dark and light,

it almost felt like you felt that

slow shatter too

#poetry #poem

[allthecolorsofourlove]

told you the wrong story, read you my poetry out loud, confessed to you

that we should’ve been friends before this. do you think fate exists?

i’ve leaned towards no one too many times but you have my sigil plastered all over you, for protection, and you

speak just like i do. i want to hold your hand again. you held my hand with your fingers stacked on top and then said, “wait,

that’s wrong, isn’t it?” and shifted them. 

oh. [there’s a right way for us to do this now?]

but i told you the wrong story. i know better than to talk about him; to you—

to anyone. i want him single and alone so we can finally end this. i caught him staring at me from the driver’s seat again. he’s inviting her to

a movie night. i want him out of my hair. and it was wrong, because you

sat there dumbfounded, and i don’t want him nearly at all—i

think i want to build something with you. i kept wanting to tip your face towards me.

it makes my breath catch, when you notice something about me, when i can make you laugh so big your face becomes something it doesn’t usually, when you

let me snuggle myself against you. and after you’re gone,

i sit there thinking to myself, “what does all of this mean?”

#poetry #poem