poems-or-whatever

[poems-or-whatever]

Day 5: Spiral

The train is delayed.

Of course it’s delayed.

Oh, it’s only two minutes.

That’s fine.

Did I turn off the straightener?

I don’t think I turned off the straightener.

Oh, good, I remembered to take a picture to prove that I turned off the straightener.

This train is never on time.

Maybe the delay is a good thing.

Maybe the delay helped me avoid a shooter on board.

Or maybe now the delayed train is going to derail.

Maybe it’ll spark on the tracks and explode.

Maybe I’ll be fine.

I’ll be fine.

It’ll be fine.

I’m glad I stopped for coffee.

I should stop drinking coffee.

I should stop drinking coffee with so much sugar in it.

Is it true aspartame gives you cancer?

What if I have cancer?

I do have that weird cough.

And sometimes I get really intense migraines.

It’s a brain tumor. It’s definitely a brain tumor.

I really should go to the doctor more often.

I hate the doctor.

I’d rather just not know.

But what if not going and not knowing means the cancer that is certainly in my body right now is taking over every organ?

I’ll die before I’ve really let myself start to live.

I’ll never fall in love again.

I’ll never be a mom.

My mom will never get to be a grandmother.

She’d be good at it.

But would I be good at mothering?

I have to stop wasting time.

I guess I’ll download Bumble again. Or maybe Hinge.

Which one did I like better last time?

Oh, it was definitely Hinge.

Why is every man in Philadelphia politically moderate?

Why does every man in Philadelphia think “Go Birds” is a good enough bio?

Ugh. Not another farmer named Wade.

Why do these men think holding a rifle is a turn on?

Oh. He seems nice.

But is he actually nice?

What if we go on a date and it’s a waste of time?

What if we fall in love, get married, and he turns out to be a serial killer?

What if he kills ME?

What if we have a kid together who turns out to be a serial killer who kills me?

If I give birth to a serial killer, that would definitely prove I’m not good at mothering.

Enough. I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’ll swipe right.

Is it weird to swipe right and match with somebody at 6:45 in the morning?

Is this guy going to be like, this girl is clearly desperate if she’s on Hinge during her morning commute.

Ugh. I’ll try again later.

Oh, good, the train is here.

#escapril #national poetry month

[poems-or-whatever]

Day 4: Trip

My life is a series of the would’ve, could’ve, should’ve;

It hasn’t been a straight line.

It has consisted of countless right angles,

a maze of mishaps and misshapen first tries that melt into failures.

Mirrors that question the reflection’s true face;

Stairs that lead to nowhere - to nothing.

Day by month by year - all have ended in a kick line of question marks:

What now? What’s next?

What do you want?

If you cracked open your chest,

And kneaded the muscle of your heart,

Would you know then?

Would the wanting become doing?

Would the trying becoming something, anything, that you could hold in both hands?

Sometimes, I wish I could trip backwards,

Tumble over and over through that maze,

Try it all again.

I’d do better the second time.

I would know myself in declarations,

I could become something clearly defined -

Like I should have been all along.

Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve.

#escapril #national poetry month

[poems-or-whatever]

Day 3: Eye Contact

The first time you looked at me - looked at me and meant it - it felt like my bones were collapsing beneath my skin. Like they were turning to dust, made of ash, until I was made of nothing. Like my whole life, they’d been holding me up just for this moment; to be seen by you.

It took me years to realize: that kind of want is a warning.

The first time I told you I loved you, it was the Fourth of July. And there were no fireworks. No pomp, no circumstance. Just the understanding, brash, unwelcome, that I’d gotten it all wrong.

That the moment our eyes first met - when I felt, deep within my crumbling bones, a sense of knowing - wasn’t what I thought it was. It wasn’t what I wanted it to be.

It was knowing, even before I knew, that I’d never trust blue eyes again.

That you’d ruin me.

That I was ruined.

#escapril #national poetry month

[poems-or-whatever]

Day 2: The Internet

I’ve made it a habit - spilling my guts:

Every feeling, every want,

every mind-wandering wondering.

Shoved down the throats of friends

and strangers

and once friends who are now strangers.

Diaristic musings and keyboard-pounding diatribes

Spewed across mediums across decades.

The lives I’ve lived immortalized:

Every heartbreak every empty promise every sidelong glance

Every first kiss every endless summer every hopeful glance -

All laid out like an offering,

All because I could never hold back.

#national poetry month #escapril

[poems-or-whatever]

Day 1: Change of State

Back at it! Happy National Poetry Month!

-

I’ve always preferred winter -

Have felt somehow comforted by its cold loneliness,

Longed more deeply for days cut short with each moon’s rising,

Looked more forward to cities silenced by snow -

And dreaded the arrival of spring.

Spring - with its open green fields,

The technicolor blooming of flowers,

All unfettered energy and the big, bright, boundless feeling of being alive -

I’ve never belonged there.

But this year -

This year, this year, this year -

This year, something changed.

Once, winter’s quiet was gentle,

a trail of fingers against my skin,

a hushed reminder - safe. you’re safe. - in the whipping wind.

But this winter’s quiet was sharp -

A whispered warning - run - to escape the darkness looming just out of sight,

Obscured by the gnarled branches of a wicked wood.

The deep blue darkness,

No longer something soft,

No longer something warm,

Took hold with rough, unwieldy want,

Bruising flesh already marred with goosebumps and frost bite,

Until my skin was the same deep blue;

Until blue was all I knew.

But the sun is out now.

Glowing golden,

Encouraging all that blue to shift -

into a color of renewal,

A color of rebirth,

resplendent in the holy green of spring.

So… this year.

This year, on the precipice of April,

This year, with a heart buoyed by the very possibility of a new season,

This year, this year, this year -

I’m opening the windows,

And taking a deep breath,

Letting birdsong fill every corner,

Beckoning the light to drench these quiet rooms,

Until there’s nothing but sunshine,

And sound.

#nationalpoetrymonth #escapril

[poems-or-whatever]

escapril, day 25: motel

there’s a key - old, rusted, almost red - that opens to a sanctuary for the lonely, where nights are marked by headlights flashing across the threadbare carpet, the eggshell walls, the old comforter that smells of the sea. this room has secrets, pieced together like skeletons, now piled in closets caked in dust and mold. the bathroom mirror has born witness to  decades of wanting and hoping - the kind of wanting and hoping that ends  as all wanting and hoping does: fruitlessly, with mascara-streaked skin, that can’t be wiped clean.

#escapril #national poetry month

[poems-or-whatever]

escapril, day 24: fear

what if this is really all there will ever be?

#escapril #national poetry month

[poems-or-whatever]

escapril, day 23: mask

i never knew i wore a mask or that a mask wore me, until it morphed into a casque and became harder to break free.

i curled my hands into two fists around the metal armor. i yanked until i sprained my wrists; it did nothing to disarm her.

soon enough, it came to pass that my neck was iron too. i screamed until my voice was glass, and my throat was shredded through.

i felt the pain, i tasted blood, but the fight and fire faded. acceptance swept in like the flood, so i kept the mask i hated.

#escapril #national poetry month

[poems-or-whatever]

escapril, day 22: out the window

each morning, when the sun is rising over pennsylvania, and its rays are glinting off the train windows as the world outside rushes past, nothing but a blur of green and brown and gold, my eyes catch on what they can, and create moments that might not exist. but for me, here, they do,  the possibility that exists only then, before the world wakes up, and reality has a say.

#escapril #national poetry month

[poems-or-whatever]

escapril, day 21: an average day

some days  i just do whatever it takes to not end up crying in the grocery store.

#escapril #national poetry month

[poems-or-whatever]

escapril, day 20: radio

i turn the dial, listening for something familiar, still seeking out chords and melodies that feel like then did. vienna, maybe, or the carpenters; something with too much piano, and a voice that’s warm like sunshine is warm as it casts across blades of grass on a summer sunday. like it did before the light  emptied and became something more akin to a glare.

#escapril #national poetry month

[poems-or-whatever]

escapril, day 19: muscle memory

my body clenches, skin and bones keeping the score. remember, it begs.

#escapril #national poetry month

[poems-or-whatever]

escapril, day 18: what’s society got to do with it?

oh, everything.

-

i wish i could know, what it’d feel like, if i didn’t feel like somebody i used to know.

if i could look at the world and be satisfied with it -

now, here, with what i have, not what i’ve been told i should have by thirty-two.

if age were just a number and not a ticking clock. if time were just a construct and not a ticking bomb.

#escapril #national poetry month

[poems-or-whatever]

escapril, day 17: the horror!

it was all sensation, the way the dark made us bold, and the monsters gave me reason to let my restless, greedy fingers slip into the spaces of your ribcage and steal your body heat. that wild, unwieldy temptation, to explore the landmarks of your skin, press my thumb against your freckles until you’re covered in the evidence that i was there, and there, and there, and you’d marked me just the same.

the pitch black of basements and the familiarity of october and the strange, electricity of darkness  will maybe always feel like that first fall when all it took was a glance, and a smirk.

#escapril #national poetry month

[poems-or-whatever]

escapril, day 16: language

for somebody who loves words so much it feels like she’s made of them sometimes never always it’s impossible to find the right ones.

#escapril #national poetry month

[poems-or-whatever]

escapril, day 15: superstition

i used to pray in church pews with a passion and a reverence, my hands pressed against my chest, rosaries threaded so tightly through my fingers that i could count hail marys on the indentations.

i somehow believed that these practices -  knees bruised by the marble floors, the quiet that built in those four gilded walls, broken only by our fevered hopes or apologies - brought me closer to god.

now, i find god in summer thunderstorms, the holy morning mist on the delaware river, the soft white buds of a dogwood tree, the joyful yelps that accompany wide open windows as we drive, boundless and free, over old bridges.

but even still, when the tires hit the weathered wood, i press a hand to my chest, and pray.

#escapril #national poetry month

[poems-or-whatever]

escapril, day 14: a miniature

when i was fourteen, i read the words, “nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands” and i wanted to swallow them, feel each letter slide down my throat feel them land, with a heaviness, in my gut. it felt like the start of a brand new planet; felt like the seasons braiding into years, felt like the years unfolding into lifetimes felt like seeing those lifetimes become the story of what it means to be human - or, at least, what i’d keep of humanity.

#escapril #national poetry month