I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry(16)

Please treat her kindly.

Ask her her story, then shut up

and listen.

Black

Asian

poor

wealthy

Trans

Cis

Muslim

Christian

Listen.

LISTEN.

And then yell at the top of your lungs.

Be a voice

for all those

who have prisoner tongues, for the people who had to grow up way too young, there is work to be done, there are songs to be sung, Lord knows there’s a war

to be

won.





STOCKHOLM SYNDROME PT. 2


Abandonment

is a complicated complex.

You’re longing for somebody who will leave.

I walked into a promised land.

A decorated,

perfect man.

With something vile hiding up his sleeve.

I wonder

what I’ll ever have control of.

Rejection breeds obsession,

so they say.

I left my heart and all my hope, my vindicated tales of woe in Sweden

on a freezing winter day.





LONG-DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP


that fleeting moment at 4 a.m.

when I am shaken from a deep sleep because I can’t feel your skin against mine.

when my entire body hangs suspended

in that silver sliver of time is a tiny speck of fear that reminds me that I love when you turn over and kiss my neck two feet of space 2,753 miles

any distance becomes too much to bear a warm bed as wide as the world.





SMOKE


It’s funny, the human fascination with smoke.

Every writer has flexed and fucked

and abused the metaphor for centuries “It vanished like smoke”

“Her body wound like a thin stream of smoke”

“I inhaled his presence like a cloud of smoke.”

We are enamored.

Schr?dinger’s element.

It is there when we restrain ourselves from touching it, And it disappears when we reach for it.

It looks solid, it holds form, and then evades our grasp as if to taunt us.

Not transparent, not opaque.

Is it arrogance?

Smoke, the reminder of the fire we started?

The flame that humankind willed into existence in desperation.

Or is it fear?

The remnants of something we need to survive, but could die in the thrashing embrace of.

Does it arouse us,

to watch the smoke?

The lingering aftermath of the thing that we feign control of, But are at the mercy of?

Do we envy the smoke?

(If I could disappear as quickly as I appeared, I would.)

In my 65-degree bedroom, On a duvet covered in dog fur, She puts her cigarette out by smashing it between two fingers.

Like a final period placed on a hand-penned letter.

I reach out to touch her, But she rolls over and her mind escapes to an empty corner of the ceiling.

Knee-deep into my own cliché, I sink.





ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER


When he is away from me,

my heart reaches from my chest like a wet toddler in a crib.

His voice fills my ears like brown whiskey in a crystal glass, occupying every single tessellate crevice.

When he is away, his smile shines like sun on fresh snow, And his eyes flicker like chunks of glitter falling through the clear goo in a snow globe.

When he is away,

His touch seems hot and scarlet red.

Feverish and desirable.

When he is with me,

My heart retreats like a salty oyster into its shell.

His voice rips through me like a scissor in a seam.

When he is with me,

his smile is so loud I hear it with my eyes shut And his nose drips

and his mouth drools

and his hands are clammy and awkward.

He is gilded in light from 5 feet away.

He is bothersome from 3.

Why can I love him,

only when he leaves?





READY


I knew I was ready to forgive you When I wrenched the knife from my back I held it up high and it cast a menacing shadow over the face of the young man in front of me.

Its shiny metal gleamed and glistened.

I stood heaving

and the veins in my face erupted like tree branches gnarled into the forest floor.

I held the weapon retrieved from my own back.

I gripped it once, twice,

and then

I put it down.





REFRIGERATOR BLUE


2 eyes

the cold comfortable blue of a refrigerator light glowing in the temptation of a midnight snack.

How I rub your head

with my fingertips

and press my open palm against your skull like I could push right through the bone and grab a gushy handful of your brain and take a chunk of it home with me to devour later.

In my underwear,

off a plate,

in that refrigerator light, like cold Chinese.

Grip my face

and scold me

for taking more than you wanted to give, and I can feel my smile rising push my cheeks through your fingers like a handful of clay, malleable in your grasp.

I’ll miss your lap

and the heat between my legs and showering off my sticky thighs in the quiet when I get home.