I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry(17)
Oh will I miss the stern, saccharine voice melting from your lips
hovering over my open hungry mouth.
THE CAVE
I don’t suppose I really know you very well— but I know you smell like the delicious damp grass that grows near old walls and that your hands are beautiful
opening out of your sleeves and that the back of your head is a mossy sheltered cave when there is trouble in the wind and that my cheek
just fits
the depression in your shoulder and that is all I need to know.
PARASITE
I thought I knew what a muse was until I met him.
I’d been inspired before.
I’d been intrigued.
But I had no idea what a muse was until he put his pink lips to my neck and spit parasites into my ears.
Let them climb in and make a home in the soft tissue of my brain.
Bred
and multiplied
and bit into my mind till the memories of him opened like sores
and festered in the heat of my anxiety.
I opened my mouth and Times New Roman print flew out like a plague of moths from its depths.
For 48 hours I was held captive by the college-ruled lines of a composition notebook.
Wrapped around my wrists like the leather-bound work of a dominatrix.
He cracked a whip against my skin and sliced my flesh open, scarlet
like the margin taunting me.
The violet bruises on my neck, my chest,
could hardly compare to the scar that rose when he petrified me.
He shocked me.
Terrified me.
Because he inspired me.
I wasn’t prepared
for the chaos that would follow.
A muse.
A parasite.
A symbiotic relationship.
Feed his hungry mind from my open mouth.
FOREVER CURSED IN LOVE ARE THE OBSERVANT
My mouth tastes like cinnamon whiskey and menthol cigarettes.
Cabernet Sauvignon, spearmint gum
and your hot heavy breath.
My mouth tastes like all the things I should have said.
I don’t want to be this way, but I have been since you left.
I should have never counted your eyelashes when you slept.
I should forget the way you take your tea, but it haunts me.
2 sugars,
please.
THE PATTERN
What will be left
when I have broken all of my favorite things?
When the glue of sweet apologies
and bat eyelashes no longer repairs them?
What will be left when I have shattered it all?
Carelessly, it will evade my grasp.
And I will have
nothing.
I WOULD LEAVE ME IF I COULD.
This must be a nightmare.
It couldn’t be a dream.
I’m washing in the shower, my limbs clean,
until they bleed.
I sometimes miss the quiet; the chaos of the streets.
I keep it all inside my mind and every night
I scream.
I can’t remember
what it’s like to smell the ocean.
I can’t remember
what it’s like to feel the sea.
I can’t remember what it’s like to face a mirror and not hate the person staring back at me.
I wish that I were dead or at least somewhere else.
I try to keep the riot quiet like a diet
for my health.
Stealth.
It’s moving silently.
It’s heavy.
It started from my knees and now it’s creeping up already.
Just another second now, ’cause here comes the confetti.
Please, hold the camera steady.
I encore 7 more
and everybody’s like “That’s plenty!”
I would leave me if you’d let me I would leave me if you’d let me I would leave me if I could.
BRIGHT EYES
They told me that she’s beautiful with bright eyes and fair skin.
She’s from a city off the coast somewhere where the girls are “made for men.”
Is she a naked mess in underwear on a dirty bathroom floor?
Do you look at her disgusted, thinking that you deserve more?
But does she scream at the top of her lungs praying you don’t leave her?
Does she scream from an open mouth begging you to feed her?
Will she set alarms obsessively to check in on your breath?
Does she know the ways to touch you with her lips upon your neck?
Is she agreeable and careless?
Does she answer all your calls?
Because I know you needed someone who was fine with feeling small.
But does she scream at the top of her lungs praying that you’ll need her?
Do you scream at the top of your lungs?
Do your veins bleed her?
DEVIL IN ME
I won’t take anyone down
If I crawl tonight
But I still let everyone down
When I change in size
And I went tumbling down
Trying to reach your height
But I scream too loud
If I speak my mind.
BRING ON THE BLACK!