which is to say
if I had three hearts
(which I might)
I would tell you that 1 of them
is always occupied by a boy.
Sometimes he occupies all full 2 of them
but right now only 1
because I am sensitive
and he is forgetful
but I will never hate him
because I know too much of his story.
It makes me wish I was like a magician.
I would turn one of my hearts into a dove and set him free. ❞
Rachel Wiley (via lollylozz)
If I didn’t think it’d make me appear crazy still,
I’d apologize to you for having been so crazy then.
Reading the poems I had written about “us”
resurrected all that nervous heat, reminded me
of the insistent stutter of my longing,
how I could never just lay it out there for you.
The answer, clearly, would have been
no, thank you. But perhaps that tough line
would have been enough to salvage all
that was good and woolly about us: your laugh,
that golden ring I’d always stretch a story for;
the pair of mittens we’d split in the cold
so we’d each have a hand to gesture with;
how even now, the paths we took are filled
with starry wonder and all that bright limitless air.
I’m sorry I could never see myself
out of the twitching fever of my heartache,
that I traded everything we had for something
that never ended up being. But if I could take
any of it back, it wouldn’t be the glittering hope
I stuck in the amber of your eyes, nor would
it be the sweet eager of our conversations.
No, it would be that last stony path to nothing,
when we both gave up without telling the other.
How silence arrived like a returned valentine
that morning we finally taught our phones not to ring.
Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, “After Reading Old Unrequited Love Poems” (via fleurishes)
I.
When I think of your heart, I think of a snakebite to
the chest.
II.
Uncountable lifetimes ago there was an empire in
Egypt. We burned the libraries. We destroyed the
temples. Everything that was beautiful then is lost
to us now.
III.
These days, poetry is the only language I know how
to speak. But you speak anthropology. You speak
hieroglyphs. You spend your life studying things I
only bury in metaphors.
IV.
When I think of my heart, I think of stone tombs.
V.
Last year, they found Cleopatra’s palace sunk deep
in the Mediterranean sea. But anything they could
learn from the ruins of her home is not worth empty-
ing oceans for.
Clementine von Radics, “Cleopatra’s Palace, Or Why I Didn’t Call You Back” (via clementinevonradics)
in beautiful cages
then let them out. ❞
Matthew Zapruder, “Poem for Japan” (via larmoyante)
i don’t think so. but, i forgive you, girl, who tallied stretch marks into reasons why no one should get close. i forgive you, silly girl, sweet breath, decent by default. i forgive you for being afraid. did everything betray you? even the rain you love so much made rust out of your jewellery? i forgive you, soft spoken girl speaking with fake brash voice, fooling no one. i see you, tender even on your hardest days. i forgive you, waiting for him to call, i forgive you, the diets and the cruel friends. especially for that one time you said ‘i fucking give up on love, it’s not worth it, i’d rather be alone forever’. you were just pretending, weren’t you? i know you didn’t mean that. your body, your mouth, your heart, made specifically for loving. sometimes the things we love, will kill us, but weren’t we dying anyway? i forgive you for being something that will eventually die. perishable goods, fading out slowly, little human, i wouldn’t want to be in a world where you don’t exist. ❞
Warsan Shire, “and were you being good to yourself?” (via lifeinpoetry)
I.
When I was trying to quit smoking
and we drank white wine from Mason jars,
you called my freckles cocoa powder
and I called your green eyes
celery.
II.
I am learning how to be a grown-up
who pays bills, cooks her own meals,
and doesn’t cry at words like
I think I just want to be friends.
III.
The truth is this:
Love is an organic thing.
It rots and softens.
Clementine von Radics, All That’s Left To Tell(via bundleofstring)
(Source: clementinevonradics)
Anne Carson, from “Kinds of Water” (via weissewiese)
(Source: invisiblestories)
Listen, I know there were days you wanted to die
when the sky was so clear
you’d stand obnoxious underneath it
begging for stars to shoot you
just so you could feel at home.
I know about the ways you misplaced all the right words,
stockpiled every important social cue you ever missed
from the first time you learned you were wrong,
waited to make it right
once everyone stopped watching.
I know you let them beat up your beauty in bed
because redemption was still alive in you, howling relentless, gathering strength.
Felt like ecstasy when they pounded it out of you in the hard dark.
Those days of dead weather
got all strung together
and they spoke for you,
wore you down to telling everyone here it was a good life
so you could run back into the wails of your windfight.
I know the parts of your past that haunt you the most
are the days you weren’t being yourself,
and I know that’s why most of your past haunts you.
There were so many who found you out,
and they were right.
You were good.
So
un-
numb.
Buddy Wakefield, “Healing Hermann Hesse” (via beautyisanillusion)
what’s gone is gone,
but at night it’s different.
Nothing gets finished,
not dying, not mourning;
the dead repeat themselves, like clumsy drunks
lurching sideways through the doors
we open them in sleep;
these slurred guests, never entirely welcome,
even those we have loved the most,
especially those we have loved the most,
returning from where we shoved them
away too quickly:
from the ground, from the water,
they clutch at us, they clutch at us,
we won’t let go. ❞
Margaret Atwood, from “Two Dreams, 2” in Eating Fire: Selected Poetry, 1965-1995 (Virago, 1998) (via apoetreflects)
(Source: growing-orbits)
Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we
lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell
and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.
Especially that, but I should have known.
You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together
to make a creature that will do what I say
or love me back. ❞
Richard Siken, from“Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out”
Gregory Sherl, from “Most Of The Things I Have Thought Today”
Like the sea, like time. ❞
Pablo Neruda; “A Song of Despair”(via babagoogoosh)
