The smell of the city

I got warm feelings from a Mike’s Pastries box on the train

Like a warm haze in summer at the docks with a cannoli and a striped umbrella

The temporary bliss we lived in

Poor as we were there was sun and

July was our month,

Cockroaches and nights up crying

A boat ride to Salem in my pirate dress

Cornflower blue sheets like a glimmery dream

As I dance along the edge of 16 hour days

Candles ever burning on that shelf

Homeless gutter surfers laughing at me and my coffee

My last day off was Monday,

A month ago

Men and women that blur before my eyes

The weight of my body heavy in our bed

A bike ride along the river where your brother found his mind

He didn’t know he’d lost

Your ring left in the Target bathroom

My bones made of iron and ice cream

Rigid exterior

I’ll always remember the perfume of lemon and sage

Staring out at the lights on Stuart Street

I was a columbine blowing in the breeze

Amidst a sea of cacti

We danced

In the living room

To old music

You played on your piano

#love #music #poetry #sadness #boston #newengland #newenglandpoetry

You cannot tame a woman with half the strength I have -

I was never meant to bend to the will of another

And yet still I will give you everything I have to offer

We had a broken beauty

And still a broken familiarity

That makes it all too hard and all too easy to reach you

Your voice sounds like old music

On a radio

To my ears

Your words beat like the drums of my memories

Green grass in the field behind the stadium in summer

I want my love back

#love #heartbreak #poetry

I think I started my new life

As an anorexic angel.

I woke up to my chapped pink lips

Breathing snow that looked like ash

In a world full of that heavy dampening

Like the afternoon your stereo

Fell into the lake.

My milk skin, stretched too tight

Across my curled bones

Had long forgotten the flavor

Of your cigarette stains on the curtains.

I stretch out my paper thin body

And I swear that my dark hair is

The only contrast between

My shallow collarbones and the winter.

I was clothed by the nudity

That is thrust upon us by innocence,

My soft, slight, shivering breaths

Puffing up into space,

Unsure of their destination.

Wearing a blanket of goosebumps,

Reaching out with dry hands

And cracked nailbeds

Sent me reeling into an ocean of white

A blinding silence,

Like a mute into a trumpet.

I was not born beautiful.

The first sounds I made were that of choking

On the memory of my crimes of self-hate.

My first word was why,

My first movement a nauseous whirl

Trying to collect some semblance of reality

Inside this blinding whiteness.

I was born with the aftertaste

Of the little white pearls I had swallowed

And now found spilt about my breast,

The acid memory of wanting to die,

The corrosive scent of my fear.

I think I was stillborn,

With aching bones and a breaking hair

And no nourishment within my skin.

My dented halo tastes like iron,

And it’s wrapped around my throat.

My wings are ragged and white, so white,

So new and so dead.

I let the water race over my skin

Until it ran as cold as the ashes that fell

Because I wasn’t pure enough for snow.

I let the memory settle in my mind,

The way it felt when

You invaded my brokenness.

I traced your scratches on my hipbones

And the soreness in my limbs.

I laid on the floor

And prayed

That God would have more mercy

On his little anorexic angel.

Promise me I’ll never stand in the dark crying by myself again.

Remember that I am only fighting against ghosts that touch me as though they were stable.

Open your arms and comfort my sobs, I cannot sleep because of all this

Screaming that burns my throat as I am thrust into nightmares I once lived.

Even the inflexible concrete cannot withstand the depth of my anguish-do not leave me to carry its weight alone.