my fingertips have never felt the
river water, so still and calm,
floating flowers and a cool
breeze. I am holding your face,
which I long to draw a picture of.
trace you, memorize the
curves and dips and you form like a river,
swim like a girl who's never been asked
to look at herself. when I look at me,
I find it hard to breathe. The air pauses for
just a minute, and I forget how long a
minute lasts until you open me back up with a kiss.
*Suicide's Note
By Langston Hughes
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
there are somay things i wished i could do
or be or have
but i always look in the mirror and remember like an old song
that there's nothing wrong with what i have right now.
It will walk in through the door: insistent like a robber, but passive like a hungry, distant son. It will eye down the silverware kept loose in drawers while stopping to collect picture frames, with the implication that all frames in the house were vacant, void of any resemblance of a memory. It will be foolish and leave Its fingerprints on the windows that hold the manicured lawn with their TV model hands; on the ridge of the coffee table that was gnawed on by dogs, like the edge of a stamp from an untouched letter; or on the lamp with the bunny painted on the vase and the bulb that was reluctant towards the ignition knob, It knows this is the case. It will lazily raid the fridge and cabinet of anything remotely essential, leaving the spices, herbs, and condiments. The luxury of these items is no longer of importance when by themselves. It will lurk in the stairwell and take two feet for each step as if It is a baby discovering how to climb the stairs without Its hands.
i feel like time is dragging me along by the hand
the way a mother tugs her child to preschool/
but instead of kicking and flailing and screaming
i am numb to the days that pass
despite my silent urgency.
there is so much i want to do
but my body is stone/
and my mind is blank.
i am no longer stardust—
now i bathe in my self-pity and despise everything.
i do not want to be here because there is nothing
here. we somehow listen to people who live hundreds of years in the past and blindly follow words on pages that need to be rewritten/ and i hate them all with an intensity that burrows itself into my bones but refuses to be released. i know i am a coward; i have said it before.
and this is why i would not survive anywhere else, why i would not survive in the pages i wish to disappear into. because i am not what i read/ i am merely a foolish pretender.
Will the rain wash away-
the ash of today?
Water reflects the land-
that's fragile like sand.
Do you really understand?
Will the promise of tomorrow,
keep the world from sorrow?
Or must we continue to borrow,
from what isn't ours?
All of the days short hours,
will be gone in the blink of an eye.
Soon the moon, will be high in the sky.
The ancient moon
has many stories to tell,
though the sun takes the bell.
Years feel as if they slip by
like sand in an hourglass.
Day turns to night, grass
turns to leaves, as fall lies
on your doorstep, though,
in the south, winter rules, casting
the land in ice, as snow begins to grow.
As time goes by, the land is forever changing.
Fearing nothing, winter engulfs everything.
When fall leaves, and winter knocks on your door,
you’ll feel as if summer leaves too soon.
Memories frozen in amber
are dropped on my doorstep like a cruel present--
your freckles and your smile and your green eyes like grass and summer leaves,
that nickname nobody had ever called me
before you,
how I cried into your shoulder the last day
like the world was going to end.
You said you weren't coming back, and it hurt--
an unknowable ache that wedged itself deep within me for eleven months,
eleven months of writing poems and dreaming dreams
about you,
the best friend I thought I'd only ever meet again within my own mind.
And now I almost wish that had been true
because nothing could hurt worse than
watching your beautiful green eyes skim over me that June 25th
just as I was about to say how much I'd missed you
but the words died in my throat as I watched you walk away
and began to wonder if you were a ghost after all,
not the magical girl from a summer past.
There is a web
and it holds us.
Pieces come apart
so we help rebuild it.
We are a species
that has forgotten
our place
on the web,
so the earth reminds us.
It shows us that
there are some lines
that we do not cross
and if we do cross them
the water rises,
pushing us back.
The water comes
and it takes.
It's the destruction of what we've built,
but also
the reconstruction
of the natural world.
The water roars,
it cries,
and it heals
even when we feel hurt.
It washes over land
that was stolen
and poisoned.
It warns us
as we build our walls.
The river speaks.
It wills us to understand
years of neglect,
hurt, and carelessness
seeped into the sand.
The river is strong,
stronger than us.
It will
reclaim its path
