Having to let go of my childhood has proved more difficult than I initially expected. In fact, I don’t think I ever considered what growing up and letting go of a younger version of myself even meant. I have always been a forward thinker - the past seemed irrelevant to me and more filled with trouble, abuse, and disappointment than the future. The future is the wonderful and vast unknown; it represents a place of possibility and perfection, fantasies that exist if you embellish them just enough. Well, college has enlightened my view of my childhood and all of the beauty that riddled even the harshest moments. Sometimes I think I was so quick to exit my life that I wasted an entire 20 years betting on getting out. The painful truth is that here I am, far away from a life I thought I was over, and all I want is to go back and live it once more. College has been a time of mourning and appreciation for my childhood. As stupid as it sounds, I really did think that I had it all figured out – I’ve faced my ego in many ways and I’m still trying to conquer it. These poems reflect a year’s worth of emotion, both wholesome and perplexing.
Empty Fields
What to do with the space. I am alone in the images that pulse through my vision as I walk this narrow field. Somewhere across it all you are the you that fetches the night and the stars and welcomes the beaming clouds in the early morning.
Traverse all the distance so I am not the voyeur of such hedonism. Sex that wakes me up at 2am only to be reminded that it’s you who took it all with the dying light; so be still and practice the erasure of such betrayal.
The only feeling that remains rings down my legs and everything tightens in order to sustain such fleeting presence of something more delicious than you. And I was unwarned by the comfortability of what surrounded me; built up like an immovable object, deceived by resilience.
The wind prevailed. The mind is the only immovable thing. A room filled with candles that float above hand’s reach and I am not tall enough to pull them down and blow them out.
I am unsure of what is worse, to remain inside the room or to walk down the staircase and outside back into the field that separates us both. At least the field gives the semblance of being closer to you, in the slowness of each pace I can sink into the isolation and gaze from afar.
The back of your body tempts desire just enough. The farther you get the more air fills up behind my brow. I am utterly unhinged.
Deception
Oh you stubborn beast
Deceiving me so
As I roam without bearing.
In what you exist,
I cannot figure
Somehow I find you everywhere
Whispering that the trees flutter just for me,
And the Elysian sky is painted in my honor
Who allowed me to indulge such nonsense?
That each morning is made to be tarnished
By my arrogant disaffection
I can feel your eyes as they urge me onward
And follow me into the night which you own
Who are you? And where are you?
Begging me to look up,
Yet I can’t seem to find the high wanted of me
It’s just a ceiling above us, unending as it may be
We are all bound up in its glory
Oh the Ego
Ruiner of unfettered boredom
It’s 4pm in the place I’d rather be in
Lately we are consuming flaky sugar pastries adorned with sumptuous amounts of cream
Teapots of Darjeeling waft through the corridors and into moments not easily placed
I am drunk on these days, soaking up the forest that flows through like warm whiskey, or spiked sorbet in the summertime
There is no music echoing amongst the walls, no noise drowning out the low hush of the waves that crash below. Let the silence be loud enough for you. Let the stillness of the narratives be a reminder. The furniture carries on conversations as it always has. We have no need for speaking.
And yet, the time that is so firm within this wooden dwelling immediately picks up when I exit the door, into the next house, the next room, the next forest, only this one does not slow like the others
Tick tick tick
Here I find myself standing at the door frame
Wiping my boots of the mud dried up from the past weeks
Do not let me take out the key
Do not let me turn the lock ever so slowly
For my entrance means more now, dictates a loss of what will remain in the hallway
It all seemed so simple when I left with my bag merely days ago,
Days? Or years? The calendar cannot answer that.
I just want the chocolate to taste the same,
If the air could taste sweetly of smoke
I swear I would burn it all down and make my own recipe.
The trees don’t even burn but they smell like fire
Only in the evening, when the wind bites on my ears
Like hot coals in the fireplace that was never actually used
Maybe it never even existed
But we overcompensated and candles filled the spaces between all the rooms,
Light connecting us all by necessity, the old and the young alike
Oh please take me back
I would dress up for no one over and over again
A party put on for me, for the me that wanted to dance all night with familiar strangers
And you humored me so kindly, poured wine into decanters and spread them amongst all the tables
Soon everyone will arrive in steady intervals
But they leave with equal haste, in and out
In and out
No one stays long enough to take off their coats
Not a single glass half empty
Wine wasted on the promise of deliverance
Lately we drink colored liquid from Styrofoam cups,
Eat raisins one by one and look up at the ceiling
But these rooms do not speak over the silence
Beats blast viciously, because uncomfortable furniture is unforgiving.
Bed Time
My body keeps reshifting lately, trying to adjust physically so the discomfort does not settle in too quickly. I can feel the tight pull of the saran wrap pressing everything together so skin begins to touch skin. How easy it would be to swallow myself up. I am eating more but breakfast doesn’t fill me up like it used to. I miss the unexpectedness of my rippling laughter, now forced into an obvious disguise. Even the thoughtless flirtations of deliverance do not save me. I sense you see through it. The stitches have been reworked a hundred times and still do not hold. What do I say after what’s up with you? Crying is not what you want to hear. You can’t hold me in these moments. I just wish I could mend the gap between moments existing so painfully far apart. The room is becoming unkempt and I would like to blame all of the stains on your normalized disappearance. I don’t even know where you sleep anymore, how you can sleep. I made the bed for you. I hope you come back and soil it again.
Winter
Funny how well I trick the seasons in the morning
The light is terribly dull but if I squint it’s all lovely and simple
They’re all blending together lately,
Sunrises that run into sunsets all equally astounding
And dreary just the same,
The paintings are watching me as I slumber into the bleak night
They mock my attempts at fantasy
I wonder who made them so conceited
This winter is more honest than most,
White blankets can’t save the sweats that roll me around
Fever dreams waking me up in a panic
Just to look out the window at the deadened vegetation
Everything is fucking beige, there’s not a color more maddening
So I disregard the falsity of the day
The blue night takes my face in its hands
Kisses me gently on all the flat parts of my visage
Promises that next winter shall be
Magically imprinted with well-crafted lies
And a warm snow that you can wrap yourself up in