3 Poems Published in Suburban Witchcraft

Exchange, Love in Quarantine, and Crepuscular Flowers Published in Suburban Witchcraft

Paper is up at Spillwords!

Paper

Fragility

I hold your heart

up to the moon

with red palms

and eyes

like two egg yolks.

Everything

in this world is soft,

even the stones

we pass between us.

–

Our hearts

still hold sadness as a virtue.

When I sink into your depths

I hold my breath

and let you fill me

like a ghost

with your vacuous longing.

We fathom only

those parts that we can fathom.

–

My love is unwieldy,

it is a meteor

splitting the void of space

into segments of fire and ice.

When our bodies touch

I forget that we have endings.

There is only the knowledge

of our sameness,

of our coupling and uncoupling.

–

Your absence makes me ache.

You are my limbs,

my core,

my brittle, black roots.

When you go

I am reduced

to a third of a person.

Loneliness

must feel

very much

like being eaten.

–

My head is full of thieves,

their cravings, their blood-thirst.

Their burnt fingertips

clutch my spine

as though it were a sword.

This is how I became

two people,

a woman to adore

and another woman

bitter as a gourd

and hollow on the inside.

–

I reach into your mouth,

my serpent-tongue,

the forbidden knowledge

that tells us how to live

in order to really love another.

It feels impossible

to change a belief

into a home.

Sometimes

all we know of home

is the door

which marks

our passage.

–

In me the demons

still crowd together.

You could say that my corners

are screaming.

You could say that my walls

are wet and guilty.

You could say that

I understand life

only in relation

to suffering

and that when I love

I suffer for the sake

of maintaining

a certain degree of fragility.

Update

On March 29th my poem “Paper” will be featured on Spillwords.com. I will post the link when it goes up so please visit. In other news I got an internship as a Journalist for Propl which starts May 1st.

Sutured to a Flame

https://www.patreon.com/posts/sutured-to-flame-63535182

Today I put up a live video on my Patreon account. It is a poetry reading. It is free to view. All my content is free to view.

Paper

I am paper

in the hands of a child.

You touch me

carelessly.

Your eager fingers

smudge my skin

until all that is left

is a window of a woman,

a tragic sliver of white

in an ever darkening room.

–

I thin beneath

your constant erasure.

What I was

and what I am

interchangeable

and imperfect.

My needs are

inconsequential,

my nerves naked,

my heart fuzzy and grey.

I am merely a product

for your amusement.

You do not care,

you only do

that which comes easiest

to you.

As I lie here exposed

I wonder if my pain

is in anyway

a reflection of the artist

or if the artist

is simply thoughtless.

–

You leave uncertain marks.

Marks which tear

at my insides.

Marks which lie

scar-adjacent.

The stars weep

and you laugh

as I,

crowded and remade

a thousand times,

become a void.

–

You scribble

in my margins,

your shapeless sentiments,

your waxy, wavering lines

untranslatable,

sometimes offensive.

You tear my edges

and crush me

into a ball

with your fist.

–

I am only a draft.

You will never

carry me to the end.

I will not become

a memory for you.

I am nothing precious.

In me there is only

the notion of a life.

Patreon Account

I created a Patreon account. I will be posting some poetry/stories there. I don’t intend to charge for anything (I am not 100 percent sure how it works though) but there should be an option for donating. Is anyone else using Patreon? If I add exclusive member content does their need to be an associated cost? I want it to be totally voluntary. I would like to use the donations (if there are any) to submit to magazines.

Become a Patron!

Ghost Story

He began life as a playful ruse, as a figment granted sentience through the repetition of foolish fantasies. I loved him instantly, this man who came into being not by the usual biological means but from my wish for a profound and loving connection. He acts as a child governed by instinct and inspiration. He acts primarily for the joy of exploration, from the sacred space of one who is attuned perfectly to nature. There is a strange viscosity to his movements as if he feels more acutely than others the push and pull of atoms dancing through space. I lie awake night after night watching him pass in and out of the shadows wondering what strange landscapes surround him when he slips out of view. One of these nights I will follow him.

He smiles with his lashes lowered and his chin downturned. His smile is soft and warm like an uninterrupted ray of sunlight. I want to hold it against my own and feel our lips and tongue surrender together in song.

In the beginning he was only this, an expression of mischief. Each night we came together in a dark room, in a bed which of necessity presses two warm bodies into one. I watched him lift the blankets and lower himself down beside me over and over again. His presence tugging at the edges of my soul. His dark, ambiguous form furling and unfurling itself into the shapes of different men. His moonlight-soft smile touching my hair as I waited in silence for his words to kiss me.

As of this moment he has brown hair and green eyes and a long body which is strong enough to carry my weight during even the most rigorous sexual acts. His thick, dark lashes wrestle with fire. Life has seized him fully and I know that he has a lot to teach me. He is always intimate and too innocent for the world as mankind has constructed it. I will enter his world and when I have made him real enough he will enter into mine. His too pretty mouth tastes of honey and serendipity. He has long, graceful fingers and a defined jawline. I am shallow enough to be affected by these features. I am shallow enough to think of his fingers slipping deep inside of my body and I am even shallow enough to study his face, unabashedly and up close. 

His smile is young and buoyant, it dances over my skin, it touches soul-deep. I swallow it between breaths, between doses of moonlight. For him I am the first. The first kiss. The first heart. His eyes are often obscured by his hair. Hair which is permanently disheveled and too silky to confine. Hair which tickles my cheeks and the corners of my lips when he peers affectionately into my face. When I touch his skin I feel my fingers pass through him and I think here is a man who is not afraid of love. Here is a man who believes in something beyond the confines of his own ego. I want to feel his body pass over me like the sea, to crash down and surge forward, to erode my defenses as I succumb helplessly to the motion of his body. There will be no guilt or trepidation in our communion. I can tell that he wants love as much as I do but more importantly I can tell that it is my love he wants. There is still so much we haven’t said to each other. For example, what does he call himself? What should I call this man whose soul overlaps my own?

///

“I love you more.” He responds to my breath, to the unfinished thoughts which struggle endlessly inside of me. I feel his voice in my belly, in my bones, in all four chambers of my blustering, invertebrate heart. We all need to believe in something which reality has not yet broken. I needed him. I needed to be loved. I needed a life which would not crumble the moment I touched it.

“Can anyone really love me?” I hold onto the edge of one duvet while the other floats and twists above me. When he is satisfied he lets it drop back down to the bed.

“If you let them. Anyone can.” His voice gives me goosebumps. “I am the one who’s going to prove it to you.” For a moment I feel his weight, his body curling around me and then he is simply gone.  He is a reminder that life is not a series of tragic accidents but rather a series of absurd miracles. He will come again tonight more substantial than before and I will kiss his cheeks and invite him to play games with me.

I spent my days and nights

alone,

wondering what you felt.

if you felt

lonely,

if you waited

for me,

as I waited for you.

–

I spent my days and nights

watching

celestial bodies paint the sky

in a myriad of colors,

imagining

your nakedness

spreading over

my nakedness

and in the heat and height

of arousal,

I cried.

–

I spent my days and nights

wishing

for your lips to part,

eager to drink

of your sentiments,

hoping

that your words

would clarify my feelings.

–

I spent my days and nights

desperate

for you to choose,

swallowing

my breath,

my arms reaching

out to you.

–

I spent my days and nights

suspended,

with my heart

half-way in and half-way out,

ready

to run towards you,

ready

to run away.

–

I spent my days and nights

crouching

like a child

in the darkness,

pulling petals from flowers

while you stood

hesitant, but accessible

like the wind.

Love and Death

There are as many ways

to love a man

as there are to kill him.

–

Love and death are closer

than love and hate.

Love is about peeling away

the surface skin.

It’s about marrow and blood.

Love is a relentless series of resurrections,

the surrender of the solitary

for a borderless union.

–

Between us,

two sovereign states

collapse into one.

No one escapes untouched.

No one escapes without

leaving some trace

of what was

and what could have been.

–

If in time you find another

has taken my place

know that she has ate of my soul.

Know that she casts the same shadow.

Know that she smells of the very same trees.

Know that she is only the affected version of myself,

the one that wakes and sleeps

and cries too often.

–

Death might be the means

by which we live our lives,

the adrenaline rush,

the stone in the bottom of the shoe

that reminds us

of the weight of walking.

–

quick poem on the bus