Magnetic eyes broken
only by cracks in
the mirrored wall.

Limp on the landing:

Drained

Empty

Which way does one go to?
She is dark, deep,
young in frame
ages in mistakes
fading self- portrait

She is languid,
her movements drowned beneath a tide of
what was.
With thoughts
scraping
itching
in reluctant skull.
They force her head around,
with a dull pop of bone,
until all she sees is behind her
and her feet, clothed in tatters,
shove onward through sullen seas.

Empty:

hands and

fingers and

bones and

hearts.

Borrowed

(The following post is by one of my friends. I have borrowed these words with the hope that you will visit her blog, as she is an incredibly amazing writer The Void Beyond Her Voice.)

Veins

Blue veins crawled along his skeleton, wrapping and twisting around tendons and bones. A girl strummed along those veins, pooling into a river extending to his heart. Fingertips fumbled over light skin, obstructed by short incisive scars. Entranced by the maps of emotional struggles and self-inflicted injuries, she paused to figure the contours of his malformations. It was a taste of nostalgia, of late night expulsions and carving hate into her own arms. She saw a kind of self-loathing that resonated deep within the breastbone, an ink splatter dispersing into the bloodstream.

Within in his murky eyes and half-moon smile, she saw herself reflected. Shielded and hidden behind kind words and soft smiles. Scars were gemstones, gleaming red and fleshy. The soft tissue, which extended from the curve of his forearm to the small of his wrists, was marred and fused back into itself. Her heart stretched to fill with an ache as she saw his ugly scars, so beautiful. A small encircling of the two allowed each to peel back and gauge at secrets.

His hands separated hers from his skin as he brought her fingers to his mouth, seeking resolution. She looked to him, dewy eyes plucking and picking at his mind. She had a certain way of touching his soul and bringing it home. Her warmth was his genesis and his mind swam inside delirium. At last, the remaining grain of bliss had fallen to the floor of time, it seemed. In this fleeting moment of intimacy, two pairs of eyes watched the world within them dissipate.

The mousy-haired boy dipped his fingers into her soul and pulled from her heartstrings the musings of her existence. Slow, droning noises fell from his lips as soft utterances of goodbye that left her yearning for more. She was insatiable, a fawn eager to explore the crevices of his conscious and seal his scarred tissue with kisses. However, he never allowed her opportunity to delve too deeply. He left and led his heart away from the lingering longing that spawns from a love that lingers lastingly.

He filled his spoons with liquids of regret whenever he would leave. His restraint held him high and it was through persistence that he never revealed his sensitive insides. He was machine, made of vessels and concrete, unable to bleed or feel freely. Limbs like vulnerable noodles from his middle wrapped around himself to hide from the world.

She stood jilted, possessed by the sustaining affection now rejected. Distance was written on her wrists, held positioned for absolution but never fixed. Absence is a form taken quietly. It seeped under her lids as she prayed she would sleep somehow, but the vacancy inside her chest rang far too hard for her to catch her breath and rest. A tremendous weight had burrowed itself into her breast and gnawed at her harmed heart. It feasted upon the scar tissue, dissolving the pink flesh with a venomous caress.

Round, winding sores divided in the brief bits of touch as though they had brush shoulders. Such contact was slighted and swiped before anything tangible could be grasped upon. Their collisions occurred on angles, sweeping and diving across one another but never completely meeting. Like a subtle gust of wind that expelled and dispersed from his lungs to hers, it was over before it really began and something that had felt so incredibly intense dissolved into rain tears—solid bulbs of saltwater which when mixed with spit seemed no different from any other liquid.

They are sick

sick

sickly sweet

white teeth and laces every edge

increased and faded.

Glossy goddesses,
hair a cascade
outstretched arms
in gauzy facade.

Light pouring on them:

Thin

red-lipped

inhaling

kissing

dancing

suspending

in stilled frame.

"Aren't I

aren't I glamorous

in my collared boned shame?

Don't you wish you were me,

with sunken, mocking face?

I am the picture of perfecteion

my eye-lights never fade

I am guiltless temptations

but beauty knows no pain."

Shedding Gravity

(I wrote this a few months ago and performed it in a slam for my poetry class. It was inspired here in all of your blogs so I feel I should share it, I just didn't have the courage until now... So here it is <3)

Shedding Gravity

We begin as whispers,
Keyboard klick- klacks in midnight dress,
Floating through a nowhere-land of status,
And judgments.
We aren’t aiming for anything but survival.

As I stand in the mirror,
They are the fleeting thought that,
“I’m not good enough.”And we take that in as a part of ourselves.
Black branches against a yellowed sky
Thinning as we grow.

If school is white waters then we are twigs,
Slammed against the corners
Colliding with fish
And latching on for survival.

Perfection isn’t real,
But we are whole,
We obey,
We take notes,
Do hair, smile
Chew, swallow, and repeat
Without question.

One day those mirror thoughts
Tickle a nerve,
Pickle my face
Before my eyes
This scale lies.
I become treadmill mounting
Pinching my sides because I am not enough:
Smart enough,
Strong enough,
Pretty enough,
Thin enough.
Soon I see that I cannot run all day!
That running, even for hours, is not enough.
So I “cut down.”
I am not a tree reaching at nothing,
I am strong branches ripping down the sky.

And I catalog.
Because 1000
No 700
No 500
No 300 calories is still too much.
Because pounds were created to be dropped.
I am screaming inside
Because I can’t lose 3 pounds
And my goal is 97
But I’m lost in the sea,
Somewhere between 100 and 99.

I join the echoes,
The whispered screams
The middle of the night tears
drip-dropping on the keys.
My body is weak,
But I am not alone,
For once.

In this worlds it is easier
To count by two’s
Learn your ABC’s
And lose weight.
Because people judge us by
How we act and how we look,Not by who we are.
Because there is one sure way
to get to heaven:
By smiling on command,
Wearing big sweaters
To hide your bulging tendons,
And losing.

Because without mass…
… there is no gravity

I am combustible

yeilding myself

my eyes spring hydrogen fountains

my breath is only CO2

Can't you?

Can't you?

Will you please?

I am mock-small and pretending

scaling ladder ribs

bones playing hide and seek

and screaming from within.

There is no air

each gasp is vaporous

little bursting bubbles

in red effervescence.

Then

It was then that I realized what he had done

he had reminded me of what it felt like

to be whole.

And I hated it.

When you're whole you can get hurt

when you're whole you are weak

feeling the concavity of your stomach
of your heart

Being empty lets no room for anything to leave

anything else to be lost

anyone to disappear

because there's nothing left for you to lose.

My eyes are knives

they hit my lungs and puncture

I am balloon splinters:

Rotate, turn, and break.

I am film covered and bubbling

don't you see?

We smile through the churning

the clattering spines

We line up and bellow

one
by
one

Hair flipped examinations

yellow pearly daggers

popping holes inside my mind.

I am shedding layers

and decreasing numbers.

I stand on white platforms

with slanted ceilings.

I am not

I am not

I am not

I am not what you see,
I am distortions.

There is only one window

a tiny thick paned thing

double panes ringing and filling with

yellowed dust.

There is no chance of opening

so I close all walls.

I don't know anymore...

I am grounded which is why I haven't posted for a while. Anyhow I feel
like a failure.
I am not
good
enough.
I had let these thoughts get to me
alternating sweet insults in my head.
I let the ricocheting thoughts
pelt my mind, with it's soft feathery weakness.

I stood proudly as I was, the floor swimming under me, an ocean
I swam in gladly counting downwards
toward GW 1.

I persuaded and disuaded myself from that kind of life, that flavor of desire
The kind that still riddles cacophanies in my cortex.

I wish that I could vanish
relieve my insides of the terrible weightiness
that constantly surrounds me.

The trees are terribly taunting, aren't they? Always reaching up endlessly
dream dream dreaming away.
I used to be them. I used to tickle at my mind with little 'what if's
I used to breathe.

I'm searching for that now. a little puff of air that
(could someone lend me some?)
might bring me back to flightlessness. Back to the feeling of OK

back to the place built of sparkles and tightwires
Does it even exist anymore?

I've missed you all very much. I am miraculously online now (I'm grounded) and I hope to sneak on and write to you all again soon.
xxx
Ever

I exist in the reversed world of puddles.
I am the floating refraction of you
Staring up from an aerial view.
I am the unrippling slam of fists
Drumming against your mirrored lies.

On my side of things, I have trained my eyes
To envision summer lights,
The glowing aftertaste of ivy and fireflies.
The sly secrets grin in your face.

On my side of things,
You See.A sunset is the final explosion,
A dying cry for help.

The concrete surges before me.
I am grid locked,
trapped in this puzzle board
Each piece infinitely perfect,
In and of itself a masterful stretch
of forever.

Your absence is not fading,
It is highlighting.
You are the golden fringe
Containing and supporting
Entirety in my fibers.

Here the tantalizing trees are my models
And I stay inside the lines.

The blizzard twists a white hair
Tightly against this finger of a town.
This is where the ice gathers:
Freezing down,
Knuckle by knuckle
Until coarse bone is smoothed with ice.
Winter is this sense of ivory,
Tickled place of clocks letting blackening keys travel its face.
Each passng flake is a page on which ink drops lay.

The streets are the staff,
Your body the key.
The notes, your songs
You say belong to me.

You rest yourself, cool, in my branches
And name me your Oak princess
You land each day with sickening thuds,
Washing my skin with your ebony suds.

You pour your tongue along me like ash
while I bleach the red of your sorrowing past.
You remove your skin to release inner white,
And I died as my leaves flew away with your night.

Finger Dance

Her hands are ribboned

each finger a tiny bud

blooming themselves

and shedding layer by layer.

They are their own rain cloud

watering themselves with thick drops,
putrid red paint-lets.

They move themselves down ladders

stains of ache on the rungs:
Holding,

Gripping,

Fisting,

and Guarding

All preoccupied with supper,

hosted by crooked teeth,

where they are the meal.

We were scrabbling hands and bracing fingers,
falling lids.
The air was thick and we were melding
into waves, encaved
with salt.
I broke water, upturned corners
and twitching teeth.
I wanted to gracefully stroke
my arms across oceaned throats.
I wanted to remove your scalloped shells from my side....
... But you wouldn't let me.
And the second you asked me to jump,
to let the ocean overtake and drown me,
the second you said you adored me...
...You lost me.

I am a crumbling, powdering disease.

I hallucinate the things you say

prancing demons, distorting my ageless glass.

I cover my face with a silk veil

creating with tight-shut eyes

because it's better if you don't look back.

They are pouring molten-

Plucking-

Tugging-

Shredding-

They whisper things, sticky caramel

honey sick-sweet with lies

and refactions

and warping.

My little box was always solid, in the end...

... Though, surprisingly brittle, don't you think?

We - You =...

bags under eyes, late night smiles
laughs and textile hearts transmitted bravely over vines
washed away
with unlimited words and dangling m
                                                                       e
                                                                             s
                                                                                 s
                                                                                         a
                                                                                            g
                                                                                             e
                                                                                              s

bittersweet, like retasted, reharnessed, reheated desserts

m&ms dropped in salt.

like paper, words written and erased so many times

it catches fire

small and lonely. An average, rusted tin can

erroding each day as it stands

untouched, unseen, uneffected.

like an old film strip. The picture interrupted

by white flecks of dusty ideas

angry technical issues.

It's beautiful like a rose,

that when bending with the wind

pricked itself and bleeds

It is stomped, drained, petted, and pruned

by itself and all around it.

If thoughts could speak, my dear, your's would say

"Like as friends"

BREATH
because that's all you can do.
These words grow in your pocket,
delightful thorny vines.......

We are,

Will be,

Never more,

Ever was,

Frozen.

 scraped along windowsill

climbing, scrambling

breaking vases they call Beautiful

because there must,

has to be,

is a way in

Unsure,
can't you see

I'm breaking?

Disconnect,

it's hard to deal with.

All the fireflies scattered long ago

leaving you alone.

The night sky seems less enchanting
and journaled words about gold leaves,
seem impossible anyway.

So what do you do?
When your protective scarf
d
i
  s  
 s
    o  
     l
      v

                 e       
         s
and you are bare to the cruel world's teeth?

Pain

My cells are wilted petals

that drown in radiation.

I scale my pain from 1 to 10,

and curse my own creation.

These eyes you see

don't belong to me
owned by bloodshot demons
my cracking lips smile widely
despite the chemo haze.

I spend my dayscounting down the ways
that I am taken care of
and wish away the cascading pain
I see in all your faces.