Come sit on my porch with me, I say, as the sun shines through my open window. You are nearby, you might stop by, I put on lipstick and new boots and wait.
By the time I give up and sit on the faded pink cushion alone, the sun is pointing somewhere far away and the warmth I wanted to feel with you is just a dream between me and my numb fingertips.
Thank you so much. I super appreciate that. I have never been public about my writing, so this really helps me build more confidence. I think you’re wonderful, and your blog was one of the bigger ones that gave me the push.
1. When I think about how small your hands are
or when I think about wrist bones
they are not actually made of bones.
This is the way times moves.
2. On Sundays I hear the vacuum for hours.
I associate the sound with the
rhythm of your heartbeat,
of burning,
with those skinny little cigarettes
Bukowski used to smoke.
3. Were you always so sad
or was I the one who taught you
to think in halves?
We do not call the same place home
and we do not occupy space the same way.
I am scared of your most quiet moments.
4. Heave you ever held my hand?
5. Because I have convinced myself
that you hide your love in strange places
I will fold myself into the neat
poems you hide in your sock drawer
I will leave hairs on your brush,
knotted and heavy with the weight of language.
6. This tasted like the yellow
breath of city, the ashy tongue of sidewalk chalk.
Everything I lie about melts in my lungs.
The skin on my hands is so sensitive then when I touch water it shrivels and peels. My own skin, jumping off my bones. That is probably the only truth my body holds. I am not small and this is the only part of me that is as fragile as I feel.
Because love hides in strange places, I will
rescue you from your nightmares by planting
myself underneath your bed and stowing away
safely- compact and reusable until a rainy day.
I will fold myself into the neat poems you keep in your
sock drawer, leaver my hair
entwined with the words, crippling knots
that drag down and droop with
the weight of distant languages
trapped by poorly-constructed borders.
Until my heart meets the speed of stars
and quarries, I will watch you
from a distance,
purple falling like ashes
like shot ducks
like sadness.
And I will never understand art
because I do not cross boundaries
like the damned, nor do I fight for my words.
I am given and I am taking and I do not look back
and wonder.
I am a crossword, coming to you in pieces. You are a rock, concrete. And sometimes we are nothing more than sand,
lonely, like a poem,
breathing ribbons of space.
1, At first it is barely bothersome. Just some stomping. Maybe a crash here and there. You can tune it out. You can lock the door and pull the covers over your head and if the light is off and you are exhausted enough, you can fall asleep. You have lived with 21 year old boys before— this is nothing.
2. He says your name like a mantra; ArinaArina Arina, over and over again until it stops being your name and becomes a guttural sound, lost somewhere in the hollows of walls and drifts down hallways. A few weeks ago, you would have answered, would have run up the steps to make sure everything was okay. Did he want to talk? You would let him talk.
Now, you turn up the music.
3. Your ex boyfriend tells you he loves you. This makes things both easier and more complicated. When you attempt to talk to him, he says he doesn’t care, that your texts annoy him. You don’t know where to turn for days.
4. You begin to sleep on your friends couch four days out of the week. You feel like shit about it, but she doesn’t seem to mind much and you make jokes about paying rent to live in her living room. You probably should chip in a bit for electricity or something. Yes, you’re definitely an asshole in this situation, but you love spending time with her and home is scary. This one night her roommate kisses you and for a second there you remember about self esteem and the warm fuzzy feelings that have been stripped from you in the past three months. You grow a bit stronger. You start sleeping over less, in fear of overwhelming your friend with your constant presence.
She hasn’t spoken to you in weeks and you still haven’t figured out why.
5. You remember that one time in high school where he forgot to pick you up from the train. You sat in the snow and watched it soak through all your layers, ice melting against your skin like knives. You sat there until it got dark, until your mother’s friend finally pulled up in her CR-V and wrinkled her nose at your damp jacket on her seat.
6. You’re talking to a cute boy, flirting and giggling and feeling like a girl and just want to lay in bed forever and text when you hear him screaming your name again. You ignore it for a beat, but it sounds urgent enough to drag your legs off the couch and down the stairs.
You step into a puddle of blood. The entire floor is soaked and the gash in his foot is still bleeding, thick and sticky. You did not know blood could have this consistency, like pudding or cottage cheese. The part of you that usually panics lies dormant as you call an ambulance, make a casual joke to the woman on the other line that tells you to keep pressure on the wound. You do not follow her instructions and instead chase him around the house as he attempts to run from you. At some point, you have a pipe in your hand like a sword and he laughs at you. In retrospect, this is funny for you as well.
When the paramedics arrive you go to let them in and by the time you all get downstairs he is gone. Your dog is gone. You don’t know which you care about more. Eventually, you find both on the neighbor’s lawn and get dog in house and father in ambulance with some unique negotiating.
A paramedic asks if this is a domestic dispute. You make a joke about being the dominant party. Somehow, you are still talking to that nice guy and if he doesn’t think you are a Crazy Girl with Daddy Issues, then he is probably a saint. Either way, at this point you need someone and he was there and perhaps that was what made everything less scary and more laughable.
7. “Do you really think people are going to read anything you write? Get a clue. No one cares. Why do you think your boyfriend dumped you? You’re just a fat fool that will never get married.”
8. All of the coffee tables have broken, the holes in the walls need to get re-plastered, there is piles and piles of clothing in the middle of the living room floor. You step over all of it. This is not your mess to clean up. Later, you overhear him on the phone. He blames you, he blames the dog, you are imposing on his territory, you are the victim. You want to pack your bags and leave right there. Your bank account laughs in your face.
When I think about you I remember the things you said to me as you pushed me away (my first real breakup— the kind that twists your ribs into your spine). But I also remember how you held me that very same night, stroked my hair, captured my tears with your fingerprints and I’m sorry. I love you. I just can’t. I love you, I’m just not happy. Not in love with you.
The day I moved out I watched my stuff loaded into the car and squeezed our cat for what I thought would be the last time. I swear I’ll be back for you. I mumbled into his fur, my fingers pulling at his ears. Your mother helped me move, and for some reason you came alon. As I dropped my stuff off you slid out of the car with me, your arms wrapped around my waist and I looked up and then you kissed me and it was sweet and full of my tears and I knew something was happening and it wasn’t the breakup it was ten minutes ago, it wasn’t the month of hell I endured, sleeping in our bed which was no longer ours, watching you forget me. Somewhere in that kiss you remembered about us.
I remember the first time you kissed me and my legs shook because it was fluid and flawless and maybe it was a bit from the vodka and maybe it was the way your hands landed so softly on my cheek. Someone once told me that a relationship builds foundation around the first kiss. This is the same girl that was nervous because her kisses with her boyfriend were awkward, did she use enough tongue? Too much?
You were the first boy I ever kissed that got it just right.
I remember the second first time you kissed me- a heartbreak later, the tears this time yours, as you held on to every inch of me. The air was full of promises. I miss you. I can’t be without you. I messed up, I’m sorry. I do love you.
I started sleeping at your new place, my legs entwined with yours, still crying into your shoulders because I was so scared that this wasn’t for real, that one day you would remember all the things you hated about me. You held me as safe as you could.
And I was angry with you, then. I had just moved past us, had remembered that there was more than you in the universe, had kissed some boys, had let another one touch me. They weren’t you, but they were the tiny steps I needed to forget you. You made me forget them, and after a while you forgot me.
Our summer of rebuilding love turned into February, and the signs were all there. But how does one go about approaching something they don’t want to admit exists?
I bought a new dress, one with a zipper at the back because you said we’d do something. You’d never taken me out on a date before, we weren’t the dating type, but this time was going to be special. I imagined you taking me out to dinner, maybe giving me a flower or two, taking me home to your place and peeling the back of my dress down, kissing my shoulder blades, telling me I looked beautiful.
I woke up early that morning, baked you cookies in the shape of little hearts, put together a cute little arrangement of thoughtful gifts and waited. And waited. And went to work. And waited. And came home and waited. And cried with the cat. And waited. And then I waited exactly a week to ask.
You don’t love me anymore, do you?
You don’t love me anymore, and I can’t get past it this time. You don’t love me anymore, and my heart sits in my throat all day, because all I ever think about is holding your hand. You don’t love me anymore and last week I bought a queen sized bed so you would stay over more often. I don’t know how to fill the space. You don’t love me anymore and last night I came over to return your stuff because it was haunting me, your toothbrush and boxers sitting in a drawer waiting for you to come back. You don’t love me anymore but you said that one day we could still be friends. You don’t love me anymore, and as I wept in your arms asking you why, why you leaned back and your hoodie rode up and my instinct told me to lay back with you, to slide my hands up your exposed stomach into your chest, to curl around you and keep us safe. You don’t love me anymore and you pulled back as I reached out for you. You don’t love me anymore, and I begged you not to leave me, told you I would be okay just dating, if you would be okay with me loving you enough for the both of us. We could see other people, why didn’t you want to be with me anymore? You don’t need to love me to be with me.
You don’t love me anymore, and you this time you didn’t kiss me goodbye.
I do not like secrets
because I hate to tell,
and in the grand scheme of things
a secret is not a secret
until it has been passed
down a tunnel
of silly, flip-flop heartbeats.
I will always tell you
because I want to wrap your
logic around my quivering throat
and sometimes maybe I won’t
tell you everything
but it will always be truth and it will
always feel this heavy on my lungs.
I have given up on us
but
this does not mean
I have given up on you.
With each new moment
I find one more thing
that I can feel
hanging heavy on a string tied around my core.
In another life we will paint
dreams on the sky
with sidewalk chalk
too high for even pigeons to knock down.
I think hands are my favorite metaphor
because they can both give and take
and your have learned to push away
to span distances I have never learned to travel.
