Beauty

I look my best when I'm nestled between tall blades of grass, with the sunlight splashing freckles across my face like it did when I was 9.

I look best in the eyes I wore at 17, which dwelled in awe of the sky, always thirsting for immensity.

When I smile and feel sunburns tugging at the skin of my cheekbones, I am beautiful.

Since that girl in the mirror began mimicking me,
I have seen her loneliness pressed against the glass.

I adored her. I couldn’t help it.
Maybe they’d let her out
if she dreamed hard enough,
if she got braces, or bangs, or a nose job.

Sunshine bends the sounds of my memories to gold,
and for that, I am grateful.
Eyes linger if you let them.
But I can feel when they forget me
when my body fades into the sheets.

I ask for beauty to accept possession of my eyes. I want to rebuild the world with more colour.

I wish for eyes to coat me in beautiful, I want to be adored.

Dating, How Dumb!

Easy come, easy go.

easy to say at least.

like a change in the weather and it is just the way of things: to burn into ash and kindle the next spark.

I think I see in his eyes a sadness I’ve seen before, in someone else’s. I feel the tightening on your nerves, I remember how much I hate it, love.

Hello. What’s your name? Where are you from and where are you going? What is it you’re hiding? What hunger drives you forward and what name keeps you awake at night? Will you tell me? Laughing, awkward, until it slips into something real—eye contact that lets me into the mind before me, behind the biologically inherited frame.

What do I make of myself? Who am I before you? A brush of the leg, a touch of the hand—non-intentional. Make it intentional. Do I notice, or do I pull away? Do I dare let you slip closer? Do I hold onto your words where I used to hold others?

Where did those eyes go—the ones that wanted me, what I can no longer want from others? Loss—of the way it felt to be reached for first, touched by no one else. The smell of your skin on mine. The air we pollute with breathy words, exhaled reliefs, tears left on your fingertips, stains on my notebook. A name, burning with passion—where did that go?

Do I really owe it my heart anymore? If not, why does it linger there? Naivety. We slipped stupidly around, and everyone has memories they spin on for too long. Am I spinning in circles of others, afraid to fall into arms that are not mine. What can I give that hasn’t already been taken? How can I trust your words won’t turn cold? That your eyes won’t inject poison into my dreams? Hope and what’s the use of hoping?

What’s the meaning of an extra block walked, an extra drink, the family you left behind? What do you think of me now? Do you like it? I know you do—you haven’t been around long enough to see me rot.

Where will you go? Who have you left behind? What will you think of me then? Will you move forward first and reach for me? I’ll let you, if you do—because I’ll belong to you, for however long you hold me between your fingers. But I’ll go before you drop me, before you squeeze the love out of me like he did.

I gave all my trust once, so you will never get me. That’s what he said. Is that not how it works?

It’s a game—

it’s not laughing at 3 a.m., or conversations that erase time, or promises of tomorrow whispered in a bed, restless. It’s not words that chase away sleep. And I hold so tightly to a hug because I love to let go of people. I loved tracing my name into his back as he slept, feeling his hair between my fingers, watching—knowing, even then, it wouldn’t last. And if I wake up next to someone else, will they disappoint me the way I disappointed him? When his eyes opened to a face he wasn’t dreaming about? Can love exist if only one person pushes? Can I ever let go enough to let another truly consume me? I’d rather hurt for someone else, because of someone else. I’m sick of faces that recognize me.

You, before me—what brought you here? What softened you, just for that second? You showed something eternal between the spit of normal nonsense, and it should be cherished. Can I do that for you?

My Obsession With Victory

A girl with an angry man in the house will always look for an angry man in the house.

I will pull you in and push you to the edge where you will scream, I will cry. It feels like home now. I brought it with me, I am still amidst the fight, I am full every time you dare to provoke me.

I am still the daughter crying at his car window, begging him to stay. I will burn my throat in anger, claw at your back and beg through my tears. I will learn to love when you turn, I am addicted to the hatred you hold at my neck. Love is when you come back after leaving, love is when I convince you to stay.

Do not care for me, love me, comb my hair or tell me I will be okay. My father did that already. I dont need lies, I dont need a promise of tommorw and a warm bed, I dont seek the slow degeneration of our affixation which burns into resentment, never spoken, in between the years of an eternally bound life. I dont want your silent head next to me, dreaming about the girls you left behind. Scream at me, show me you hate me - now.

I know you hold back, when you hurt me, it could be worse. I want it all, I want it all out and I want to scream back at it. Let me fight to feel something, let me win the fight that my father taught me. Love is war, love is hatred, I want an angry man in the house because I am an angry daughter that needs to win.

Spit At Me

I’m too kind so stepping over me, I was practically asking for it.

Perpetually lower than another, forever screaming to be picked, as if that is what would fix me. I am too generous, people don’t want someone to love them so hard, they want a challenge. I am too kind, and it makes them guilty, because imperfection bites the hand that feeds it and no one wants to sit in the guilt of my sorrow. Kind, and do I walk around asking for kindness? Do I ask too much, are my standards too low, or do you find them too high? Respect yourself, love yourself, you are better than this and stronger. Words wash over and over, they do not cleanse me of my affliction.

I am too kind they say, they don’t know me.

I am selfish, so I cling on to whatever injects a high into my blood, climbing upon your back and forcing you to carry me. I steal everything you give me and claim ownership, that it was mine. I am greedy, I want more always, it is never enough , I have never been enough so I starve for more than enough.

I will never satiate the hunger which screams in my throat begging me to find someone to latch on to. I give you my image and fight only for the reflection of someone loved. Will someone stop the timer ticking down every time I open my mouth? Let me fill my brain back with stories and not memories, let me have something to breathe for.

You only see desperation, and I see your hatred, I see I must move on. Why am I kind?

I am not kind I am a liar. I am imperfect like the rest of you, I am worse, I pretend to be better. It never saves me, I never break out of the sidelines where I will look for myself in every eye, grow cold- or plead- anytime you spit back a picture I don’t like.

I write for no one because I beg for someone to listen. Screaming to be real, to do something, for a body I have made in a space free of reflection.

Step on me, I let you, I like to feel the pain of every heel as it pushes me further into the ground.

I do not believe in fixing broken hearts, I don’t hear God. I saved myself and I am asking why. I am trying to stop expecting, to stop screaming wasted words to ears who won’t hear it.

I am not better, you don’t know how much I am swallowed by desire. I inherited anger I want to let die.

so you don’t see when you step on me.

I never asked and still I am spit, spit out. I can spit back, I am swallowing poison. I can feel it coming back out from my throat, it chokes me into submission, the worst kind

and I wish I was kind, instead.

ode

I am a poor lover, a desperate, delusional, dream-filled child.

I love by ripping myself into pieces, which I offer in devotion to you, wonderful you.

I can only paint you with shaking hands by the romantic gaze I look up from, I can only long to make you smile. Yes, I would cut my tongue from my throat if you asked me and I fall into narratives, maybe not love.

I will leave you because I am a coward.

To protect the beauty I take candidly, temporally, but infinitely. I cannot stay, risk you leaving a memory that will sting where I burn. When you see me, you can cut me deeper. I let you live in the beauty I found you in, and travel to sweet thoughts, safe and alone. Lovers are the candles in an alley, I am yours so much as the love I remember is mine.

From first love I devoted the optimism of a dreamer born of happily ever afters, unacquainted with uncertainty. I built us a little life in a second of speaking, in a smile and in tensing in the seconds we were left alone. I love eye contact. I love your freckles.

I was all giggles and daydreams, sleeping to dream of a future that was your face.

I lost some respect here, for seeing someone’s reflection as more important than mine. I learned I wanted to be picked, I found out I was not enough, and the shame for being me, not her.

I forever shall cherish my second, for if he learned I loved him, he would still laugh. You forced my eyes, which once scanned past you and trained them to seek you first. This is to the one that made them laugh, to the one who stands confident in front of a highschool class. I lost a piece of me lingering in the air they breathed, as if they pulled me there themselves. You looked, I loved, hard, back. It's all naivety, the novelty of a shy compliment and the first brush of a leg. You taught me that my lips existed, that a smile could linger longer than a conversation. My nerves could envelop me until you entered, that my mind would quiet until you were gone. A soul opening must give something and maybe it was my pride, or the girlish love and teenage capacity to make a romance from a distance and claim it to be the end. You taught me friendship, you did, and the ache of wit and a game. I woke up eventually and I lost my sideline stature, burned by the broken hopes so uselessly tossed into an unwilling face. I founded a home not built, held on to the blueprints for so long I thought I owned it. Young and the pain of another, who will not let you in, who will not let you fix it. I remember when I thought I would never get over you.

Next I found the magic of springtime in a soul. Blooming and growing, I anticipate silk ribbons and giggling between wineglass sips, almost choking while hoping it would loosen my words or maybe yours. Maybe your eye contact, it meant something more than I imagined. I could barely see that I was falling back in love. I was already thinking of how your hair would feel between my fingers before we even spoke. Your eyes would never fall from grace in their open, forever reluctant nature. Silk memories you weaved into my mind as if I was meant to think so delicately. I love you differently now, I love you forever still.

Then you, where, what was to gain but excitement? I admit it, and I should have never turned back to you; that first night, I realized I knew what I was doing. Oh, but I am just a girl in the end and so weak to a man who offers interest. Especially when I felt spotlighted in the wake of your favour, and eyes so kind, so endearing I could only trust. I wanted so desperately to feel the completion of your kiss, and fear was replaced in desire. To be afraid of a touch I dreamt of was the exhilaration which would echo past the year to accompany your fading face. Music and driving and grown-up fantasies for moments, a touch, I knew they were not infinite. But I felt so real that I believed while lying to accommodate the judgement. I had learned already; I knew to only ask for what I could be sure of. I thought I was trained to notice when I was dreaming again. I had only been doing what I thought we both wanted; I was doing what you wanted and wanted you to stay. I was lonely, and you were there, at night, when the loneliness got worse but never in the morning. I had to be dropped off down the street, I was too young to be acquainted with your friends. I knew better, or maybe I was 19, and that’s why it hurt when you forgot me before I woke up. I still feel left in the wake of annoyance in your bed. I still remember how your fingers felt trying to teach me guitar. I will never hold on to words so faithfully with that unbroken belief I gave to you.

I face my own treachery in the process of being kicked away

I long for nothing more than to break off bits of myself and offer them to the people who I love, and maybe that’s a little bit of everyone. I may not be as strong as I want to seem, but I love and live in memories you will always be a house in my heart