Being asleep makes me want to vomit.
It’s searing, stagnant.
It’s dark and sinister.
It’s uncontrollable because I’ll always relent,
Like I do with you.
I hate sleep because it’s where you are.
Nothing frightens me more than suburbia:
Innocuous cookie-cutter house
A soccer team of kids
Apple pie on the sill
Christmas with the in-laws we hate
White-picket fence to keep the golden retrievers in.
That’s what you want – isn’t it?
A part of me would like to tell you
That I love you,
That I would love this –
But God help me! –
It would actually be true
I want to meet the person I
A Letter to [Name Redacted] in 5 Parts by emonerdchick95, literature
Literature
A Letter to [Name Redacted] in 5 Parts
Dear [Name Redacted],
0.
It broke my heart when
You told me you didn’t
Remember.
You were my lifeline
When I was drowning –
A thin stream of bubbles
That somehow managed
To get down to me and
Taught me how to
Breathe again.
Nothing like moving
Mountains – but it was
Enough.
1.
You don’t remember this part:
You’d get on the bus and
Sit across the aisle from me
Way at the back and I’d ask:
“Anything weird happen to you?”
And you’d shrug and say:
“Not really.”
And then we’d talk about nothing
Until we got to school.
And it was enough.
2.
You weren’t her
Rough, old winds drummed against
The side of our shack, our lean-to home while
Dead-hard rain couldn't dampen our spirits –
Biting, hot memories scream at me –
Why aren’t you here anymore?
Under the blackness of the hanging wet –
You set fire to my eyes and I haven’t been able to think since –
The sighing road leads hesitantly to where you are –
Give all our things to the man in a headlock
Winds push against the yawning of the sky –
I will get to where you are.
these songs we heard under the wooden porch
are still carried in my ears – ringing something awful,
sighing anger is dead when we’re away and the
great, wet blue is hanging above – judging
young and flat – we gently slipped into it
and that awful world brightly singed us to a crisp
as well as screamed at our small blackness and
the futile bites we flung back did not care – stopped
when the rain loves to bury old demons how
can you and i weather through the dampness?
if you return, i trust you to have those homespun,
childish songs on your lips – open and intact
run with it wildly and then
leave it at a gas station –
forgotten –
take it to the threshold
and then let it fall –
Gravitas –
reckless with memories that
are better left unremembered –
discard it all!
It’s great to be able to see your face again –
It became a blur of overlapping shapes and a slur of sounds while you were away –
But when this ends, promise you won’t disappear on me again
Because I’ve loved this pain too fondly
To consider morphine and
Your smile looks like picking at crusty scabs
To get to the sick, sticky pus-mess beneath and the
Rip of skin from skin is too painful to stop
So, the way I see it, we’re two bullets crashing,
Careening – magnetically – in a sea of shrapnel
And I don’t know why I thought I could control this or make it any different or better.
The Bitter Morning After Pill by emonerdchick95, literature
Literature
The Bitter Morning After Pill
There is a fawn that runs and
Dances under our window,
Bleating and crying for joy
A snake –
A branch –
An arm twines around me
And I force myself pliant
We adjust ourselves so that
You and I are comfortable
As you groggily begin the
Business of waking up.
I realized last night that I am
A kept thing – a caught thing –
And I want to howl
But I have no throat anymore.
I just want
To let you
Know that
I didn’t mean
To fall asleep
And that I
Tore out my
Heart with my
Hands just to
See if I could
Still feel
Something
And I think
I wanted to
Keep you safe
And my eyelids
Burn like magma
Because I see
You when I
Sleep
So I’m sorry
If this comes
Off like some
Pretentious
Crap but it’s just that I can’t
Get the words to reorder themselves properly.