Poetry Portal - Tumblr Posts

I always wonder

If your lips

Were caffeinated

The first time

That we kissed

For that night

I could not sleep

Thinking how

Such sweet,

Intoxicating bliss

Made my

Brady heart beat

Quicken

For a minute

That almost felt

Like it was

Infinite

-Almost felt like infinite,

Katie, April 26th

The cold creeps

into my bed,

crawls into

my night gown,

freezes the heart

stirring from the dead

I shut the visions

forming on the ceiling,

the howling that steal

the music from within me

and think of you—the only

reason I want to remember

the past

You're there, a faint hope

dancing with the trees,

sparkling with the constellations,

leaving me warm

and full of anticipation

-the only reason,

katie

I did the dishes tonight while humming a Taylor Swift song. I know it's nothing huge and that some of you may be raising an eyebrow. 'She did the dishes tonight and she's writing about it. As if we care!'. Yes, that's the thing. I know you won't care. Not a bit. But I am writing about it in the same enthusiasm as you writing about your cat, that walk you took in the woods with the friend you secretly love, your dreams, your bucket list, the tasks that you need to accomplish, your pet peeves. 

Eight months ago, I wouldn't have minded the mountain of plates and mugs piled in the sink. I would lie in bed, stare at the ceiling and be somber. I would imagine myself wandering in an unknown forest. And that's it. That's all I could do: Imagine. I would fall asleep and forget about the bath I was running at the tub. I would wake to a drenched bathroom floor, clean off the mess and lie awake until 5 am. An arduous battle would commence between me and my mind. I would lose as I always do. Then I would go back to bed.

At 9 am, I would be too lethargic to get up. My cellphone would ring and the name on the screen would make me smile. Him-the only string that ties me to sanity. We would talk for a while, about everything and nothing. He would tell me about how sound he has slept and I would lie. I would try to make my nightmares seem like beautiful dreams that stole away my sense of reality for a night. I would make a cup of coffee and forget about breakfast. The conversation would become romantic, the kind that I indulge myself into so I could believe life is still worth living. That the sweet nothings worth every pain.

I would sit in my living room, try to make out the shadows prancing like restless sojourners from another lifetime. They would remind me about how I don't fit in this era and I would fall deeper into melancholy. This time, the heaviness would force me to mount the stairs like a wounded animal. I would lock myself inside my room, turn the music really loud so I could drown my heart, my emptiness, my exhaustion. I would cry a little. The effort would drain me. So I would lie on the floor, scroll endlessly on my phone. I would try to deny that I am depressed. I would try to deny that I exist.

When the inspiration strikes, I would type a poem. Another poem for me, for him, for someone I do not know but is feeling the same pain. I would imagine him somewhere in the wilderness, gasping for air as he sinks in his own misery. The poem will grow longer than intended as words gush out in a long queue of ghosts demanding to be inked for posterity. I would not hold anything back. I would type until my fingers become as numb as my barely beating heart. I would kiss my fingers and beg for forgiveness. Then my eyes would wander off to the window, lose my concentration into the pouring rain, and I would cry again.

Eight months, I was hiding in the void. If I came out at all, it was for me to immerse myself in the crowd so I could remember how it feels to be alive. Eight months, I never bothered to clean the mess in my dreary apartment. The dusty furniture, the cobwebs, the half torn curtains became my only company and they watched me suffer series of breakdowns. The bathroom witnessed how I struggled against taking my own life. The cold dinner table heard issues I refused to discuss with anyone. The bedroom watched me intoxicate myself as sleep became evanescent. Alcohol became my confidant. It became my lithium. And the window pane? It knows all of my secret longings. It stood by me as I waited for someone, anyone to drop by and perhaps, stop me from cutting my wrist.

Eight months, I never thought of doing anything normal. Eight months, I forgot I was human. Eight months, the sink resembled my life—disorganized, filthy, hideous and despairingly lacked future. Eight months, I stretched myself too thin, I broke like a thread. Eight months, I was luring death to take me. Eight months, I never did the dishes.

And so tonight, I want to write about how I stood before the sink, slowly picked up the sponge as Cardigan filled the background. And I hummed and hummed until the dishes were clean. It may be nonsensical to you, but to me, it was huge. It was me crawling my way back to redemption. It was me relearning forgiveness. It was me giving life a second chance.

It was me embracing FREEDOM!

-katie,

12th of June 2021, 18:25

Image: https://pin.it/6bVgzsz

if i pass away,

my pen will mourn me longer

than my friends will ever do in a lifetime

it will sit cold on my study table,

its own bereavement fester

with the lifeless body buried somewhere

reeking of lost poetry

an ocean of mystery that seems

unsolvable now that the lead vanished

like smoke

it will try to recollect the words

it used to scribble

and the emotions they carry

it will marvel at the depth of the scars

that resonate on the seemingly flawless pieces,

how many times in a day did i survive

the pangs before i decided the culmination

of a barren life

such a tragedy that it could only lie there

thinking of the past as its yearning

to be held burns with the candlestick

-mourn me longer,

katie, 16th of July 2021, 16:45

i live with you in my shadow

and stuck

in the cavities of my teeth,

hanging yourself

on my every word

Is there anything more dangerous, Eve, darling, than a woman with a belly full of knowledge and lips stained in nectar?

~love, lilith

What is a woman if not a smile in the face of a storm

What is a woman if not the storm

If not the crechendoing tempest and

The ethereal melody that somehow never loops back again

Unpredictable familiar rhythm

If not lilting music box laughter

A cacophony of karma

What is a woman if not an expanse of endless possibly

If not a universe in static motion

If not the duality of an ocean

In all her calm lethality

Her peaceful wild

In all her vastness and instiabilty and depths never to be discovered

What is a woman if not a warning to be careful what you wish for

If not a walking contradiction

A winding metaphor

An invitation to drown yourself amongst her depths

All sin and

Salvation and

Sacrifice

All risk and

Reward and

Redemption

If not the remembering and the revenging

What is a woman if not salacious second chances

If not doubting into oblivion only to be resurrected over and over

And Over Again

If not myth and martyr and miracle

If not warrior and wish and whim

What is a woman if not ravaged battlefield and a bullet wound just clotting

A freshly dug grave that still smells like flowers and earth and possibility

If not stitches pulled taunt and the soft skin of a scar

If not delicately crafted battle wound

If not the art of unbreaking

What is a woman if not a champagne toast and red wine stain

If not shattered glass and shards that will lodge themselves under your fingernails

What is a woman of not midnight blaze and forest fire and funeral pyre

What is a woman if not

burning

burning

burning

What is a woman if not waist curved like a flame

What is a woman if not

Anything she wishes to be.

“I’ve lost my words from the past decade and now I’m learning to make new ones… will you be my new language?”

-S.lilobell (It takes strength to rebuild a love vocabulary.)

Rain kills too. 

Maybe there is a tranquility in the rain,

That sings a soft lullaby to the lonely

And whispers sweet nothings to the confused. 

Maybe it rocks your soul to sleep

When all you can think of are misfortunes

And how love tastes better out of a bottle. 

Maybe each drop renews your sense of security. 

Or maybe there’s a blasé ring to it

That’s so deafening it puts the broken on edge.

Maybe the rain kills in such a beautiful way

People find it soothing,

While others suffer silently. 

S.Lilobell (I’m drowning in what you call “beautiful weather”)

Caressing a guitar, a toothpick, whose frail wood had been bitten into far too many times, submerging from between her lips, she tried to capture into the net of melody the feeling of nothingness that crawls into your consciousness when the sun has gone down. With some strands of hair escaping from a tight pony-tail, she slightly hit the instrument’s wooden body, feeling the frustration in her finger tips. She laid the guitar down on the worn carpet, that had suffered too many coffee stains and lied down on her steel-framed bed. The mattress had always been a little too hard. A ray of moonlight escaped from the curtains to obliquely rest on her face. And she sighed.  She could vaguely hear some voices outside. It was too late for them to sneak out of sober lips. She got up and leaned on the windowsill. She noticed a grey car, beaten by time and by carelessness. The headlights almost seemed to be sulking. A smirk etched itself on her face; the loudest voice came from by far the tallest of the three, shirtless, his boney ribs piercing through his pale skin. Their faces and words were a blur. A beer in his unsteady hand, he was leaning against a lamppost and would occasionally burst into a wild laughter. The second one was sitting inside the car, holding a cigarette in between his fingers, the small red fuse floating in the obscurity, the summer night’s breeze slightly pushing the smoke down the block. His legs were dangling out from the leather seats. A Supertramp song was playing on their car’s radio, and he was singing along in an off-key croaky voice, sometimes interrupted by a series of stray giggles. The last one caught her eye. A yellow and white baseball shirt that brought color’s pulse to the shades of the night. Sprawled on the lawn, his slick black wet hair was planted in the grass, his hemmed jeans overgrowing onto the pavement. The darkness wasn’t thick enough to hide his eternal beer-stained grin. She had seen him before. Or maybe she wished to have seen him before. She could imagine the shudder going through her body when he would have taken her by the hand and dragged her through the crowd of a breathless bar. Then, he would have turned around. He would have asked her for a smile. Their glances would have met for a little too long. He would have conjugated her eyes in the language of his soul. It would have been too right. She would have left. Suddenly, she opened the window: “The fuck you think you’re doing? It’s fucking four in the morning for God’s sake!” she screamed. She had her dad’s tongue. Somewhere in those words was hidden, even really well hidden, a hint of playfulness. They all turned around towards her, gawking in surprise. She had her mom’s eyes.

rendez-vous | © Margaux Emmanuel