FREE VERSE Poem: Honey Mesquite, by Hannah Messer

I wasn’t born with this salt on my tongue
or smoke coating both of my lungs.
Rather, I was actually very sweet,
quite a bright honey mesquite.

This love affair with grief is growing stale,
making me skinny, squirmy, tired, and pale.
I’m constantly ironing out this much-too-heavy coat,
adjusting its buttons as it squeezes and gloats.

I want my pen to bleed of girlish little dates,
not the thoughts that cling to me as weights.
I want to paint his fingers rested upon my waistband,
not the subtle but ever-present shaking of my hand.

I crave a version of myself so freed,
a she not forced to beg, cry, shout, plead.
I’ve tried to carve her out of my skin for close to a year,
and not once has her presence seemed anywhere near.

I sit and I write and I beg and I plead.,
Surrounded by finished stories that still make me bleed.
How is it that in the year that’s passed,
I fell out of love and back in just as fast?