Author: poetryfest

Blue is the color of my true love’s lips, white the color of her skin as I take her into my arms once more. Electricity is the feeling in the air as the warmth of the blood beneath my skin transfers to the deathly chill of her own. I hardly notice the antiseptic smell in her hair as we danced our midnight waltz.

“Slow my love, it will take effect.” I moan sputtering through crimson kisses.

Do we accept the love we are given?
And do we accept the pain from the very beginning?
The answer is no, because we can’t have one without the other
We don’t know until it’s too late, how the starts align us to our inevitable fate
How do you know you love someone?
By the times they make you smile, or the amount of tears you cry after it’s over?
It’s true, sometimes you have to let something or someone go, in order to find out the truth, the
truth being some things will send you over the moon
Love and pain make the most beautiful art, yet both we refuse to see from the start
It’s an endless cycle, love and pain
Both are worth it, but do we ever truly know the endgame?

i often wonder am i a cheater like her that when i vow i break it silently i am a rivers reflection of her everytime my hair grows longer my cheek bones rise i can no longer lie about my genetics our faces never seperate if i am a cheater does it spread like blood? does it resent the tests? why would i slice the solution ? why should i cut out? people. what does lust make us search for? i undress a married man with my eyes. i guess things glisten brighter in the dark. people even. it may be the vessel out. away from yourself. is it a test? because she failed. as i pass my grades. i bury my head in words of history. to the memory of being hidden in the back seat. to be rewarded. in helping her cheat. don’t tell daddy. duct taped over my mouth. she hands me pretty plastic to play with. while she plays with a friend of his. young. shiney. twenty three. eleven years difference. brand new to her scent. i only remembered yellow street lights. dad worked the night shift. for more money. by her request. what if i am a cheater? does it make me equal to her? as i swallow another cookie dough blizzard. among the wreckage of my house. made. dingy. in a dark blue. subaru. don’t tell daddy. i hope i pass the test. i hope her lust. greets her. with a dull kiss. and i hope she knows. she took
away. the shine from my eyes. lebotomized my dad’s sensitivity. bankrupted my grandma’s generosity. slit the wrists of my grandpa’s warm welcome. spat in the pale face of my late lola. and with their bodies buried. i am homeless. on the streets of broken concrete. with blood in the streams. of memories. nuked out of existence. daughter of a volcanic. eruption. with my naked scene dolls. broken bratz. bare barbies. told to play pretend. in a nameless cemetery.

I teared up once, out of panic,
As it was my necessity — so basic.

I teared up once, out of fear.
It was when you failed to grasp my whimper.

But I had never teared up once,
As I am,
Of what you are afraid.
You just made me one of you —
Unconscious,
Walking on your tread.

I felt left out once —
Cause I was a fool,
When I was being taken from your hold.

I felt left out once —
As I was mad,
When you lashed at me
With a stick in your hand.

But I had never felt so isolated
In your presence, as I do now —
Scared of what you might think
Of my dreams and plans,
As if I am letting you down
.
You built a world for me,
Which you once failed to grab.
Tell me sure —
Did I want to be part of it,
Though it was you I was glad?

You saw me —
I was just hanging there.
A word from you
To go on — was priceless.
Yet you let me push alone
Into a cave full of bats and rats.
Your dread won over my wellness.

I teared up once again,
For myself
I chose to build my own space,
Hidden in the veil
Of being anxious and solitary,
Among the world’s race.

the summer is an expectation
the summer is a common lie

in which i’m taking a part
of which i’m taking a part

to which i’m giving the biggest share
of my most careless and unintentioned days

unallocated days

and unallocated, unmeasured waterflow of the mind

the summer is an overflowing basket
that all of us have to carry

so why not you too?

why do you want to be spared?

it’s too much
please, let me have a bite of this and a sip of that

and one more

and one more

until i burst from my thirst and greed
until the flies decompose my lustful thoughts

then I’ll send myself into exile, away from this brilliant world

to hide my ugliness

Intending to write a poem with rhyme
is clicking and tapping an elegy for time.

Sitting and typing a well-constructed crime,
prying your brain until the words shine.

A rhyme a day
keeps the writer’s block away you say.

You don’t usually do this
because it’s so meticulous.

You try so hard to be a team while
it chooses to be your thirteenth reason.

Sewing your consonants, pinning your vowels,
you let the ink run for miles.

The poem asks, where will you put me?
I reply, With my ashes along the sea.

I feel trapped inside the husk they call my body
I am weak like the pillowy overhangs of my flesh
As it piles a top itself
and overflows over the waist of my pants

I am acutely aware of
The size of everyone in the room
And
The snacks on the table
The promise of serotonin
wrapped up in sugary satisfaction
But,
Of course
the fat girl wants a snack

I am the butt of every joke
The crescendoing laugh emitted
by a self deprecating comedian
People only like the fat girl
if she’s funny

I am weighed down by the weight
of my own seeming inability
to do what’s best for my body
An inexplicable urge to stuff myself,
leaving no crumbs

Food is a reward
Food is non judgemental
Even if it evokes shame in the end

Food is constant
Food is unchanging
Processed ingredients and food dyes rarely shift
The consumer market is always there for me
Even if their motives are vile

I see myself as an elephant
The elephant in the room at all times
The elephant who everyone is watching
to see how many peanuts she shoves down her throat
The elephant that everyone eagerly watches the ring master torture
for the mere reward of peanuts
Dance, ‘phant, dance
No one is here to watch the elephant
to love it
They want to see if topple from atop its ball
The mistakes and shortcomings
are much more satisfying for the audience
Than the feelings of the elephant

If the elephant is doing well,
The show loses all its meaning.
And the audience
Is no longer interested.

I returned—
not in dream this time.
A cracked floor remembered a chipped tooth
I was lucky to lose.
So I knew:
this was my house.

Last night,
moths came again—
marble-bodied, almost human,
dragging themselves in a line.
They shook,
softened,
grew feathers from their backs.

Their mouths dripped yellow,
eyes hollow.
When they tried to speak,
powder blew out,
fine and dry.
I could not move.
I was one of them.

The house rocked—
was it sea, bed, ambulance?
Something unnamed
was being pulled from me.
I lay like a husk,
a vessel post-purpose,
my mind floating
behind sirens and glass,
watching green blur by.

They said I lost blood.
My heartbeat climbed,
then fell.
Darkness arrived.

When I awoke
I held a child,
white-wrapped, soft-skinned.
His eyelash twitched.
Too tightly swaddled, maybe.
I searched for a hospital.

They told me:
go back.
Back to house,
to country,
to name.

I held him tighter.

My fingers began to change.
Middle and ring.
Under the skin,
fetal shadows bloomed.
When I made a fist,
they rose—
little bones,
pink like tender fruit.

A woodpecker knocked.
I did not move.

Evening came
in a room of moving flesh.
We passed a buoy.
The cloths came off the dead—
they wept red tears.
You floated,
rope between your teeth.
Mine? Yours?

I kissed a swollen man.
His skin, thin as plastic wrap,
peeled under my lips.
I pressed it back.
“I’m sorry,”
I said
to the air.

Then, a room without corners.
Mold breathed in the walls.
My thighs wore paint.
The bed was stained.
The world:
metal warmth,
bones stacked like pastry spirals.

Once,
I wanted you
inside my world.
Later,
I wanted revenge.
Now,
I only want to stay in yours.
Even if it’s only a dream
I can’t wake from.

I laid my head on your lap.
You left no mark.
The sheet remained cruelly flat.
I shook you—
you swayed,
light as breath.

You said:
Go.
Bleed from your fingers
until it becomes meaning.
Or draw a square.

So, I drew a square.