These days I find it hard
To drift to sleep without you
My back has grown accustomed to your heat
My neck, to the feeling of your breath
My hands know intimately the beating in your chest
And the way your fingers tangle into mine
The ache of longing is what keeps me from sleep,
Tossing and turning to attune myself
To a body that’s miles from my own.
Some children are born
With tragedy in their blood
Their fragile bones
Pressed to hardness from the dust,
The ruins of past lives
The overlap of muscle and skin
Layers of vicissitudes
Skin, an intricate weave of cells and afflictions
Their beating hearts
Already broken.
These quiet moments are my favorite;
A steaming mug of coffee
To fight against the chill in the air
Your sleepy sounds in the next room
While I read by the morning sunrise
There is nothing I want more
Than to steal these moments every day
To keep them sacred for myself
To know that you are safe.
I tend to taste my words,
Rolling them around my mouth like loose teeth
The bitterness of blood from biting my tongue
On words too angry, too honest
Filling my mouth with venom I’d sooner choke on than spit,
Slowly poisoning myself with every swallow.
I was always a wallflower,
But I make a pretty good wallpaper too
Back against the wall for so long I’ve become the landscape
Spreading myself thin to seal every crack
Blocking off my only exits
Sealing off the oxygen
Suffocating myself within my self-created prison
Trying to break free feels like losing parts of me
Leaving behind skin and blood
To stain the rocks I crashed myself against
Forever remembering the mountain on my back,
The weight of the world crushing as I stumble,
I’ve forgotten how to stand on my own feet
But I think I’ll spend the next while crawling
Hands and knees, slither like a snake
Seeing what’s below the surface of everything
The new perspective is working for me
It feels wrong to mourn a love never spoken out loud
Or it could be that it was never love,
But it wasn’t nothing either.
*
Perhaps it was only stolen glances and too much laughter,
Softly saying your name like a prayer
Holding my breath until your eyes met mine.
*
Maybe it was just the casual brush of fingers,
How I couldn’t help but stutter when we spoke,
And the softness in your face when you looked at me.
*
I know it wasn’t love, but maybe
In another time, another place, another dimension,
It could have been.
I was meant to lie between the power of your thighs;
Voice silenced, lips spread,
Face spit-wet
To feel the quiver underneath your skin,
As your white ribbons fall on my cheek
Like a baptismal
Your body is something to be worshiped
It is a self-indulgent act,
A sin I gladly confess to any man who has yet to see
Heaven
I find my cosmic insignificance comforting;
The stars do not know my name
My existence is but a fraction of a lifespan
My life, a second in the creation of planets
And nebula.
My mistakes mean nothing to the universe
Decisions I regret have no bearing on the cosmos
I mean nothing in the great expanse of infinity.
I am in the habit
Of hanging on so tightly that I forget myself,
Dislocating limbs to stay attached to things
Loathsome and lovely in equal measures,
And better left alone.
There is a variety of sadness
That makes itself home within my guts
Clinging to my entrails and growing like mold,
Devouring new feelings of love,
And covering my insides with rot.
the Honest Poet