Category: Poetry & Poetic Prose

When did a body bag become more comfortable than your embrace?
Was it when we became the dining dead?
Was it when I had to ask you to show me kindness?
Was it when the softness of your arms became rough with rot?

I have become used to nosebleed seats and
falling asleep while the shower is running.
When I miss you most, I hide myself away.
Enclosed in a closet full of cursive confessions,
I can miss you without judgement.

If I lay on my bed for a second longer, I may drown.
I burn my throat chasing it with things that I cannot say.
I lost my favorite parts of myself by allowing you to stay.
Having left, I realized all of our mistakes.

Anger is a default for insecurity.

What is the difference between want and need?
Loving you has become a self-given punishment.
We are puzzle pieces bent from force.
If I could, I would write you as a riddle too complex to solve.

Featured art: “Flamingo” by Kim Jakobsson

I have done it again—
Ruined my morning by trusting my instincts.
Do you know how to read between the lines as well as I?

Are you aware of your crimes?
"An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth."
Perhaps I should be as guilty as you.

Is it against our nature to be satisfied with singularity?
I do not have the urge to seek others' warm skin nor embrace.
I believe we have different values and fates.

I woke you up by screaming and
berating you for your infidelity. 
My face was tense with agony.

You became Hester Prynne by 
wearing cut shirts with "CHEATER" written all over them.
I made sure to tell the world of your "mistakes" in multiple ways.

People picked sides.
Some believed your lies while most offered their shoulder to me.
I accepted my losses and expressed gratitude to those who stayed.

It is, "'He said [...] She said,'" but
I still remember their names.
I still remember what her voice sounds like at 2 A.M.

You are guilty and expressed that with
a scrunch of the face and a single teardrop.
You are ugly when you try to make yourself cry.

There is a death penalty for relationships (with me).
Once we break up, you are dead to me.

You are dead to me.

Featured art: Unknown

We finally fall asleep
facing opposite directions,
Behind the shield of my back, I break.
Without your embrace,
I cannot hold myself together.

Your scent is on the pillow parallel to mine.
I can smell you forgetting me from just a touch away.
Tell me, how can you mumble my name
as if it means as much to you as a dirty penny?

Your forgotten smile is remembered
not by what I say or do, but
by faces and voices unknown to me.
Why did you start seeing me and
what made you stop?

Define "enough."
Explain how I do not meet the criteria.

When did your touch turn?
Once an electric current surging is now a fine phantom graze.
The mixture of our kisses does not taste the same.
My tongue grows foreign to your name.

We spend most of our breaths on discordant arguments.
Your face is a compilation of everyone I have ever loved and lost.
Our relationship, once harmonious, has evolved into
an investment in torment.

Is this what falling out of love feels like?

Featured art: Unknown

You leave traces of yourself behind—
desperate to be relevant.
You are the growing collection of jackets inside my closet,
the discarded receipts on display on my windowsill and
the odd pocket change scattered across the carpet.

Today, I will keep your smell on my sheets, but
when our sweet scent turns sour,
I will scrub, scrub, scrub my skin raw until
it bleeds reasons to leave and
I will listen.

I may not be a seer, but
I know when people fall out of love before they do.
The logic lies in understanding behavior.
When you look at me with the eyes of an executioner, 
I know that you are falling out of love with me.

If you ask me about love,
I talk only of tragedies.
I am repulsed by the things that I do to
erase my mistakes from my memories.
I promise you that I cannot handle another one.

While I confess,
I can promise you this:
You will be the last person that I ever love.

Featured art: “The Return” by Dean Gioia.

Let the hours between midnight and three in the morning consume you.
Allow your body the physical sensations your mind endures all day.
You can miss them without judgement.

Write reasons as to why you love them on your blinds.
When you run out of room, 
scratch confessions onto your nightstand. 

When the night is over, come back to reality.
All you do is romanticize a fantasy; 
something and someone that never was. 

It is healthy to explore pain, but do not take it with you after dawn.

Featured art: Unknown

When smoke distorts my vision,
hues of twilight blend with gray.
In this catatonic Limbo,
memories of him come as quick as a spark of a lighter.

Here, I see the world through smeared glass—
I can see, but not clearly and 
I cannot touch (him).

Here, mystery embraces me.
In other words, when he takes my head in his hands,
I do not know whether he will kiss or bruise me.

Perhaps, this time,
I will close my eyes and
let the smoke decide.

Featured art: Unknown

I love watching movies with you, but sometimes I do not.

For years, I did not understand why I hold these contradicting thoughts and feelings until I thought about how my mother and father used to watch movies together as if it was a chore. Their banters about whether to watch a television show or movie would quickly turn into arguments about my mothers’ indecisiveness or my fathers’ apathy. My father always fell asleep halfway through whatever they or we all watched. I felt as if spending time with my mother or the both of us was not satisfying enough for my father to stay awake for.

To this day, I carry the weight of the feeling of inadequacy with me.

I do not know how to let it go.

My father used to buy my mother roses and take us on family vacations. My mother used to sing in the car and make the holidays feel extra special. I watched their love fall apart when they began to barely touch. My father would go on trips to perform in shooting competitions while my mother would be lonely at home. My mother began to hang out with friends only to return to a jealous husband huffing and puffing.

When life starts to go seemingly sideways, I can understand how it is easier to escape via distraction rather than communicate and change. I have felt the same way as my parents once did. In many of my past relationships, I took on the role of my father’s shadow and performed a bit too well. With one past lover, I began to take twice my usual dosage of melatonin in secret and suggest watching something so that I could fall asleep as fast as possible. I was falling out of love with him, but too scared to tell him because of the trauma of watching my parents’ fall out of love.

So, while I sometimes feel like watching television or movies with you is relaxing, sometimes I feel as if we are in the process of falling out of love. My heart begins to beat a bit faster than normal. My body shakes, aching my bones. My breathing shudders. My mind races too fast for me to keep up with. I grow even more upset when you do not notice. My heart breaks a piece more when I ask you for reassurance and you do not provide it.

Featured art: Unknown

I sit in the comfort of the corner of a crooked staircase.
My neck aches from staring at my lap; an attempt to avoid eye contact.
I contemplate inviting you to the party or not.
Before I know it, you arrive and we try to define "fake fun."

I define "fake fun" as:

1. Sitting outside while the party is going on inside.
2. Sitting outside while the party is going on inside and debating leaving early to go home.
3. Sitting outside while the party is going on inside, debating leaving early to go home, and stealing glances across the driveway at the person you really want to be at the party with.

Featured art: Unknown

The only time my parents are together is when their names read back to back in my phones contacts or in photographs, like the ones hidden in my closet. When I miss my childhood most, I run my fingers along the ridges of the bullet-shaped holes in pictures of my fathers face.

My father, one who is hard to forgive, never forgets to tell me good morning and goodnight despite being thousands of miles away. My mother, one who I held as she cried, taught me how to win a battle against your worst nightmare coming alive. I, someone already unstable, am trying to balance mixed emotions with clumsy hands. Sometimes, the weight of resentment causes me to let forgiveness fall.

My motto is, “Fall asleep in forgiveness.” I am a firm believer in positive self-talk. How you speak to yourself becomes a physical appearance that others reflect back onto you. For someone who values forgiveness as much as I do, I wonder how I can forgive my father for cheating, yet I cannot forgive the part of myself that takes after him.

I refuse to go to a beach without a bonfire. Bonfires mean there will be people to keep me from wasting wishes on shooting stars. People will keep me from wandering off, intoxicated by whatever I find, and becoming consumed by ocean tides. It would be ironic to die in a pisces home.

Bonfires remind me of the homemade firepit my father made, the one by the lemon tree outside my old bedroom window. Ever since December, s’mores have become sour. My palette no longer adores sweet things. Tell me how it is possible to be nauseous at the scent of rich chocolate or, better yet, how bonfires smell like your jacket, like the white one I used to steal.

You, the one that I wanted to give my heart to, suffered the consequences of me acting like my father. I want you to know that my life has become a cycling of apologizing.

I confess that I learned how to apologize from a liar’s mouth.

I think my most innocent lie was telling my parents, “Goodnight.” Little me would stand up on my bed and hug my mother tight. She would kiss my cheek. My father would grab me, swing me around or throw me over his shoulder, give me a big “bear” hug, and shut the door behind him. I, born with eyes that never learned how to shut, spent nights talking to the moon.

Saying, “Goodnight” was the only time that I loved seeing them together, yet, to this day, I try to forget the things that I heard from the other side of the door.

Featured art: Unknown