Starshatter

The night knows all my secrets.
Sometime plucked from between imaginary stars
during that night which just passed
I misplaced myself-
again.
This morning I find fragments scattered about-
don't remember
anything breaking-
kitchen counter, bathroom tiles,
stairs, crumples on the carpet. Never in one piece.
I want to find tiny bits,
tiny pieces, in characters
and phrases between pages
upon pages in thousands of books
until I'm whole-
again?
Just keep reading.
One day all the nights will have my story to tell.

Of walls and windows.

I unearthed this story I wrote when I was 18 when empting the drawers of my desk. I wish I could still write like this, without so many neuroses and such a spinning mind. I was so free with my pen at that age. What has happened to me? 

Winter had thus far only seeped into her bedroom, like dust sleeping in all her drawers and picture frames. When he came over he opened her window, and then the winter lived there comfortably. Walls have very little work to do when windows are open for they protected her from nothing but the hallway. With each passing day she had lived in a different box.

She began to like all the big warm galaxies outside which belonged to other people; the neighbours and businessmen and the postman, their many rushes and concerns. They played board games together, even though he was a rampant rule-bender. In the past, when it was cold, her eyes had always become frostbitten, small and too precise, but now she paid more attention to bird and trees instead of her shoes. She began to read patterns and maps on the backs of her hands, despite the any inches of night-time between her glance and her skin. At a keen eighteen years, she was used to grandiloquent excuses for beauty and thriving off some borrowed edginess. But she would never tire of the handsomeness of someone different, who sees things not through the windows of others or through a convex mirror, but in ways that made her realise she had been living her life with eyes closed.

At Christmas she asked for time to read every book and listen to every record that had ever been recommended. She asked for an end to walls and symmetry.

Her name changes seasonally now. She keeps the books and records in her car and they continually grow in number. Th others wondered where she slept and why she couldn't stack her books there. She talked of vaulting over the too-large world and finding a place where she could distinguish stars from planes. And she she woke up in her morning, she found that he was there too.

Wordless

Finding the words is like trying
to find a single vein
in the vineyard of your body.

The whole day

is a feeling,
and the words are all caught
at the front gates, teeth.

It feels like knowing Polish
without being able to speak Polish.

pacific pillowtalk

Lying under the silence of waves,
tangled in blue and green roars,
a splash of marbles
fall and disappear to the bed
and I'm just dreaming of the feel
of you looking at me.

Being loved

Flowerbeds


There is little I prefer to the sensation of his planting
two kisses on the top of my head before sleep.
Only now have I realised how funny planting a kiss seems,
as if all kisses are capable of growing,
and if we wake up one day with our pillows full of roses
we'll know that they grew from those night-time kisses

Before the summer I turned seventeen, I was blindly faithful. Afraid sometimes, but not the way I am today, and the fear is misplaced. I know, because the worst is behind me. Back then I couldn't fathom the reasons why I was wanted. When you have no knowledge of why, you feel powerless. For the first time, with him, my intricacies are brought to light. I have felt the very bottom of being and he was always there. Once I was back he could not stop smiling because he'd been waiting for me there.
Now I am confronted with what I try hard not to measure. Feeling one of his hands against the ladder of my neck, his fingertips measuring, calibrating breaths, I imagine he is considering the enormous burden of loving me. He says he is wondering how he became so lucky.
When thoughts clash like that, everything is confused. Maybe that was where the chaos came from. My fascination with the Butterflychaos Theory and continuously imagining all the parallel lifetimes I may have had, and all the small things I have passed by in the world that shaped me into what I am today, that gave me this lifetime instead.

Train of thought on a train

I'm beginning to think that I'm not real, and that every self-judgment is only a small projection of how I fear just existing. All of me could be disproved, And even if my body was real, it would only be there so my mind would have something to float in. Still, when I see my reflection in windows and doors I am taken aback because I forget I'm not invisible. I forget how my body and mind go together, that I exist as a physical thing even when I cannot see me or mine. But I don't want, really, to give up on being haunted or needed, of wanting to hold on to any semblance of a good thing.

Sleeps.

Outside, golden hands make the light change colours.
Hypnos tells me it’s okay; I tell him I’m fightless.
Cold daylight chews me into nighttime pieces
 and perhaps if I tell the sun what I’m reading it will stay a little longer.

Everything past the window is uneven and loud like the ocean,
Melancholy and pointed like knees and fists and teeth.
September falls into October and paper stays paper,
Though it used to be trees somewhere in the sun,
But the real truth is that there is emptiness in everything, not just beds.

October is coming in like a train whose whistle echoes for days,
An old steam engine with one hundred thousand windows,
Whole rooms for watching time but no space for little tides, big blinks,
Or eating up a list of books I must read before I turn twenty-five.

Light retires with a soporific goodnight and all that is left is a dearth of sleep,
Imaginary owls and other big-eyed birds contemplating stars.
Morning will sound like breathless trees stretching new leaves,
Clouds whirling, tiny winds darting through my sheets until I am grey again.
Sleep is just dust and I hate feeling filthy.

In memory of people

For a moment she was nothing but a beat of nostalgia
Disappearing on the end of his tongue.
Then suddenly misplaced
Like a receipt under an ashtray.
Or was she replaced?
Quitting cigarettes to grow orchids.

Summersad

And summer comes like a one-night-stand-in-sleep-in,

Blinking at the windows, pouring hot spills on warm skin,

Leaning on the doorframe with come-hither eyes.

I throw a tantrum in the middle of the floor,

Tearing up sheets and books and other objects of fury.

You do nothing but sprawl on the bed looking at summer

As if nothing is happening, as if you cannot hear.

Five girls

When I looked at those photographs, I sometimes wondered if all five of us had been born pre-fabricated, in paper grocery bags. We were all clean and articulate, even in our squabbling. We hated naps and we broke buttons, bruised knee bones, penned letters from invisible fingertips, fell asleep in warm bathtubs. Do you remember? The grass was itchy mid-July.
Later we would burn ourselves with cigarettes at parties and dance on rooftops. Our eyes would change colours with the eye-rolls and attention we got. When we kissed boys it was like burlesque, all ostentatious, as though we’d bite off their tongues.
They’ve all become so tough and able now. I try to make my features point inwards as though I’m suspicious of my own cheekbones, which should protect me from affection even though I spend countless hours asking for it. It doesn’t work. I still look like open windows. My hands are so little that bigger hands fall out of them. When I wake up in the night, my shouting doesn’t sound like anything.