mandooks

This poem was written during NaNoWriMo, because one of the challenges I’m currently failing at this year is to write one poem a day. As I said, I am not being quite successful with that or the total word count, but I am pretty enthusiastic about my story this year, and I have already written more than I did the past two years. 🙂

I knitted a sweater
Warm, soft. Pink and blue
With yellow flowers on the front
And matching earrings.

I ordered chunky shoes online
And hemmed a skirt some inches shorter.
It took a while, but I embroidered
Hearts into leg warmers.

I swallowed back harsh words,
I drafted heartfelt apologies.
I bit on her lower lip until it bled
And picked at her rainbow-painted nails.

I brushed her hair,
Cut her hair,
Brushed it again,
And bleached it on a whim.

I loved her and loved her and loved her
Until she stopped believing me.

Out of expectations and grief,
Out of despair and angry tears,
I made a girl.

Small as a mouse,
Bigger than the universe.
Arms always open.

I made a girl
Pretty like a blade,
Cutting like a rose.

I made a girl
Then I took it all back.

Sometimes I feel so full of some sort of emotion that I feel kinda dizzy with it, and the outside world gets blurry. Yes I meant to put a comma there. Anyway here’s Wonderwall.

I was dizzy for a while.
The world distorted as I went about
my daily chores.
Empty, it seemed,
of cares I should have paid to my surroundings.

I was in love with the pendulum swing,
the lean of the axis,
the subtle
stumble of my step.

I was late,
terminally exhausted.
I was
alive back then.
The void embraced me in its whirlwind dance.

There was no answer to be found.
No lesson to be gleaned.
Just my fragile head flirting
with the hard pavement.
A thrilling joy
in vertigo.

It’s been 84 years, but yeah, I do still write poetry sometimes. It’s the beginning of NaNoWriMo once again, we’ll see what happens this year. I’m trying not to put any pressure on myself and enjoy it!

today I talk to the dead.
I pry my eyes open inward and remember
the soil they went back to.

I breathe in the prickly blue sky,
weep with willows, play hide and seek
with a meandering sun. I know
the end will come,
but not today.

I clench my fists. I refuse
to cry. they loved me
and I love them,
for all they’ve given me,
for all they’ve taken from me.

today I tell the dead about the ones who remain
and how we don’t pray
exactly, but sometimes I’ll leave my window
open for a bit too long,
till the clouds invite themselves in.
I yell at them because their beauty
offends me.
the air in my lungs stings like your hand on mine
decades ago.

today I talk to the dead
and as long as I do,
they live.