Who Am I When No One is Around?
Voices call
from down the hall.
I’m sure I don’t know them at all.
Yet still my heart is called to days
I locked myself in stalls
and prayed.
Just asking for a simple glance
From boys I didn’t stand
a chance with.
Truth, I feel still like that girl
who knows she’s not
fit for this world.
A voice just said he’d ask her out.
Oh, back in high school I would shout
and call for pity for a heart
too scared, too shy, too sick
to vouch.
For me my heart is much to weak
for leading on, for simple streaks
of best behaviour (still no-good).
No man should love me.
No man should treat
me with kindness without pay.
However, if one chose to stay
I'd be a perfect little girl
with begging eyes,
with spiral curls.
Oh why,
oh why,
must I still cave?
To simple lines.
To re-used phrases.
All those tropes I’ve grown to loathe...
Still deep inside
I’m so alone.
So I will bat my eyes and plead
for any man that will concede
to take me on as burden woe
to work me ’till I have no soul
and will I be so fulfilled then
when ring is placed, when vows are said.
When in a house I’m wast’ing way
and wondering if another way
could have been carved
had I not feared
The life, a woman,
so congealed.
That did not center on a man
I know some do it
I know some can...
I’ve friends that love women as well
and love though daily they face hell.
To Hell I’ll surely go as well
for with a man I’ll never dwell.
A worse thought I could not conjure
when to depths my mind oft wanders...
Lost amid the mazes dark
of hurtful past,
of wounded heart,
of crying soul,
of past begin.
Oh why,
Oh why,
Do I always cry?
My period. It's coming soon?
I have lost track.
I’ll ask the moon.
The moon betrays me, as does all.
When deep I trust,
through shall I fall.
So birthday cakes and bright balloons
I hope will greet me in my room.
A party I’ve planned for myself.
A gift I’ve hidden on the shelf.
Inside, a note whose print reads just
“You need not marry
you’re on the cusp of
greatness dear!
Oh, don’t you see?
You’re close to finding
who you're to be.”
So when the families scream and shout,
and he curses you:
Shut them out!
For a feeling is valid
if it is there.
Though no one sees it.
No one cares.
I care,
like women you don’t know.
For you don’t realize
How far this goes.
There are women held
and women caged
and women trapped in rooms of rage.
Dear, you are not the first to feel
the weight of life that grinds your wheels
and hate that drags you
down,
down,
down.
Its not your burden,
leave that town.
To seek bright lights of cities glow.
The castles pink.
Each bathtub, rose.
Of sweet, kind looks on the metro.
Love, hold their doors and speak their retro-
active regrets.
For you know
a secret kept just grows like mold.
A never ending tow’r of tears
can never lift you,
He won’t hear.
He does,
I should not speak that way
He's not forsaken you that way.
While women fight though life unheard
He’s sent us roadkill, sent us birds.
Each image of a lovely thing
that we don’t get.
We’d never sing
the songs in keys of chickadee.
No we’re not listn’ing
You and me.
But
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A heart does ring!
Is it a friend?
Is it a thing
that’s sold on shelves in hardware stores
or on TV?
Do we need more?
I need not march if I shall die
with no one with my name who’ll cry.
The other women who have died
to let me sit here sit and to lie.
I shall not be a sour girl
Of hateful heart
desires, cruel.
I’ll live more kind.
I’ll live more soft.
I’ll live more loud.
I’ll live more oft.
I’ll be a woman who can say:
"Voices, who cares
what you say."
Waving
Waving.
What we do well.
Why waste what we've weightlessly weaved
with words?
Words will without waver
wither wonderful waiting.
Wobbly waves will withstand.
Whether we want warmth
or warnings.
Waves will wash our wants,
witnessing where we
wish we were.
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I love alliteration poems! Please leave me prompts and your favorite letter (and even a word count!) I would be so grateful for the challenge
Let Yourself Let it Go
My dear, let yourself
let it go.
Though sad, unfair
to leave unknown.
Unknown, the smiles.
Unknown intent.
Unknown how many
nights both spent
out wand'ring streets
so aimlessly
hoping paths to cross.
Unseen.
Just bleed and seethe.
My dear, let yourself
let it go.
The knife is twisted.
Flesh has torn.
Torn out, your lungs.
Torn out, your eyes.
Torn out your heart
of shallow lies
set waiting by the
silent phone
revering love
though stark alone.
Moan and groan.
My dear, let yourself
let it go.
For if he loved you
You would know.
Galaxy
My galaxy reformed beyond just the sky.
To how often upon something you lay your eyes
and with how much warmth or with deep despise.
Who is your Moon? That you sing to each night?
Who is your Sun? Whom coats all in light?
For a moment I thought- I felt -maybe you might
grab my hands and swing me in circular flight.
Are your stars the walks you wish to take on your own?
Is your orbit the six blocks that circle your home?
No. Wider and faster your path, now I see.
Which is how I don't know how there is no space for me.
For your Moon and your Sun, I can only guess who
but your Pluto cast out into deep inky blue...
Simply exiled one day without even a word.
No longer acknowledged.
No longer heard.
Yes your Pluto there is no question of
who is she.
For you are the Sun
and meek Pluto is me.
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(Alt. last lines for my own memory: If you are the Sun, then meek Pluto is me)
Spring
Small, hard buds will shortly bloom
Into green leaves, the morning dew
will grace the grass soon tinting green.
The sun will shine, the birds will sing.
Small streams of melted snow vacate.
Love calls out for its sweet mates.
A warmer, kinder air hangs ’round.
Seeds planting in softened ground.
The ancient earth appears again,
renewed and washed away of sin.
Fresh calendar reveals new months
and pledges change so soon to come.
A choir of voices carrying
A longing call to welcome spring.
Favorite Shirt
I look at a photo
from years ago,
a moment I forgot I lived.
And in it, a shirt.
I can feel it on my skin
its worn softness.
Comfortable,
though ill-fitting.
Worn nearly every day
to bed, to work, to school.
Brought everywhere.
In many pictures
moments
places
trips
the shirt was
against my skin
or at least not far from it.
When did I decide to give it away?
And whose skin is so lucky to feel is easy warmth now?
A reason I fail to recall.
Was it a loose thread? Missing button?
So foolish then... it would have been an easy fix.
Or was it something else?
The way it enhanced my worst qualities. Or draped lazily over my curves.
The way the sleeves refused to stay rolled
and the pocket on the front was not functional at all.
No.
I truly cannot recall, nor the day it ceased to be in my laundry.
In my life.
How funny that something I once held so dear
and which held me
is now only existent when
I look at a photo.
Sweetness
A smooth, sweet apple ever-ripe sleeps hidden in a pocket of my coat. Unbruised and blemish-free, a miracle of physics seen as all that it has traversed.
For on a specifically teetering day in the library, it slipped and bounced away from me down the stairs underfoot of a glowing patron. He hardly noticed, only breaking stride slightly and dragging glistening pieces of it across the carpet. I grieved the night in its entirety to find the next morning an eclipse of a heart-shaped shadow cast upon my floor.
Once offered to a curious lover for a look, I made the mistake of turning my face to the sky. Newly inspired and reaching for love, I noticed his lips were sticky-sweet and his hands empty. On my sore walk home, I collapsed and cried a small stream of tears. Rolling along its banks in the reeds another apple greeted me.
Now I hold my ever-ripe apple close to me in pockets that zip. I have lost my taste for pies and lip gloss, colors too-bright and sounds too loud. More sensitive perhaps, but harder as well. For one cannot remain bruise-less without reincarnating with a shell.
To sit in silence is to face oneself. A break in conversation to hear what the other has to say. The other: your feet. The other: your organs. The other: the pain in your back whose cries are stifled by social anxieties each day when you leave the house. A locking door to an empty room, a place of silence. A place of overwhelming complaints, of longings, of terrible, horrible things. To sit in silence is to sit in chaos.
To sit in silence is to reflect into the mirror that is the undistracted heart. When the room floods, what is it that rises to the surface? What sinks? And which will you remember to move to a higher shelf? Do not fret though. The sunken and forgotten with age will become treasure that will be most novel to rediscover. By someone else of course, not you. The next tenant, hypothetical grandchildren, or a sparrow to use for their nest. To sit in silence is to scramble to the top of the trash heap.
To sit in silence is to gaze into the crystal ball you have spent your life creating. To revel and to mourn. To anticipate and predict. To worry and to dread. To sit in silence is to be assured that all is factual that is broadcasted from you and if the forecast is dire, you need to take shelter soon.
To sit in silence is to levitate in a spacious moment. At the counter between customers when the store is empty. On the near-empty bus late at night between stops. On a walk as the battery on your phone finally runs out. To sit in silence is not to sit at all.
To sit in silence is to squirm uncomfortably in your chair, in your clothes, in your skin. To sit in silence is to notice you are physically alone, and to realize the music, the podcasts, the radio are not your friends after all. To sit in silence is to notice silence. To sit in silence is to remember how untethered you are. Levitating, cartwheeling, sleeping, gliding, landing and launching. All you do to feel as though you are going somewhere, reaching something, reaching someone. To watch time pass and feel it pass to always arrive at the same place. To sit in silence is to face oneself.