amalgamation-of-words

[amalgamation-of-words]

i remember being a kid and wishing something awful would happen to me. not because i wanted to die but because i wanted a reason to be held. i used to lie awake and think maybe if i got really sick, like hospital sick, something scary with a name, then they’d have to care. they’d look at me like i mattered. they’d touch my face gently. they’d stay.

sometimes i’d pretend to be sick. i’d wrap myself in blankets and fake coughs and say my stomach hurt, hoping someone would press a cool hand to my forehead and say poor thing, rest. hoping someone would miss me for a day. hoping someone would notice how tired i already was.

i used to think it was unfair when bad things happened to other kids and not to me. i know that sounds wrong but i’d watch people cry over them, gather around them, carry their pain like it was precious. and i’d think why not me. why doesn’t anyone worry about me. don’t they see i’m already hurting, even if there’s nothing on the outside.

i hated myself for it. for wanting the kind of pain people rush to fix. for dreaming about broken arms and hospital beds like they were lullabies. i was tired of crying with the door closed. tired of being good at disappearing.

i used to pray at night. not for joy or love or anything big. just for something to go wrong in a way people could see. just for a reason they’d finally look at me and realize i’d been hurting all along.

because sadness that hides in your chest gets ignored. because when you look fine they let you stay broken. but if your body’s in pieces, if your skin bruises the right way, if there’s a needle in your arm and a monitor beeping, suddenly it’s all real. suddenly you’re worth something. and god, i just wanted to be worth something.

[amalgamation-of-words]

My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less. When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited. There is nothing I want for now that we are so close I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning. I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples, I am more with you than I ever was before.  Do you understand? It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop. It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise it’s the truth. I promise one day you will say it too– I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you.

love letter from the afterlife, andrea gibson

[amalgamation-of-words]

This is a comment someone appended to a photo of two men apparently having sex in a very fancy room, but it’s also kind of an amazing two-line poem? “His Wife has filled his house with chintz” is a really elegant and beautiful counterbalancing of h, f, and s sounds, and “chintz” is a perfect word choice here—sonically pleasing and good at evoking nouveau riche tackiness. And then “to keep it real I fuck him on the floor” collapses that whole mood with short percussive sounds—but it’s still a perfect iambic pentameter line, robust and a lovely obscene contrast with the chintz in the first line. Well done, tumblr user jjbang8

[amalgamation-of-words]

cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it

[amalgamation-of-words]

Maria Gray, from “Bad Nostalgia”

[amalgamation-of-words]

i dont think i loved you in the way that you deserved

or the way that you needed.

but i loved you

and i'd like to think that counts for something.

i think we loved at the wrong time.

in the wrong ways.

but at least we tried.

trying means something.

[amalgamation-of-words]

sometimes, but not often, i'm filled with a purging sadness.

this is hard to convey-

i'm trying.

its a sickness; a disease.

its something stuck fast in the root of my lungs, like ivy or moss.

something invasive and hard to remove.

i need it gone.

its too much.

i feel like im suffocating.

i have to get over this.

[amalgamation-of-words]

the earth is so still and so quiet

the silence is border on violent

and i long to go home-

where the winds whistle and blow

as my eyes begin to close.

and im at the base of this tree

wishing leaves would fall on me

to feel their embrace-

brushing my face

before my eyes begin to close.

[amalgamation-of-words]

Ilya Kaminsky, I Ask That I Do Not Die

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its not necessarily about comprehending the inevitability of our mortality. its about the fact that we're losing people to it.

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i will leave you in the spaces between the lines.

something forgotten.

but for a split second, i will think of you when our song comes on the radio, and there is a ghost in the seat beside me absent of your smile.

[amalgamation-of-words]

words of aggression and anger stick in my mouth like cloying tar, 

the words i cannot say spew and splatter on the page like vitriol, burning something putrid.

but words of love and gentle appreciation flow from my mouth like pale clouds passing overhead, something to be cherished.

i will not take advantage of my compassion.

but i hate that i cannot show the frustration that i am experiencing, so ill smother it softly and wait for it to burn itself out-

it will burn itself out.

[amalgamation-of-words]

[amalgamation-of-words]

Mitski, "I'm Your Man" // Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness // Andrew Kane, "How to Be a Dog" // // Soccer Mommy, Your Dog // "this is the last time i beg for devotion" by violenttradwife // Anne Carson, Preface to Hekabe from Grief Lessons

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[amalgamation-of-words]

i hate it when i cant even write a poem about something because its too obvious. like in the airbnb i was at i guess it used to be a kids room cause you could see the imprint of one little glow in the dark star that had been missed and painted over in landlord white. like that's a poem already what's the point

[amalgamation-of-words]