aninsomniacsink

[aninsomniacsink]

“There’s enough light to drown in but never enough to enter the bones & stay.”

— Ocean Vuong, DetoNation

[aninsomniacsink]

                              I want to leave                               no one behind.

To keep & be kept.

                             The way a field turns                              its secrets

into peonies.

                            The way light                             keeps its shadow

by swallowing it.

Ocean Vuong, from “Into the Breach,” Night Sky with Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016) 

[aninsomniacsink]

Still

Your eyelashes turn from dark to gold at the edges

and it is three years on but I am still noticing the details,

still craving more time than we ever have.

Too many days spent waiting to be together,

too many nights holding each other and watching the seconds tick by.

In the mornings I leave your half awake body,

warm and soft

and it almost feels like only half a goodbye

until the cold of the morning air hits my face

and once again I am leaving.

Once again I have left.

But despite the hours and the buses and the waiting,

here we are.

So many months and journeys on.

Still I would chose half a day with you

than weeks with anyone else.

It is always you.

Every time.

[aninsomniacsink]

My baby teeth

were rooted so hard I had to have eight removed.

I have always been bad at letting go of things I was once attached to.

If I saw you in the street,

for a second I would still smile at you like I used to, muscle memory kicking in

before I am met with our silence.

That sepia love can still bubble so close to the surface

even though it is distant as childhood,

faded and sweet.

The years expand until I wonder why the dream of you is sometimes still so present.

If I could unravel the years,

I would take back that sentence and replace it with something softer,

something more solid and explainable

so that you knew I never meant to pull away so fast I left a tear.

When we were eight years old my front tooth wobbled

and you pretended to punch it out then accidentally did.

Maybe you were always the better one at letting things go,

quick and to the point.

Maybe things would have been better if you were the one to leave,

that way I could have grieved without all this guilt.

The day they removed those baby teeth,

you came to my house.

My mouth was so swollen I couldn’t even talk,

we sat in the back garden by the tree in silence,

but a different kind,

this one was still soft and unaware of the disintegration

that would come to us;

like rope falling apart in water,

like baby teeth loose in your hands

and all the ones in your mouth knowing that someday

it would be their turn to leave.

[aninsomniacsink]

This Windmill Heart

is all shaken not stirred

all salt no sweet.

Too many tree branches across the skyline

and I fell asleep on a rusted bus,

woke up halfway across the country

with tangles in my hair

and sleep strewn through my eyes.

I wake next to you too early

with the excitement of touching you

breathing you in.

So many years of love sickness

and still your arms are the cure.

So many years of travelling

and still you are home.

[aninsomniacsink]

Street Lights

The clouds darken above me and I am all hurtling hands towards you the fields a blur of gold and green and the road crumbling away beneath me

I have left so much behind me on these journeys so eager I am to reach you that I forget where I am forget to stay

Bus seats of fruit and earphones and coins all discarded in the haste of this love this greed to reach you and catch what little time we have up in my chest like frosted breath across this window where the horizon always darkens and I am always leaving you just as I am always returning to you

I imagine us years forward and this journey is forever there this parting and joining and long drawn out ache of distance filled with the lost things that did not have a hope of measuring up to our love so full of street lights and chalk tree outlines.

[aninsomniacsink]

This Body, an Open Wound

There is nothing about these fever hands that suggests healing,

too many icicles beneath my nails to ever scratch the word cured

onto anything but a piece of paper.

God forbid these freckles spread like a rash down my spine.

How many times can my throat close around a word

until we label it as sick.

How shallow these arms are,

How swollen these eyes are

with all they have seen

and all they have dreamed.

This skin so full of every little ghost caught in my eyelashes,

every shadow I tried to wrench from my chest before it  

made a home in my memories like a nest of spiders

spinning their tiny webs tighter around my wrists.

And still,

there is nothing about these fever hands that suggests

we are any closer to healing these wounds in our palms,

any closer to sliding the collarbones from the nape  of our necks

and stitching this body back

to where it began.

[aninsomniacsink]

Foxglove

He arrived at school with chalk hands,

the kind that stain purple from picking too many foxgloves.

Outside the porch the ground shifted with red dust,

the fox almost camouflaged into the edges.

When he first told her about the fox visit she didn’t believe him,

didn’t know why something so sharp would release its baby teeth.

All bite, all howl,

bloody claws and torn ears.

This is what she had been brought up to expect.

They lay on their stomachs on the hot porch floor

and watched the wind make the dust dance for two hours

until he appeared,

fur streaked with mud.

His tail dragged along the ground,

paws scrabbling at the bread the boy had left out for him.

The porch groaned and she got once glimpse of his almond eyes

before he was gone,

their secret visitor blending into the horizon.

[aninsomniacsink]

Scar Tissue

You were born inside a seashell,

for years your voice was so quiet

no one even knew your name.

Growing up somewhere so small

made your limbs curl in on themselves,

your fingers tendrils of ivy that turn blue in the cold.

No matter how far you travel

I swear your heart still beats to the crashing of ocean waves.

You knew that soaking it in salt water for all these years

would give it a layer of resilience.

When you spend so much of your life surrounded by salt

then tears are bound to hibernate beneath your eyelids,

ready to cause a tsunami one day.

This day, you are preparing for.

You have wrapped your heart in so many careful layers

hoping that it will survive the fall.

But the truth is,

it will withstand even that which you don’t want it to.

Your heart is a fortress,

it can soak up the pain and expel it once again.

If the worst day comes,

please do not let it break you.

Your heart is going to accumulate so many wounds over this life

but they will all harden to scar tissue overtime.

This heart will keep beating throughout it all,

this is the one thing you can rely on.

[aninsomniacsink]

Honeysuckle Nectar

Almost two years on and you are still the sweetest flavour I’ve ever tasted,

still the softest body I’ve ever slept next to.

On the grey days when my palate dulls to bland

I sometimes forget the taste of you,

forget the fire in your hands.

So I’m writing this for those days.

To make myself remember how good it is,

to remember why I stay and that he does love me

and that distance may be a knife

but I will not let it cut us in half.

We can choose to transcend it,

to ignore its leaden weight.

Maybe right now this feels like the toughest thing

but it keeps you breathing.

It keeps you full.

Remember this on the nights when the ache is too heavy;

the softness of his mouth as he stammers

I love you’s against your neck.

[aninsomniacsink]

This life is half breath and half regurgitating the night before until the moon looks less grey. It was always mud on my hands but squint hard enough and we’ll call it hope. Call it bone. Call it anything but truth.

Lonely poet makes her vows, aninsomniacsink (via aninsomniacsink)

[aninsomniacsink]

The half life of love

An adult luna moth’s entire life lasts only seven days,

they are born with no mouth

and have a frenzied search for a mate before they starve.

I read somewhere that charcoal beetles

will fly into a still burning forest fire

if they believe there is a potential mate burning inside.

Their sacrifice is brutal,

death in exchange for a few moments of love.

Their whole existence is created for one purpose.

We have thousands of mornings and night to live through.

There is no countdown on your heart,

you do not have to set your heart on fire for love.

Ten more autumns can go by and your pulse will beat

just as powerfully by itself.

Junot Díaz once said that the half life of love is forever,

but even without it

the summer breeze will still warm your skin.

[aninsomniacsink]

Spiced Moon

The girl, after months of mourning,

clutched love in her hands like blossom

and threw it to the wind.

She flew half way across the world,

craving the tundra of the unknown

cracked beneath her feet.

She entered a world of stagnant heat,

burning food and soft palms.

The moon scalped the sky and beneath it

they were wolves,

they were cleft of all they knew

and taught to walk again.

The girl, mouthful of pebbles,

hands dripping ink.

The girl, stumbled through the jungle

and learned to run.

Learnt to brace the humidity,

to slide the spice between her teeth.

The girl returned home,

skin shredded

and spine sharpened like a cactus.

[aninsomniacsink]

From boots to pen

She loved me first you know.

Before she discovered your magic,

she was mine.

With me, she could go anywhere.

The sun gleamed as we ran through fields,

chasing the slow burn of the red dogs coat.

Once a week we went to the stables,

I could feel her heart quicken

beneath the thundering hooves.

Tell me, do you make her feel like that?

Do you feel the throbbing in her veins?

You stole her from me,

year after year she took me outside less

until one day I heard her announce

that she didn’t have time anymore,

she was too busy,

too much work to do.

She waved you around like the answer to her prayers

and placed me at the back of the cupboard

to decay

among the dust

and other childhood ghosts.

[aninsomniacsink]

Mi corazón azul

The sky,

duck-egg blue and soft,

dripping across the horizon.

The dog howls,

scratches the peeling earth

as the trees crumble.

She sits in the chair,

stares at her book,

hands rippled with the years

that she wears so well.

She dreams of his eyes,

duck-egg blue and full of love.

No longer here to shine.

She remembers the first day,

his strong hands,

their chatter as he stepped off board,

the water below them,

deep and never ending and duck-egg blue.

[aninsomniacsink]

Spiced Moon

The girl, after months of mourning,

clutched love in her hands like blossom

and threw it to the wind.

She flew half way across the world,

craving the tundra of the unknown

cracked beneath her feet.

She entered a world of stagnant heat,

burning food and soft palms.

The moon scalped the sky and beneath it

they were wolves,

they were cleft of all they knew

and taught to walk again.

The girl, mouthful of pebbles,

hands dripping ink.

The girl, stumbled through the jungle

and learned to run.

Learnt to brace the humidity,

to slide the spice between her teeth.

The girl returned home,

skin shredded

and spine sharpened like a cactus.

[aninsomniacsink]

The half life of love

An adult luna moth’s entire life lasts only seven days,

they are born with no mouth

and have a frenzied search for a mate before they starve.

I read somewhere that charcoal beetles

will fly into a still burning forest fire

if they believe there is a potential mate burning inside.

Their sacrifice is brutal,

death in exchange for a few moments of love.

Their whole existence is created for one purpose.

We have thousands of mornings and night to live through.

There is no countdown on your heart,

you do not have to set your heart on fire for love.

Ten more autumns can go by and your pulse will beat

just as powerfully by itself.

Junot Díaz once said that the half life of love is forever,

but even without it

the summer breeze will still warm your skin.