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[ainevsuniverse]

company on a park bench

i find myself looking through old pictures,

searching for old feelings.

my best friend looking beautiful and free, dancing on the sidewalk.

seventeen photos of the pot of tea I ordered at brunch,

it was chamomile and my mom mixed spoonfuls of honey in.

the first time I went to the school library,

the glass windows with carefully placed potted plants.

i cried in the bathroom because I missed my parents,

then i went to philosophy.

the girl i was two summers ago,

with long and frizzy hair,

wearing blouses I couldn’t fill in yet,

and running until the idea of smallness felt achievable.

the trees from my windshield,

they blurred together in greens and oranges,

i drove around my tiny town that was home to all the people i loved.

in the city it’s hard to find places to cry,

to let your chest heave and tighten your arms around your stomach, because maybe if you hold on a little bit tighter the slower your heart will beat.

there is no privacy in a park bench, but the old man scribbling on his crossword doesn’t mind the company.

[ainevsuniverse]

untitled

You tell me how you cried with her,

and now she will cry with you.

I think it’s funny how life turns like that, keeps moving and doesn’t pause for a moments time 

to let me say goodbye,

to kiss her forehead one last time and feel how she soaks in my tears like they’re her own,

almost like she is saying, 

“let me take your girlish sadness away, I know how much it’s hurting you.”

I can’t stop looking at pictures.

I cannot fathom never getting to take any more.

[ainevsuniverse]

Summer standing still

Journal Entry  9/17/21

I hate the discomfort

of being far from you.

There is no probability of walking into the same supermarket

at the same time.

I can’t daydream about you sitting on my doorstep,

a bouquet in your hands because you hated how I bought the cheap gas station ones for my nightstand.

There is no knot in my chest when I fall asleep, giddy like a little girl,

because I knew I would see you the next day.

I remember wishing the fall would never come.

Wishing the summer would stand still and keep rewinding.

Maybe, if I asked you to hold me tight enough

time would keep still

                                        just for me.

It’s hard to convince myself I still hold any weight in your heart,

it’s hard to imagine you saved a space for me.

Time never stopped moving for you,

You always kept your feet planted firmly on the ground.

Unlike me, whimsical and wishing, always hopeful you would save a sliver of yourself for me.

I begged you not to replace me,

                                                   because I was terrified to do my own replacing.

That would mean moving on,

Saying goodbye to the first thing that felt comfortable and stable and

safe.

Admitting to myself you meant what you said

when you called me sweet and soft but I’m so sorry,

once August slips away it’ll be over.

Admitting,

I don’t hate you and I never will,

No matter how many times I try to convince myself- you were all things good.

[ainevsuniverse]

My heart is a clementine to be peeled

I think about you more than I’d like to admit,

My biggest accomplishment of last Tuesday wasn’t

an A on my philosophy exam,

but not texting you again.

I think I hate everything about you now,

that is progress,

Right?

But more so;

I hate myself for believing in the softness of your arms,

for mistaking your boredom for admiration.

I hate you for your selfishness,

for taking and taking, ripping me of my ripe fruit,

that I grew and gave and begged you to take,

but now I’m sitting here with rotten berries at my feet.

You decided you fancied someone else's

and God I feel so confused,

I have baskets and baskets with no one to hold.

Do you understand,

just what I’d be willing to do,

the pieces of my peaches I’d cut just so,

for your lunch and dinner.

I cannot teach you empathy,

I cannot force you my fruit my love my heart peeled open on the sidewalk,

I think I’ll be rotten and broken for a long time,

I think I’ll have to reteach myself how to garden for a love that is not yours.

And that will take so long,

because that was all I had ever wanted.

[ainevsuniverse]

Being good, being messy

I’m trying so hard to be good

           I take my vitamins 

          and set reminders in my phone

          to buzz in my pocket and remind me to put my socks in the dryer.

I sit in the library for hours on end,

hands sticky from breakfast still,

I can’t go home

I can’t go to the washroom until I finish.

          Even if I sit between the bookshelves and cry

          isn’t that better?

than not trying

letting myself fall back into comfortable failure.

        I’m trying so hard for you, 

        but you don’t see it anymore.

I just hope you think fondly of me,

not of the mess of a girl crying in your arms.

Not of the mess of a girl begging for every part of you

and you saying nothing.

[ainevsuniverse]

Sickly sweet

I wish so badly,

that I could enjoy your lingering fingers

on my hips,

how softly and sweetly and a way I only adored in romance movies.

In the moment I do,

it feels as if there is no room or floor and it’s just me and you and the way you’re looking at me. But then you drive me home and I think about how far your hand is resting from mine,

and it becomes clear that I am not a first

or a favorite

or so special

In the way you always will be for me.

And I feel like a silly little girl,

wrapped up in my own head and fantasies,

and I feel so sick because jesus did you say these things to her?

or do you still,

[ainevsuniverse]

Hot showers

There is a softness about me that I wished away,

for so long after the way you gazed and admired it.

In ways I didn’t understand because it had never crossed my mind.

You made me turn the faucet so scalding,

scrubbing and scraping until I was chapped and blistering.

I wanted to feel clean and

everytime I looked at you all I felt was the grime and dirt tucked so deeply, Not even the never ending stream of my shower could rid it.

I never thought too deeply about it,

but for the first time everything about myself made me uncomfortable and disgusted.

It felt like I was giving in,

abiding by your dirty fantasy,

And I couldn’t conceive how to escape you and the gaze that followed me every minute.

I didn’t want to be small or young or so innocent and I hate how much you loved it about me. Maybe it’s why I wasted myself away,

showed myself in ways I once thought so special and sequestered.

But then again that was my own doing,

and last I checked, you’re doing just fine.

[ainevsuniverse]

Hair/Womanhood

When I was in sixth grade I chopped all of my hair off. In one fell swoop I shifted from looking like my elementary school photos to a completely different person. Looking back, I wanted to confuse people because I myself was confused. I was one of the first girls in middle school to grow boobs, and all of a sudden my chopstick legs became meatier and shifted when I walked. I was a happy kid, I can promise you that, and I didn’t hate many things. But for a very long time I despised being a girl and everything that came with being feminine. And so I blamed my discomfort on Taylor Swift and eyeliner, tank tops and colorful pens, music from the radio and long pretty hair.

I don’t think we as a society discuss how strange and uncomfortable puberty is for many kids. I felt so awkward and obtrusive; I wanted more than anything to be small again. I used to sit in my room and look up “thigh gap workouts” on Pinterest and do pointless activities for hours. Suddenly I had shifted into something I couldn’t recognize. In my mind I was still a child, but I had been thrust violently into a world I didn’t understand.

I thought if I took away all the soft feminine parts of myself then I would feel like myself again, and I could melt into the background. I now recognize how harmful this internalized misogyny was to my development as a young girl. Entering high school I felt embarrassed by how intensely I had rejected my own femininity, and I felt compelled to almost prove to my peers that I was just like them; I had “gotten over” whatever strange phase took control of me when I was younger. I tried my best to be everything I thought a young girl should be. No one told me what to do, but I thought maybe if I were a bit quieter and softer and smaller even still, then that meant I successfully could be a teenage girl.

This past summer I was sitting in the passenger seat of my best friend's car, eating Taco Bell and reminiscing about the fact that this food tasted good and I wouldn’t cry about the calories stuffed into a CrunchWrap Supreme that night. I turned to her and said, “I think I hold all my femininity in my hair.” I don’t remember what she said, but she looked at me like I was insane. Hair has always been a symbol of my identity, and has always represented something so significant in my life. I cut my hair off in middle school because I was terrified of growing up, and I let it grow long because I was afraid of being perceived as anything less than a pretty girl.

Last week I cut my hair for the first time since seventh grade. The dead ends itched my neck anyway, and it felt like my hair was weighing me down, anchoring me to the same spot. Every morning I draw black wings on the corners of my eyes, maybe to make my brown eyes pop or maybe because I like the preciseness and simplicity of it. I started embracing this identity of girlhood when I had the realization that femininity was not something made to confine me. When I heard the diligent snip of silver scissors at my shoulder, I felt like it was snapping the chains of whatever anchor was sitting on the ocean floor, grasping on for dear life to my bruised but healing skin.

[ainevsuniverse]

Inside looking out

I am sitting in a glass box,

feeling quite calm.

Water droplets linger on my thighs,

Much too shallow to pool around my ankles.

When I look outside my soundless box,

I can watch the world go by.

It’s all so clear;

I can hear your laughter when I

press my ear just so.

When I stand on my tippy toes,

I can catch the swish of your walk,

the toss of your shirt.

I’m not quite sure how I ended up

In this box of mine,

I think I built it myself.

Not on purpose of course,

you gave me the glass and I constructed it.

At first just the floor,

a wall,

then the next.

You brought buckets of water

from your own flood

and I-

I poured them in.

How could I deny such a gift?

Now the soft splashing has made its way to my hips-

but no matter.

I wonder how it is,

You promised you’d come inside,

as soon as I was done,

but I can see now

You just wanted to watch the show.

Or

Maybe all you ever wanted, was to know I was trapped from the inside

looking out,

the icy water sending goosebumps to my lips Quivering,

but so Good

And so Quiet.

I don’t even say a word, as you hand me the last of your supply,

And seal my lid.

[ainevsuniverse]

I have acne in my Intestines

I can't believe I looked that way at 15,

Everything soft and untouched,

My only insecurities laying in my too pink cheeks,

Heating when I was embarrassed or proud or lying.

Now I am almost 18,

Red dots line my cheeks,

The same ones once comparable to porcelain.

Even when the stinging bumps stop protruding to the touch,

For months reminders of them remain,

Stained like red wine on my face.

Everything about me now is impure,

My outsides feel just like my insides.

The book I read when I was little,

By Rohl Dahl,

About bad people being ugly,

Kind people being pretty,

It feels true.

I’m kind to everything but myself,

My fingers are unforgiving to every blemish,

Squeezing it into a worse fault then if I just left it alone.

But I can't leave it alone,

Every moment of every second I am thinking of how I can be better, prettier, more likeable

to people I never stopped for a moment to wonder if I even like.