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[aspoonfulofmoss]

22 august 2024

september.

how can, without a word, you leave

your seat across me cold

don't you remember the paper

butterfly chiseled from my fold?

don't you know the weight

of my head in your sheets?

don't you know the keloid scar

in my back where the flayed skin meets?

don't you remember the fit

of my arm in your palm

don't you remember, burning together,

the holy book of psalms?

even if you don't, i do.

i remember. i do.

i remember your mother's

cooking on my tongue

i remember your primrose seeds

rattling in my lungs

i remember your dog

nested snoring in my lap

i remember feeling tender

in the teeth of the trap

i remember your letters

to my hospital bed

i remember your eyes

once the leaves were all dead.

"aren't you going to eat?

have some of mine."

"play another for me.

bob dylan this time."

"have dinner here.

are you allergic to anything?"

arm on my arm: "you know,

you're amazing."

in distance submerged,

in august beset

i'll never forget.

i'll never forget.

[aspoonfulofmoss]

3 july 2024

september, there’s something so cruel in me.

i think my heart wants me to think you are all i will ever want. i feel it in my throat, in my chest: the sweetness seeping out from that drafty place (cold, bare, but aged somehow with squalor), heady like blood but not quite.

it’s mistaken.

like a dry leaf i skidded down the sidewalk this morning, and the sun was in my face though i waited for the night, and the snow was in my hair in july, and i was sweating in an icebox, and i was gasping for breath through a ventilator and you were in my head.

there was a sign, there. i was warned about the trap and i bit down and drank deeply like a beaten dog that doesn’t know to stay away. there was an indicator there, on the sidewalk, a flashing red flare in fresh glittering morass, and it told me to stop. it told me you don’t like me, and it told me stop hoping, and it told me you’d had enough, and it told me go home.

i didn’t go home. it was right. i was mistaken.

we’re watching a movie — your idea, your choice — and your nail is between your teeth. i say i’m tired and you say do you want to sleep? and i say i can’t. and you let me lay in your lap and touch my hairline with your fingertip and you breathe against my ear and for a couple seconds you just let me believe. you let me close my eyes and wait for a kiss. you let me squeeze your hand and mouth all the pretty, sour flowers i want you to taste from my hometown when we're older and we go there together.

no, you don’t. no, we didn’t. i haven’t seen you in months. i haven’t even tried.

you complain to me about your girlfriend over the phone. you want to see her and hold her and nothing seems farther in the universe than your love. you tell me her beauty makes you pray for the first time in years, and you tell me you think you were born to kiss the corner where her lips meet. you hold your hands to your mouth and kiss them and cry and say ‘it’s always her.’ and then, september, i say, ‘it’ll always be her. you are going to make her so happy. i promise you will find her again and again and again.’ and i want to take your hands but i don’t. you don’t touch me; you wave me goodbye. you say i love you.

your girlfriend loves you so much, september. you have a movielike passion which most people never know. i mean that. such a love it makes the sun revile in anger and chew through the blackness of night, and snow heaves through a bright summer day. there it is; that’s why i feel so hot, so cold. this is certainly why nothing feels right.

you fly cross-country to see her soon. i’ve never seen you happier. and then i feel it in my throat, in my chest; it’s mistaken.

[aspoonfulofmoss]

1 july 2024

if a romantic is to adore nature, let it be known

i tried when i, for myself, held nature’s fingers alone.

while i was there some rain thought to pour

and for rapture i sprawled open on the verdant floor

shan’t i enjoy the rain as it is;

tapping the hot june grass with a dolorous hiss?

but bedding in grass i could not help but muse

and pity the wildlife; september, what must it think of you?

the snapdragons, i’m sure, begrudge you your tenderness

tree-sap still seeks the smatter it left on your cheek, i’d guess

when dandelion tufts rove with the wind and sunflowers bend anew

did the old poets know: the flowers are all in search of you?

september, you are indifferent to me – perhaps worse –

and for it, the mirror of you in everything beautiful is my curse.

but for god’s sake, the primrose, the cattails, the ringlets of vine

love another, but let the perennial remain mine.

if a romantic is to adore nature, let it be known

i laid in that grass til i was a moss-covered crone.

[aspoonfulofmoss]

29 june 2024

september

you lay all bathed in leather

your hair like stalks cropped by winter

your wrists upturned to show the moon

the beaded bracelets from your lover

you think and long and long and long.

september

i lay forlorn in fetters

my heartbeat pushing you up my throat

my eyes tracing color in the black ceiling

my palm clasped over a peeling mouth

though i told you 'goodnight' hours ago.

september

i feel besotted; it's just the bender

i drink your dreams of someone else

and the surety that she's the love of your life

all vinous and bloodlike and painful.

i think and long and long and long.

[aspoonfulofmoss]

24 june 2024

cw suicide

i watch teenage roller-skaters like birds flit by my window

i am so old now; seventeen now

i listen to the cacophony of fabric and saliva as the

lovers kiss in hiding under the science wing stairs.

their hands perch places i’ve never been touched

the thigh, then the hand, then the heart, then the cheek

their eyes are closed quiet

the sound of senseless love coils up and

it stings me sharp and bitter.

in such reflections i went to class

i sat and read and listened

as the world sprouted and sung about me.

to whatever entity bestows liveliness and spring

i must have seemed an outrageous gnat

stupid and tiny and unthinkably blank.

my time will come.

i am stupider than seventeen;

i scorn literary magazines and weep at blank pages

i tear garbage from my guts as the

real poets watch me mock their medium with nonsense.

an author visits my school and

she is more beautiful than an author ought to be

the shameless grin too sweet and pink as

she displays the hardback she published at thirteen

the fullness in her hands and reflection in her eyes

disgusted my own empty palms.

i left the auditorium and put my fingers in my throat

to be certain there was something in me to expel

and there was. it did not satiate.

she said i could write if my heart was in it.

i was peeling my skin to the quick of my nails

and smudged the blood on my sleeve.

my time will come.

i was so young when

i saw an old man arching into the Golden Gate

i watched through the fog as he

breached the barriers to salvation

he looked into the water; his gaze crossed

the whole span of empty drop

his eyes held the most fervent reverence

the sweat-slicked palm loosened on

his barely-gripped bar;

in a puff of breath he was gone.

he fell gently, like snow. people called after him.

my mother shrieked in horror.

his eyes swallowed such rapturous peace

shielded in rheum as they were; i almost thought they were mine;

they held such lordlike peace.

my time will come. my time will come.

[aspoonfulofmoss]

cw self harm, implied ed

april 14 2024

i am scarcely angry. i would call that a certain and humiliating, desperate kind of cowardice, though im sure someone out there calls it a virtue. but tonight, tonight i am very angry.

i am angry with my parents, for their boisterous bragging about how well they know their son (daughter? child? not that it matters) while the son lay rotting from the inside like an oozing fruit, wrinkled and tender, packed tightly with maggots.

i am angry with my sister for her constant admonishing of me for things i haven't done, and indeed for things i have. i am angry that she may very well have to know she outlived me, someday.

i am angry with j and d for possessing their comical apathy towards my deteriorating state. i am angry that they do not care enough to force me to become well again. if they begged me to stop i would. perhaps even if they asked offhandedly. perhaps if my hand was squeezed or the pressure of a fingertip drawing an arc gently over the curve of my inner wrist, the layered lines there. but that is not the truth. they will not. so i will not stop.

i am angry that nobody wants to help me. i am angry that nobody cares, for somehow i want them to despite hoping for the opposite. what a piece of work is man.

most of all i have always been angry with me, mostly for things i am not rather than for things that i am. i just barely know what i am well enough to loathe myself. i am angry that i am nobody else. i am angry that when i realize that jolting, wild fact, that of my own existence and its irrevocability, i turn it upon myself and make myself more wretched. i am angry that my fingers meet the back of my palate when i am filled with detestation for my deplorable frame, and the gluttonous flesh hanging superfluously off of it. i am angry with here and there, the hip, the ankle, the jaw, anyplace (and it is everyplace) that is too soft, not sharp enough, the consequence of a weekend cake or a lunch, for once. i am angry and i would be happy to take the hammer to the skin and shatter the bones beneath into twinkling dustpiles, like glass.

upon myself i feel a sort of anger, but the more i repeat it the less certain i am that it is correct. the teeth, the snarl, the primitivity of the word wrath suits it far better. what i feel for myself is something sour, dank, sharp, coiling; something that bites down and drinks deeply. my wrath is something neolithic. perhaps biologically satiating. it will never be enough. i will always want more, and so long as everything keeps on not caring, it will be mine.

but now im very exhausted and i don't much feel angry anymore. maybe that's all it ever was.

[aspoonfulofmoss]

cw self harm

4 april 2024

i run fevers at night. i don't

know why.

but i at nights fall into fits

and fumble blindly for

someplace, a shaving kit.

when there are moments like these

and these moments are plenty

for im seldom at ease,

when with fever i am wild

slashing my arms, making mess and

screaming like a just-injured child

i think of how there is no one to call

by my hand and blame, profoundly alone

as i stutter and gasp through it all

and i think of how, hilariously, there is

nobody to blame, but me

for everyplace i am valueless.

i wouldn't know what to say anyway,

if i had someone to whom i could

explain the advancement of my decay

nobody loves the wretched, the ugly, the sick.

which i suppose is okay, on second thought

there's probably little that can be done now.

i run fevers at night. i think

it's because im very lonely.

[aspoonfulofmoss]

3 april 2024

when reflect on the greats of canon

i try to put my words to slay the foe

commit the eye to meter, and forego

make the page a room to ponder and plan in.

but my eye conjures the most fanciful

yields of the exquisite, sublime, swimming

on seas, in supple skies singing some thing

that's sweet, and green, and softly pacifying

my ache, my choke, my noose, my bluing ring

and knows that word is man's neolithic king.

but. when i reflect - and i must do so -

i see naught but my colors so spoiled

and set to write: thankless, fettering, a toil

and dully ache - on what i cannot know.

when i reflect on the greats of canon

i cast my glace to my inert pen there

so i lay prone in stale and night-slicked air

and lose the name of action.

[aspoonfulofmoss]

2 april 2024

i am black soil, one man shouts to his god.

i am black soil and i wish

to live among life.

his maker replied,

the soil is fashioned to lay still

to form a foundation for life

to be unseamed by roots

and careless tapping rains

and bake in the feral sun

to be quaint and nourish

to be quiet and bring up

fennel, orchids, yams, and grasses.

that's not fair, one man shouts to his god.

i am black soil and i can nurse life

but i wish for my own.

his maker replied

i know. but for what were you fashioned?

have you hands to paint? a mouth to scream?

you were molded to the palm

of a dedicious and rooted fate

to bear your name and purpose

to stay inert and stupid

and all your life gaze up at

a lifeless germinating night.

one man is black soil.

he is not ready to capsize the dead, but he will be.

one man is black soil, and was silent.

[aspoonfulofmoss]

1 april 2024

there still lay a greatness in me

aggressive dictatorships linger in the throne

impressed in the earth and struck in the tree

you know that this smeared fingerprint

and this fatal distant glint

impose their power even now

linger like depressions in someone's stead

demanding i feel that it's dead

more than it ever asked me to feel it was alive.

there still lay this greatness in me

pruning from too long in the coldest of the sea

thus the totality of water sloshing in the lungs

and the suffocation of simple pleasure

while the hope grows emaciated

with disuse.

thus to emerge from the tepid water

and surrender to endless breathlessness

gasping forever for air.

there still lay such greatness in me

if i wanted something to know well

there it is. there it is out there on the plain

small and insignificant with distance

ready and capable with a blade

loud and juvenile with prematurity

black and bleeding with duality

hot and fettered with brutality

trembling and invalid with a cane.

there still lay some greatness in me

of a kind who severs me intimately.

[aspoonfulofmoss]

14 feb 2024

torture accented with genius is the worthy kind

and misery is the vice of a sharpened mind

but not us all can mold it into beauty

not us all can realize brilliance so duly

not us all can alchemize melancholy into gold

some pain is raw to be tasted and told

as it is.

and that's what this is.

pain, for i am a beast.

bleed, for you can bleed

want of what you need

for you can want

and you can need.

and so i am this intelligenceless beast

of rabid, foaming throat and snapping teeth

it hunts, it sleeps, it bleeds and it screams

screams although that's as useless as it seems

so its hollow heart is insulated with dust

and by the morn it will be dead in the cage just

as it is.

[aspoonfulofmoss]

8 february 2024

ever since the flood when i

was taken pity upon

by some god, i am assaulted with

the sun, with morning, that falls

then rises then falls again

i watch the world

carpeted with blue and nipped with foam

slobered with the ugly gloss of

the sun, of life, stewing hot air and febrile

since the flood.

ever since the flood that i saw

living loving beautiful things

capsized and clinging in knots of arms

with much more to live for than i

i, summoned by a council

that placed me down immured in the open sea

i, who belonged noplace. i who

lay in a lone damp boat

riding the beat of the wave: a moribund pulse

since the flood.

ever since the flood i

float abreast bobbing bloated bodies

the sopping husks of all the men and women

i might have been,

and the lovers that followed them

into skyscraper-high waters

as i sit in a boat

above the waters

below all dead and living things, thus alone

since the flood.

ever since the flood i

break black bread with noah

and before him, utnapishtim

but they were not so lonely

nor so close to the sun

nor pruning their tan rowing hands in the water

nor palming the lives they lived and loved

floating just like plankton now in the

wine-dark sea, nothing and everywhere

since the flood.

ever since the flood i

watch the agonizing sun rise, and so fall again

and ever since the flood i

have been casting an anchor with wasted arms

and ever since the flood i

have watched it sink past what i can see

and ever since the flood i

have wished to follow it

home. it has been four years

since the flood.

[aspoonfulofmoss]

5 february 2024

and then of course there were your hands

teasing at the walls of a hollow

touching the surface

of my sensitive

emptiness

it was the slightest touch,

an infinitesimal pressure of the

smooth

firm

flesh of a palm,

unweathered by years of labor.

true that the winds every morning

shook the trees,

seesawed the branches

up and down, and

true that the tree always surrendered

languidly to the current

of the wind. like a tree i

let love (love?) have its way till i

bled so much it made me embarrassed

and when i reached my

mangled clawed hands

into the air i fumbled for you

and begged for the kiss

of my killer.

blindly i rummaged in the nothingness

like you might materialize before me and soothe

the infinite

brutalities

of yearning,

and save me from

a devilish hound.

my hands drew back empty,

and i stared into my open palms

like i'd suddenly lost something

that had been there

mere moments before.

my god.

if my palms are empty,

and my wound is bleeding,

and the branches are hollow enough

to bow to the breeze,

my god,

why all this heaviness?

[aspoonfulofmoss]

4 february 2024

hey babe would you still love me if i felt lonely to the point that i felt the isolation might drive me mad because i see everyone around me having deep, fulfilling, lifelong friendships and romantic relationships meanwhile i feel like a spectator to the human experience of interpersonal camaraderie because i don't have any friends and nobody loves me or wants to talk to me so i feel that i repel all that is good and kind and like there is something in my soul, if there exists such a thing, that is missing at such an innate primal level that nobody has ever or would ever or will ever perceive me as something worth time and love and attention and tenderness and i feel a rot inside of me like a mold that won't dislodge from the lining of my skin so that every time i look in the mirror im filled with a disgust so visceral and unbearable that i don't know how im going to go the rest of my life in a body so repugnant without mutilating myself to death and feeling more proud of it than any other deed i have sewn

also if i was a worm

[aspoonfulofmoss]

cw suicide

31 january 2024

so now i gaze upon

the single chained thurible

swinging like

like a child on a playset

like a pendulum, rhythmic and unwatched

rhythmic for no reason for he is unwatched.

so now i gaze

swinging like

like windhoisted branches up and down

like hair tied up as a woman runs unpursued

running for no reason for she is unpursued.

so now

swinging like

like a dead man

with a fatal kink in the neck

swinging and swinging for no reason

dead for no reason for he

for i...

so now i gaze upon

the single chained thurible

and the bell is tolling - no, swinging -

to declare the end of morning service.

[aspoonfulofmoss]

cw self harm implied

26 january 2024

i am very diseased

my disease does not spread through air or fluid but finds its stake in the big black pit of a gentle gaze, in the flashing of the gums in a genuine smile, in the folds in the corners of the eyes as the muscles of the mouth stretch and touch those in the eye corners. i do really want to be loved in this way, with a smile and the threading of fingers through my tender scalp and my clumpy mass of hair. i really do want to be tended to like a baby. i really do want to be held like a child. but this is how the disease spreads, and there must be some reason that nobody has decided i am worth such a risk.

i lay on my bed, i cry a little, i lay and turn like i can write the disease out of my body. but the spore has grown roots in my skin (mold is not supposed to do this) and it will be with me forever. i am the favorite gestating place of this kind of spore. for i am warm and dark and hollow and have much in the way of yielding pathetically to whatever comes to harm me.

'stay in bed. don't write. don't drink. don't eat. don't sleep. stay in bed awhile. lay wasting and dying and pile up clean clothes at the foot of your mussed up sheets and don't put them away and just stay in bed awhile.' it says to me.

'why?' i always think. 'okay.' i always reply.

disease likes me because i do not fight it. i am still and very quiet and only whine and cry a little bit and i am so good and quiet for the disease, i promise, i really am. it is the only thing that wants to touch me and keep me company.

every day i wake up in my bed with an ache. every day i wake up and the skin of my thighs clings to my nightpants where blood has dried. i go about class and worksheets and my job at the theater and lunch alone by the lockers with my disease, and my ache, and my pants sticking to my legs, and a pile of clothes on my bed back home, and the rest of the world passes by unseeingly, torturously, passing by my diseased wretched form like stupid cattle passing by dead leaves as they graze the plains.

i think a lot about ivan ilyich with his floating kidney and bazarov with the splotches of blood poisoning on his stomach. i wonder if i will know when the disease begins to kill me.

[aspoonfulofmoss]

hiii

this is my personal blog for poetry/writing/general musings!!! this is mostly a personal portfolio to organize my stuff and put it all in one place. im making a blog for it because i used to handwrite in a journal but then i lost the journal ergo i lost all of the stuff i wrote which was shit. and a google doc isn't the best for organization. thus tumblr poetry blog like an honest to god 2014 teenage girl 🫡

this is meant as an archive and NOT to gain traction!! please do not reblog my work if you decide to have a look at it :)

this is also to show my friends if they ever ask to see my stuff which hasn't happened much cause i have very few friends but!!! someday maybe

content warnings will be provided for poems and prose with triggering subjects