c-poetjoycciwi

[c-poetjoycciwi]

“Oh hun, it’s midnight.

Don’t tell me you want me now if you’re not sure you’ll feel the same in the morning.”

[c-poetjoycciwi]

I think I miss you in the mornings. Not in the clingy, toxic, 'I need you' sort of way. I'm having a good day, I'm doing ok, I promise.

But it's odd. I miss you in the moments I feel most like myself. I want to exist in that joy with you-

I know we've cried and talked and slept together, it hasn't been too long since I've heard from you. And yet.

Here I am, still checking my phone to make sure you still want me to tell you about my day. I know you've promised me so much- I want to believe you, and I think, for once, I do.

You can have space, please, take your space. Your life is yours and mine is mine, and I like it that way.

At the end of a long day, all I want is to know you're there. You're ok. That there is love waiting in the wings of every moment I miss you.

I'll cut you a peach and slide it through your door, I'll remember how you told me to be kind to myself, and know that someone cares.

You ask if I've ever felt this way with someone before. It's easy to say I have, but in all honesty, I'm not sure. "This is such couple shit," we laughed.

For a moment, I couldn't help but imagine what coming home to you could mean. You quietly say you've wished for that- and still do. But you give me space today, to cry and love and sleep without you.

You love me in a way that lets me breathe. Do you know how badly I want you to feel just as safe and cared for? I want to be your person just as you are becoming mine.

How terrifying this is, the intimate nerves of looking into your eyes and knowing you are in love with me, as you say. 'IN love,' quite intense isn't it? Enough to let the blue parts of my mind seep through onto your shoulder.

I think I'm rambling. I think I'm trying to say something, but the feelings haven't made themselves at home just yet.

I want to experience more poem-worthy life events with you, is what I'm trying to say. I never want to say goodbye to you, is what I mean.

What if we spend Christmas together, what if I never had to lose the feeling of my fingers through your hair- maybe those thoughts belong to us only at midnight. Where we can build a life greater than our dreams.

I guess all I meant to say is- your life is yours, my life is mine, and I'll miss you again in the morning.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

Life is constantly creating unwritten poems.

It doesn't cease, it doesn't slow down, the more words I learn, the more I can describe and name these feelings, which have paralyzed me.

I want to not only love and cry and dream- I want to write about how it feels to exist as a human with a soul.

For other humans to find comfort in the fact that maybe we really aren't in a simulation and we are similar than we think.

Or maybe for all of the jealous angels and demons who wonder what it's like to be alive.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

History holds no relevance to my life, I know this is not true, although there is a purpose to this. I pride myself on creating more than I consume. Consuming is for those who have nothing else to add. Audience members of a movie theater taking in every scene, laughing at each joke, and leaving exactly the same. Continually looking over one’s shoulder, only to not repeat it, seems redundant. In a world of artificial creativity, why can’t we create more introspective minds instead of search engines? Perhaps there is a point in saying my art would only be expanded with a greater knowledge of those who formerly came up with the concept of creativity. I admire art museums and the idea of cave paintings, isn’t that enough? Let me write from my completely original thoughts. They are original, right? Maybe the past can answer some of my repetitive questions, I can’t be the only one to have had them. Young teenage boys need to stop becoming history majors and begin to become writers and philosophers. We’re missing philosophers in this generation. It’s not that we’ve concluded God exists- but we have subconsciously concluded he is absent from us in this current age. All politicians should be philosophers, as Walt Whitman once said. I think I agree. We repeat history too much already, the fact every middle school kid knows which guns were used in war isn’t doing us much good when we ask the same ‘why are we here’ with no answer every corner we turn. School has always felt pointless because we aren’t even trying to reach a point- simply recycling expired knowledge that will soon rot in years when we discover anything new. We’re leaving no marks if we’re only passing down information from one generation to the next. Read the book I wrote. Read the book he wrote. Read the book he said he wrote. (That’s how we get to a place of worshipping the Bible, I think) “What if my mark isn’t good enough?” She said. What could ‘good enough’ or ‘not good enough’ possibly entail? The marks on cave walls and dolls from BC never asked if they were good enough, they simply were because someone made them to be. Was this Gods intention with us? To create something good and nothing more? Yet he made the mistake of our consciousness seeing everything more and turning it into art. Stop escaping life, stop using pills and sex to forget you exist and start intentionally choosing to. Don’t live simply because you don’t know how to tie a noose- but because you have additions no one else will ever have throughout history or the future. Every book will one day burn with the suns demise. In the meantime I’d rather write a million books from the snowflake uniqueness of my own head than repeat facts every person from now until time forgets them will pass down. I want to be the subject which gets passed down. Not the learner but the teller. Sparking others thoughts in later years, giving a teenager their first existential crisis until they die and give another to their grandchild. Isn’t this the point of it all until some greater power reveals some other purpose? For now I’m content with my poems. I hope you can be too.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

Queer bodies leave their memories on my lips. The rings formerly on the joints of my fingers, now resting at the foot of their bed. I fall asleep to their voice, they call me pretty and count my spotty freckles with their eyes. No pressure except the right kind, everything good, everything wanted, everything unholy. The butterflies in my stomach find their way out in bruises and bite marks against their skin. They hum a song I haven’t heard before, but my heart recognizes. My chest is exposed to only those who will treat it right. Awe and careful gazes, a poke or two. Restricting cloth tightens around my ribs, their hands expand my lungs with puppeteer strings as they remove each clasp. Apologies, apologies, apologies- slow breath on my neck and clasped hands praying for forgiveness. Will this become part of my testimony or one of my few regrets in this limited life? Fogging windows and first kisses- forbidden love in the parking lot of nothing important. I think this is what being nineteen is for. I can come back to church when my hair is gray and I’m not quite as new to the whole being gay thing.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

I am not bound by typical vocabulary. I call myself every gendered term and latin bug name under the rain, and they are all accurate in describing my soul. The term ‘soul’ itself I see as a poem. An abstract concept of what makes up a person, beyond them- beyond skin. Why can’t my theoretical soul be made up of genderless colors? Or is that too close to comparing myself to a god?

[c-poetjoycciwi]

I call myself ‘boy’ in a poetic way. One with a middle part and dirt under his nails.

Black T-shirts shroud my body in a way that lets the mirror look so much more appealing. A feminine boy though, acne and a soft face. A round smile, but mine.

I sit with my legs spread and my hands behind my head, elbows on opposite ends of the earth. What a boy, what a boy, I dream.

Only those who could love me see this side of me, the soft masculine side, the part of me that longs to not only be a boy- but a comfortable one.

One who is seen exposed and loved by those around him, the kind of boy who melts at the touch of a beautiful girl and learns to cry because of her smile.

Bruise my knees, please. Make love to me in the way only a boyish soul can. Kiss me with sweat stained lips.

I’ll never grow tired of the rain. I’ll never regret cutting my hair or seeing myself as a clumsy love-sick boy. Writing letters to my lovers and holding ants in my palms, I can’t help but wish you were here.

My childhood girl self would look at me now and admire me, I hope. A paint covered artist with bright blue-ish eyes and hope written on his shoulders.

His. His. His. How dare I compare my pronouns to that of Gods. How dare I say I sometimes feel I am one in my act of transforming.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

As a manic daughter picks apart her fingernails, bleeding more than she should and sobbing in her car.

An unintentional emotional punching bag for a marriage she didn’t want anything to do with- leaving her spinning, pacing, leaving welts in the carpet of her room.

The same songs play on repeat carving holes in her skull. Rocking, shaking, wishing to die in silence.

Her parents who are still sharing a silent bed, never noticed the scars she gave herself when she was fourteen.

They never heard the screen door open and close in the middle of the night. The pills she took to feel something tangible.

Telling her the fridge was full of champagne, as his eyes are full of too much trust.

Her brain knows their melting rings aren’t her fault, but her body makes it her problem. Forgetting to fill her lungs from the weight of being another parent.

Her brother’s eyes are bloodshot and the mistakes he’s making have no safety net with immature adults above him- I’m sorry she’s trying her best.

She never asked to be a parent to her parents. Her best isn’t close to a true mother’s hug.

She only begins to cry when she’s alone, knowing her father can’t comfort her in the same way she does for him.

What a place for a daughter to be. Someone who’s not even sure she was ever meant to be a daughter in the first place.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

Two parallel melting bodies

Drifting into opposite thoughts.

Dreams of something more than us,

A life outside of this one.

I pray you’ll be there when I wake up,

I pray this lasts longer than we think it will,

I pray you’ll remember the sound of my tears hitting the phone and never lose sympathy in the same way others have.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

We’ve known each other for less than a week. Maybe that’s about a year in lesbian time. The calendar days seem short but the conversations lasted forever.

I hope today feels like another year.

Maybe eventually it’ll turn into forever too.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

I am typically fairly generous when it comes to the words ‘I love you.’

I hand them out like candy on Halloween to open receiving arms or grabby hands. If you have found your way to my doorstep, you are receiving the gift of love from me and words to go with it.

I don’t like the idea of saying ‘I love you’ being so serious.

So why am I terrified with you? I guess I want them to mean something. I don’t want the words to be tucked away along with every other best friend and sibling you also say ‘I love you’ to.

It’s too soon anyways, isn’t it? Not for my standards, but ‘love’ seems like too strong of a word for a person I’ve known for less than a week. I could be wrong. I’m figuring this out too, isn’t that beautiful?

‘I love you’

Is only what I whisper in my mind and beg to tell you when the time is right. Only if it’s true. You don’t have to say it back- but please, all I ask is mean it if you do.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

“What was just- shitty of them.”

I told her for praising my bare minimum behaviors of respect and appreciation and love.

“And it was also good of you. You need to understand that.”

As if my actions don’t count because they are simply the bar. The bar is lowered and I am meeting it where it should be- that is not praise worthy.

But it is good.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

I think I wish I liked you less. Then I could get a grip on this, a handle, find accurate views of you in my recollection instead of doubting if you even exist.

I think I dreamt of you. Created you, somehow. You’re one of the girls from my dreams, I know you are.

I’m sorry if this is overwhelming. I promise I don’t mean anything more than you’d like me to.

But I think I now know how Justin felt while singing ‘what the heck I gotta do to be with you?’

[c-poetjoycciwi]

I want to apologize a thousand times over for making you cry.

I know you’d say I didn’t make you cry. That maybe it isn’t my fault I haven’t yet written about that night in your car.

I am so sorry you’re sad. Not hurt, you said. But sad.

“Don’t apologize. It’s ok to be sad.”

Not here. Not like this. Not when you read what I write and know it won’t be like this forever.

A little longer, I can tell you that for certain. I wish I could promise forever. But I don’t think I can promise anything for longer than a week.

I think I know how everything will go and suddenly I don’t believe in God and my parents never loved each other.

I’m not lying when I say I love you. I never was. Putting together a future based on that fact is what I’m trying to figure out.

Part of what’s exciting is not knowing. Isn’t it?

Bittersweetly dreadful, I know. I wish I could see your eyes last night and the tears that filled them.

But at the same time I don’t think I’d be able to look at your face without sobbing in apologies.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

I know this is a fixation. I tend to do this with people more often than I’d like.

I want this to be more than that. I want this to last. I don’t want to be so nervous or scared, I simply want to know you.

Maybe a dumb wish. Maybe an impossible one. Maybe this will be nothing more than a few really good nights and days- a summer fling I’ll think about when I hear Chappell Roan.

All I can say is I am happy to be known by you. For an hour or for a lifetime.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

I see so many posts to send you. And yet I refrain from overwhelming or annoying you.

But who would send posts when I can create art and original poems from the crevices of my mind for you.

[c-poetjoycciwi]

I have never been so nervous around someone in my life.

Is that healthy? Is that ok?

I scroll through endless posts thinking of what to say. What to comment and how to word things right. I put off posting these poems for days because I’m scared you’ll hate me if I push things too far. I panicked when I cried in front of you.

And I know you’re just you- but that’s the thing there is no ‘just you.’

Maybe you’re right. Maybe I do think you’re too beautiful in the sense I’m not sure how to act around you when your eyes meet mine.

I’m still learning. And yet I wish I was God who knew everything and you didn’t have to witness my awkward struggles and mistakes. Maybe that’s part of vulnerability though. Clumsiness and correction.

If love is something I want with you then this is part of it. Learning and growing and fucking up in the comfort of those who care.

I wish knowing this calmed the butterflies in my body.