eightywrites

[eightywrites]

expect a lull in posts as I wait for the next wave of emotional turmoil (winter has almost ended, my skin has seen the sun)

[eightywrites]

2/5

just admit it already

you’ve been this way your whole life

do you remember the time

when you were a kid and

you got mistaken as a boy

and it hurt you so badly that you cried

and then spent the rest of your life

wishing someone would do it again?

is that when you buried it

is that when you decided to forget

because i remember

it’s all I remember

why can’t someone realize it again

without me telling them?

[eightywrites]

non hac vita

all my love has turned to grief

and as the quote goes

“what is grief

if not love persevering?”

my hands tremble now

my stomach sunken, twisted

any life you breathed into me

exhaled like a gut punch

i didn’t sleep last night

stuck on every word we ever said

was i not enough?

did you not trust me with your dark?

did you ever really know me at all?

i do not know where i went wrong

my bucket of empty promises to you

were not so empty to me

and as i remove the past

undo the history

what was once a beautiful us

just know that i still hope

to find you

in the next life

where the world does not burn.

[eightywrites]

the sky tonight

there was a beautiful sunset tonight

you were still the first person

i wanted to show

the glory of the painted sky

the other half of the horizon

was a storm with lightning

cloud to cloud

ominous against the golden

you would have loved it

and now i sit here

wishing to tell you all about it

as thunder rolls outside my window

and i hate myself for this

i should hate you too

and part of me wants to

oh god does a part of me want

to be the storm cloud or the sunset

to be part of the true sky

and so i lay on my rain-soaked porch

sobbing to want nothing at all

[eightywrites]

"I've been trying to go home my whole life."

"All the places I run to have no room for me."

— Chelsea Dingman, Two Poems

[eightywrites]

the summoning

i still think of you

when i am alone

and my hands can wander freely

imagining the smell of your skin

the taste of your sweat

the sound of your whimpers

my senses alight with you in imagination

i picture how your chest would peak and wane

heavy with breath and bitten lips

the weight of your hand pushing down

against the softest parts of me

how tender, how strong

it is you i hold in fantasy

whose eyes i pretend bore into me

envisioning the intimacy insensate

it is the idea that summons me

the untasted divine

desperate,

percipient my own touch will never compare

[eightywrites]

a haunting

a day without a sign of life from you

is twenty four hours too many

and I am sorry if it is too much, too painful

I do not mean to be a digital poltergeist

driving you insane,

slamming your cupboards and opening doors

hoping you will come to close them

spectral whispers into the void,

hearing my voice in your ear.

I cannot help but follow you through

the abandoned house of what-has-been

flickering a spark from the lamps

playing the same song again and again

my soul at unrest

haunted by you, too.

[eightywrites]

salt: been really getting into wounds lately

[eightywrites]

what doesn't kill you makes you weird at intimacy

[eightywrites]

am i undeserving of rest?

if i got it

would i even know

what REST felt like?

what is a gentle breeze

to a mountain?

what is it to a molehill?

am i certain that

life is tangled wires

and that my plastic

coated skin remembers

the kinks of bending

for years too many

no matter how long

i am laid

flat

straight

cut

recoated

will i ever know the smoothness

of the day I was made

or are my fingers

caught in a trap

that i am too stupid

or too stubborn to

find my way out of

i do not know

if even my name

carved in a marble marker

the weight of dirt &

the kisses of carrion beetles

and worms

will be enough

(2024)

[eightywrites]

2/10

I am a bad person

And everyone knows it

Everyone knows it but me

I wish I was invisible

Or dead

Or both

Or never existed at all

Or maybe had a single bone

in my body to stand upright

So have what I want

Without worrying who lies in the crossfire

I’d take a bullet if that meant

I could live guilt free

how do you pick between yourself and your best friend

[eightywrites]

2/27

it’ll be a miracle if you make it out of this year alive

make it out in one piece

rip off the bandaid for everyone

maybe I’ll pretend I’m a balloon

twenty bucks and I can make

a whole lot of people happy

just need a plastic bag and some tape

some tubing, a condenser per the research

id make a funny shaped ballon animal

but hey, at least someone would be laughing

[eightywrites]

2/4

I only know love to the point of suffering

there is not one without the other

I have to lose myself in the felt black

and forget who I was before to know it

I learned it from my mother

and it’s true,

I do really love you

they say to marry the person you can build

furniture with, so I did

but I don’t understand how you

can go a day without kissing me

[eightywrites]

ad infinitum amica mea

how was i supposed to know you’d mean this much to me

how unfair of you to come into my life

decimate the fact that

it was happiness

show me the grass

is indeed greener on the other side

i stare at it from the dingy side of

the white picket fence

built around myself

with my own hands

you reach over it

and hold me

gods above you hold me so tightly

that i lose where your atoms end and mine begin

fusion with you was easy

and i think science lied when

they said fission was more easily achieved

i see now why my world feels on fire

and i am the one watching it burn

watching you burn

with it

ad infinitum amica mea

forever my love

oh, forever my love

forever my love

on the other side of the fence

in the next life

in the other universe

where i find you first

and the world does not burn.

(2023)

[eightywrites]

Christmas Eve

i saw the tv glow

the light shines down the hallway

I lay in my room

and pull the blanket over my head

if someone tries to kill me

maybe I’ll want to live

when the gun jams

suddenly it’s my first day of kindergarten

my grandpa had made me oatmeal

we watch little bear on the television

there is so much beauty in the world

and none of it is myself

I see it in others

in cracked and dirty sidewalks

not in the mirror

my life has never been my own

it is for others

not me

never me

I wouldn’t know what do with it anyway

[eightywrites]

every year i reach new lows and wish i killed myself earlier

[eightywrites]