jjanewillow

[jjanewillow]

done with college, what the shit am I supposed to do now

[jjanewillow]

me & some change

[jjanewillow]

carpet confessional

vetiver on the brown shag carpet

with an overlay of dust

the scent memory comes

with the same warmth as the sun

on the soft waves you come

crashing in and fading out

over and over again

the floor's twine scratches me

on my bare back

previously kissed healed

against this scratching post

I reopen my wounds

to taste the blood your lips were on

and I wait for you to come dress them again

my hands aren't as soft as yours

still I hold my face the same

trying to feed the craving for gentle touch

though, only you satisfy this hunger

[jjanewillow]

It’s the warning siren

a tip tapping upon the hairline crack of the dam

eroding the last piece of support

and all I can do is watch

I’m not far enough to run

so I listen to the siren before I am drowned out

trying to find the music

the melody within the symphonic lopsided cry from the speaker

the tin can’s rattle that begs me to try

but it looks like rain and mud

and my shoes are too thin for a survival sprint

and I know I’m going to go violently

a ragdoll under the tons of water

I can only hope that I’m washed out head first and go quickly

but I can’t visualize the thoughts that I’m having

but I know I am afraid to die

and I felt it when the birds stopped singing

and were in their right minds

because I watched them fleeing

now the earth is so quiet

like I am, for now, the last one breathing

a slight respiration from the watering cracks

it’s the siren and I, together

hearing the last roaring and screaming of the other

searching for the melody within the shrill sound of suffering

the death rattle pitch begins low and dies hard

what the concrete of the dam and I are soon to do

[jjanewillow]

felt inactive

[jjanewillow]

Birth of The Thing that Waits

The monster lives in the laundry room. Tucked between the scent of fabric softener and the clink of a forgotten quarter in the dryer, it waits. It coils in the basket of old clothes, ones I can’t bring myself to wear anymore, and even smaller ones I can’t look at. Especially the sleep shorts. From highschool, but I kept them as a memory. A stabbing pain- they’re kept so nobody else can see them. So nobody else knows. The pair I bled through once, in eleventh grade. The day I learned what it meant to become a mother in the quietest, loneliest way.

The monster doesn’t howl or claw, or even cry- which I would’ve preferred over the haunting silence. It doesn’t scratch at the windows. No one else sees it, feels it, or knows of it.

It lingers year-round, but makes an even bigger entrance on Mother's Day; With the scent of baby's breath, and leans over my bed while everyone else is posting about their families. About their successful starts. It whispers things that sound a lot like “what if?” and “you don’t deserve it.” The monster brings the weight of guilt and shame. But it’s voice is my own, just more tired. Just more cruel.

I feed it’s silence daily, with a strict routine- so as to keep it alive, something I could nurse. I give the monster every avoided conversation, taking the bait with every deflected “Do you want kids someday?” And I let it chew on the soft places in my chest that ache when I walk past newborn sections in Target, when I laugh with my friends about the size of baby shoes. And remember that whole “baby shoes, never worn” thing. I let it invade this very vessel and stretch out across my lower organs at night and pretend to sleep beside me. 

It follows me into the bathroom. Where it’s loudest. That’s where blood still runs. On my hands, like the murderer it made me out to be. In the mirror, where I’ve seen a second monster ever since. In the shower, where I have not yet scrubbed clean the memory of waking up soaked, ruined, and alone. Too young to grieve the way grown-ups grieve, with casseroles and cards and names written on stones, only secrets shared in passing period bathrooms and juvenile diaries.

And I’ve not let anybody try for another since. I pretend it’s a choice, but the monster knows better. The monster knows me inside and out. It watches from behind my closet door every time I cancel a date. It hums lullabies made of static and screams, and snarls when someone touches my waist too casually. It sleeps inside my dreams, a crib just out of frame, and a newborn's scribbled face.

Sometimes, I wonder if calling out her name would help. If giving her a new shape and arranging her letters on my tongue would make her real enough to banish. But then, maybe the name would make her stay longer- as if I’m begging once more for the monster. 

Some monsters you birth, even if you never carry them full term. In the end, I always fold back the sleep shorts and swear it’s the last time I visit them. I place them gently back in the basket. And leave the laundry room door open just a crack. I don’t want to look. I don’t want to forget, either. I let it wait and haunt me endlessly. When she comes as a terror, I cannot deny her a place to stay- in my mind- since she cannot have one here. I let her wait, always.

[jjanewillow]

four-letter curses

out of my weakness I took her number off the list

unblocked and still no messages

what I expected, maybe

perhaps something more

since I've been eagerly awaiting a text

sat on the edge of my seat, hoping

one sentence that says

that I'm looking well

and something about herself

but instead, silence

I should know by now

and I bet that was the last time she'll come around

and she sped off in her red pontiac

with the windows down and her hair flying wild

the rest of her will blow away just the same

as the scent of orange blossom shampoo

and gourmand vanilla perfume

all are lost in the wind, too

that was the end, I know it

still I scrounge for a piece, secretly

flower petals she mailed

for a note in a margin

something to love for a moment before I seethe

and throw it all away again

and pray she always remembers me

that I haunt her, that I'm in her dreams

but maybe that's just my excuse to think

of her

to pretend that I am plotting

something greater than moving on

of that, I have never willed myself to try

though I say I have and there, I have lied

because the wound has stayed open and pouring

but the narrative has been screamed boring

and a raw throat cannot confess

the truth, what the hurt really is

[jjanewillow]

your bio brings me joy

hearts hearts!!! Phoebe Bridgers referencing my whole life

[jjanewillow]

caught up

I wear thin

you know just where I'm soft

malleable enough to bend to your shape

for your will and comfort

but I just don't quite accept it any longer

I linger for a fruitless tree

for any bit of goodness to fall

only I drop everything

in exchange for a nothingness I'm trying to make fill

the craters left by the emotional impact

it'll never do me well to keep hoping

that you'll clean up the mess of yourself

and us

to love is to let go

but my comfort lies with codependency

and I tear my skin from the meld when I leave

still I know there's just no point in fighting

if I am always the only one trying

[jjanewillow]

unrequited love

the unlocated ache

like a phantom pain

I feel it somewhere

where I am not connected, I'm sure

it hurts, anyway

like a fresh wound

somewhere in or on my body

a burning I won't place

like I'm sinking in oil

and drowning in water

feelings that just don't mix

but causes a greater suffering

which I cannot end

because I don't know what it is

of what I think, it cannot be true

chalking it up to a general gloom

and not the pinpointed madness which I'll deny

an unacceptable spiral

I cannot face

for the sake of my beating head and heart

I'll let that everso mysterious, allegedly unfixable, pain tear me apart

[jjanewillow]

ChemSpider 5864

forgiveness

the dirtiest virtue

I let you tap me fresh out of my life source

and I come back as if you'd return the favor

something's missing, though

that thing in your chest

functions only to keep you upright

don't you feel guilty?

anything at all?

I know if you did, I wouldn't have to do all of this

sitting around and burning

with something more than a hate for you

and anger for myself, mostly

that I allow myself to return as often as I do

back to you, they say

there goes the backbone

bent in ways to please

from the times I asked how high I should jump

I understand, now

exactly which behaviors keep you alone

the pin pricking that eventually bores a gaping hole

the tiny things that can no longer be ignored

brought into the light

as quickly as you shoot the sun from sky

to darken the ways of the kind

no more

I can't keep getting back up

and smiling with bloodied lips

cracked and peeling from the times I forced it

to try and make you happy

but there's no healing the intentionally miserable

you are the siphon of joy

and the swiftest evil of them all

[jjanewillow]

rebecca

I'd sell my soul for five more minutes

for one, even

for a last look

or to be the last hand you held

to try and give you a last breath in dead lungs

I'd give my life away for one more touch

a moment stolen back from God

a minute to spare for my soul in change

my being would be satisfied with that

for a fading smile

or chanel in the breeze

if the devil comes and offers me paradise

in exchange for everything

I'd choose only your laughter

it's worth the hell I'd have to pay

for a glimpse of heaven

I'm burning either way

[jjanewillow]

w. may, creator

bubbling before I boil over or blow

it's going to be a violent one if I can't cool off

just breathe and drive with the windows down

but even then it's a white knuckle 10&2 cruise

and I'm driving in two lanes like I've got nothing to lose

because these days it feels like it

the easiest rest I wouldn't wake from

why God? why me?

I watched the nurse flip through the photos and tools

the grainy sonogram turned into a funeral montage

all black and white with no heartbeat

just fucking kill me like my baby, Lord

if you're even there, will me to stay

take me before I do it myself-

- just out of spite

or maybe to meet someone I do not know

but mourn enough that it will murder me, somehow

at least twice a week I find myself bleeding

a self inflicted flush of her, as if it weren't enough in the first place

to wake up in my teenage bed

a baby with a freshly childless body

inside and out

however it happened has been long shoved down

but how it ended is fresh and whispering in my ear

taunting me

coaxing me over the cliffs upon the laughter of someone else's children

it's not me

it's never going to be

why, God?

[jjanewillow]

father's father, alvarado

2,140 pounds of steel towed into the drive

the windshield weighed as much as a handful of cereal

it’s texture, the same

like tiny pebbles, not big enough to skip

not enough of the car left

my dad’s change was scattered, too

an ounce or two of metal I sent him down the river with

where he was washed clean and white again

they cleaned him out but not the full interior

he weighed his birth weight in the ceramic

eight pounds in my hands

the grief was heavier

like a great mass fell from the sky to crush me

harder on the pavement than that ‘01 corolla

shrinking, was I shrinking?

the air was so thick and suffocating

because I didn’t want to cry in front of him

even if he couldn‘t see me

so I let the tons press harder and harder until I was nothing

and the air on lemon grove is haunted again

with the dense spirit of an irresponsible father

the sorrow keeps him here as a tether

and we haven’t taken deep breaths ever since

as not to waste it

hypoventilation in the short shallow breathing I’m sure matched his

under the weight of the silver body

crushing and incinerating

[jjanewillow]

burnout

there's a loosely packed hand rolled cigarette between my former pearly whites

back to picking up the bad habit I tried to quit just to cope for the minutes it lasts

if I had some big girl money, I'd smoke a whole pack

and with each crackling drag-

-I contemplate and complain about the life I have

the stresses that I'm under and all of the things I've got to do

the homework that I'm missing, the hair I'm starting to lose

it's consuming me faster than I eat-

-and more, at that

these days, I don't recognize me

maybe that's not so bad?

growth is uncomfortable but I don't think my gear shift is supposed to be stuck in reverse

I'm losing control again

back to the long sleeves despite the blistering heat

higher up or lower down?

I'm plotting my next mutilation

or I could disappear for a while to avoid the humiliation

that comes with my dropping grades and excruciating card debt

I'm filling my empty hours with what I can get my hands on

and have had two shit cups of coffee and three hours to rest

I've been falling asleep fully clothed, with my makeup on again

and my showers are getting longer

because I sit under the unfixed tip tapping of the faucet

while the water bill skyrockets

just another thing to worry about

world,

just

fucking

stop

for one moment so I can catch my breath

and once I finish my fourth cigarette

I'll go stomp out the other shit that's left

[jjanewillow]

hamartia's touch

I've got seven missing assignments

and a C in my favorite class

I accidentally painted over my guidelines

and I'm breaking out again

my hair is brittle and dry

and my car's got orange peel

I broke three of my nails in half

and just burnt my savings out

I'm not sure what is wrong today

or what was yesterday

and the day before

I've been crying when I wake

I'm not quite sure what for

I've fallen off and lost talent from when I last wrote

I tried to pray this feeling away

but I can't remember what I spoke

It's a constant state of nothingness

brain fog and forgetfulness

I'm not even in my own body anymore

but maybe that's what I get

I bit off more than I could chew

and gave all I had left to give and more

I'm in debt on my own credit line

but succeeding is what I'm living for

[jjanewillow]