thepoetthomas - Tumblr blog

[thepoetthomas]

i stood in front of the bathroom mirror this  morning and stared at myself for a long  time. i don’t recognize myself these days.  my face surprises me. it belongs to  someone else. i stare at myself, and other  people stare back. i see my mother in the  wrinkled furrow between my eyebrows.  i used to want to smooth it with my thumb,  to gently wipe away the anger there. now  i don’t bother. my father is in the tired bags  under my eyes. it hurts me sometimes, to  see such quiet exhaustion. my brother is in  the curve of my ears, in the cowlick on the  back of my head, in the way my eyes squint  closed when i’m happy. there’s two parents  that i don’t know in the blue of my irises, and  in the thumbprint in the middle of my chin. i  see memories, too, if i look too long; in the  slouched slope of my shoulders, in the way  they curl further and further forward the  more i stand there; in the way my hands tug  at my shirt, or dive into my pockets, or pick  at the rough edges of my nails; in the  shifting of feet, and the cringe resting in the  corners of my mouth; in the way i twitch and  can’t meet my own eyes. i punched the glass  once and it splintered. when i looked at  myself, there was a broken image of my  face, disproportioned and cut apart. it was  almost beautiful. it was almost a  representation. it was almost art. it would  have been, if it hadn’t been so awful to  look at. the mirror isn’t broken anymore, but  the reflection still is. too many pieces but  still not enough. i wear too many faces  these days. none of them are mine.

- i have been a crowd for too long // a.t.

[thepoetthomas]

there is a myriad of words that i am  afraid to say. they echo in my head  like a taunt, never taking the leap off  of the edge and past my lips. i love you.  i want this. i am good enough to be  loved back. these stay silent because i  am scared of what they mean. i am  afraid of the soft sacredness of them,  and afraid that i am wrong, & that  claiming them will lead to a mistake  that will bring hurt along with it. i am  afraid to hurt. i deserve good things  for doing the best that i can to be good.  i am not worthless. there are good things  waiting up ahead for me. these stay  silent because i do not believe them. i am  afraid that saying them out loud would feel  the same as telling a lie, that it would twist  into a guilt that would settle into the pit of  my stomach. there is enough guilt there  already. but i am hoping that one day i  will not feel that fear. one day i will believe  the things that i have to force into my  thoughts today. one day my words won’t  echo like ghosts, unheard, & will instead  make the leap of faith past the threshold.  one day i will hear myself say i am doing  better. one day i will hear myself admit to  someone that i care. one day, i won’t feel  myself shaking as i do. even these words  make me afraid. one day i won’t be. but for  today, my words remain unvoiced secrets.

- i want to give out my secrets freely / a.t.

[thepoetthomas]

i told my father today that my tunnel does not have a light at the  end of it. it has no illuminated end.  it offers no focal point to measure  distance by. to negate the lost confusion that nests in my heart. i don’t know where i am as i travel. i told my father that my tunnel opens up into more darkness. a different kind of darkness, deep but not pitch black, not hopeless, not blind. if i were to tilt my head up, i would see tiny hints of light, like tricks of the eye,  blinking down at me as i blink up at them. these pinprick holes in the dark are what constitute my light. the sun will never come back - it’s long and far  behind me now. it will never shine warm on my skin again, or blind my eyes, or set my hair on fire on a summer afternoon.

but these new lights lie ahead of me +  will shine into me - my skin might stay cold in the dark, but my heart will be a  warm furnace, burning from the inside with a seed of new hope. they may be far away from me and seem small from the ground, but they are innumerable - so many ways to be content in the dark, so many things to keep dreaming about. i may exist, after my tunnel, as a shadow - black + sooty + travel weary, grieving the life stretched behind me + fearful of the one stretched before me - but the stars will  shine on me gently, softly, kindly, with compassion. i will be illuminated as a  beautiful thing out of a place of ugliness.

- under the starlight, even shadows look holy / a.t.

[thepoetthomas]

i wish that you were here next to me. that i could see you. hold you. hear your voice. smell you. taste you in the air. i wish that i  could sit with you. just sit. shoulder to shoulder with legs outstretched + knees brushing. the picture of content + perfect serenity. our feet -  with or without our consent - would find some way of touching each other; a small bump here, the ghost of a stifled want, coming together + fleeing again. we would find comfort in it.  hidden meaning. a secret something that our mouths lack the courage to voice. perhaps there are no words for what the ghost whispers into the stillness of the space in + around us. ( i want you i want you i want you ) you would sing wordlessly under your breath, and i would sit beside + soundlessly speak. we would smile private smiles, each causing the other’s. we would find the strength to be  vulnerable. eventually. it would come to us slowly. our feet lingering instead of ebbing away from the warmth that draws them  together. a pseudo accident turning to a timid brush turning to a purposeful + continuous  contact. nothing lost in translation. nothing neglected in fearful silence.  unutterable truth known to us beyond doubt.  ( you are real we are real i want you ) you would know the admission + so would i. instead of fearing it we would face it together. hands copying feet; accident. timidity.  purposeful touch. then fingers moving further than toes had dared to; intertwined now. linked together by more than unvoiced want. by more than the lingering ghost between us.  a brief moment of mutual insecurity ( do you feel this too are you sure ) and a blessed tenderness answering ( i do you’ll kill me if you don’t ) then we would sink into each other’s skin; you, wearing mine like scaled armor and me, wearing yours like a beacon of home. sweet as the ripened flesh of summer peaches.

- these the things that i long for in silence / a.t.

[thepoetthomas]

you are the glue holding me together today. i feel like i’m falling apart, but  the heartstring that plays your song on repeat beats strong + sturdy + warm. you are a dry porch during a thunderstorm, a garden growing in the sunlight, the  creaking groan of an old rocking chair. you are the soft strum of a guitar under starlight, the feel of coffee steam on cold fingers. you are a plane ticket home.  there will never be enough words to say thank you.

- an italian cottage, in the countryside | a.t.

[thepoetthomas]

my heart feels things so very deeply. on the good days, i am glad for it + even welcome it. on those days, it feels swelling joy in a sudden breeze; it feels serenity in the gentle lapping of waves on a moon-cooled shore; it feels the strength of the stubborn man when it gazes on  the sharp up-hill of the mountains. on the bad days, i pity it + long to put it at ease. on these days, it feels the  blistering pain of scorching anger; it feels the crippling fear of the inescapable, unknown future; it feel the crushing weight of a soul-deep and excrutiating loneliness. on the worst days, i fear it. i long to lock it away where i won’t have to look on it. on these days, it feels nothing at all. i cannot help but weep for it.

- my heart loves + grieves itself | a.t.

[thepoetthomas]

to love you is an act of revolution. not of war, for war is too hard of a word to describe us. heart of my heart, we are an uprising of peace.

- we are soft in our sedition, my love | a.t.

[thepoetthomas]

i hope that one day my caring  heart does not scare me as much  as it does today. i am terrified of  loving you + i am terrified of losing  you. i have reached an impasse, my love.  it is right + it is wrong, heaven + hell,  sanctification + affliction. it is always  a burden, though it changes; some  days it is light as sunshine + some  days it is as dark as the shadows that  linger in light places. forever haunting.  i pray that one day i will hear you + not  immediately flee from the way your  words sit like honey upon my ears, that  you will touch me softly + i will not  flinch at the wave of tenderness that  passes to me through the tips of your  fingers, that i will not be afraid to  look in your eyes + tell you the truth.

- i care, love, i have always cared / a.t.

[thepoetthomas]

the light of your constellation  keeps me awake; a cold, unreachable paleness amidst a black infinity. i reach out, fingers straining upwards through space + time, but i cannot touch you. i am not allowed. you are a dream, + they tell me it is better this way, better to look than to touch, better to think than to say or do, but my soul stills yearns for contact. i ache in ways that they could never comprehend. what is so sinful about want? what is so wrong about my reaching for you? tell me, please! how can touch be damning?

- i love you, and it ruins me | a.t.

[thepoetthomas]

i have been having dreams about my mother. i wake up with the echoes of her words ringing in my ears + running in steady, salty streams down my cheeks. she clings to me like a spector that refuses to move on, haunts me + hangs heavy over  my head. i carry her everywhere with me. even in my sleep she lingers, and even the pretense of gentleness carries with it the sharp sting of an unspoken warning. but perhaps the shadow is  simply a good thing disguised as something ugly. maybe the holding on is really, in a way, the letting go of a burden i don’t need to carry anymore.

- healing is never a smooth process / a.t.

[thepoetthomas]

i am a lover of simple profound things: the golden  sunshine rising in the morning; the contrasting warmth of hot cider against the biting cold of a winter day; blind touches under the covers in a dark room; soft, loving kisses in flickering candlelight. i find heaven in the most human things.

- i find the holy within the mundane | a.t.

[thepoetthomas]

my life has become a series of  countdowns: countdowns to happiness, countdowns to freedom, countdowns to love, countdowns to healing; to the day when  the answers become known and the whys can  rest. there’s days until it stops aching, months until it heals, years until the ghost of it can cease its looming haunt. countdowns do nothing but slow the passing of time.

- countdowns are shadows over the present | a.t.

[thepoetthomas]

some days, i want to swallow stacks of your pictures, just so that you can be a part of me for a  little while longer. i want you to  bite my lip until I can no longer speak + then suck my ex-lovers’ names from my mouth, just to make sure that they never come up in our conversations. i want to touch you until your skin sings songs that your lips don’t know the words to,  until your heartbeat sounds like my name, until you smile like the stars.

i want to spend forever drowning in the light that lives inside of you.

i want to be a stuntman for all the people who ever made you feel like you weren’t enough. i want to do  everything they never had the courage to do, like trust you + believe in you + defend you + love you inn all the ways that you  deserve. i want to do these things with you, for you, for the rest of my life.

- i want us to believe again, together | a.t

[thepoetthomas]

june hits me like the sun after a thunderstorm, when  the dampness still hands in the air like a weighted blanket. it is warmth after a cold night of sleep, brightness after blindness. it leaves colorful promises painted across the tops of trees + of houses: promises to never flood me with more than i can handle + that love exists somewhere for me to find when the timing is right. june hits me like hope, + i bask in the light of it.

- june refreshes me | a.t.

[thepoetthomas]

i want to start by being honest: i am not a love poet. in fact, every time i try to write about love, my hands cramp just to remind me of how painful love can be. sometimes my pencils break, just to prove to  me that every now + then, love takes a little more effort than you originally planned. i realize now that real love is like a supermodel before she is  air-brushed; it is pure + imperfect, just the way it was intended to be. love is blind, so i write all my love to you in braille. but i am still not a love poet. not really.

if i were to wake up tomorrow morning + decide that i really wanted to write about love, i promise that my  first poem would be about you; about how i learned to love you the same way i learned to ride a bike: scared, but reckless, with no training wheels or elbow pads, so that every skinned knee and scraped hand can tell the story of how i fell for you. if i were a love poet, i would write about how i see your face in every cloud + your reflection  in every window. i would write about how you have the audacity to be beautiful even on days when everything around you is ugly. i would  write about how i melt with you, every time i hear your voice. I would write about how, every time your name comes up on the caller ID,  my heart plays hoscotch inside my chest. it climbs on my ribs like monkey bars + i feel  like a kid all over again.

i would write a million poems, always hoping that you will jump out of the pages + somehow be closer to me. i swear that i am not a love poet, but if i wake up  tomorrow + decide that i really want to write about love, my first poem will be about you. always you.

- you are all the words inside my head | a.t.