untilmypengoesdry

[untilmypengoesdry]

There are people I’ve said goodbye to without a second thought,

memories together becoming passing thoughts and tethers broken with time.

Of course, I am grateful for them,

but I do not wonder about where they are now.

There are people who linger in your mind,

people who you cannot let go of no matter how far away the memories feel.

I get caught up in my curiosity: where are they now, are they happy, what are they like?

do they still think about me, too?

It’s weird to feel like those who were once central only make sense at the periphery,

to want to feed my curiosity without any idea of what it would even mean to say hello.

Those goodbyes I’ve said without realizing I’ve said it--

I think about those a lot. 

(k.k)

[untilmypengoesdry]

I had always thought myself marked for self destruction,

believed I was on course for unrealized potential, 

failed apologies, and empty love.

And I’ve had my fair share of that, of course

and yet here I am,

at times only moving forward inches,

at times reliving past guilt,

at times breaking my own heart

but still learning to celebrate anyway

to still forgive myself anyway

and to keep loving anyway because

fuck it

if one day I fall,

I might as well make it one hell of a ride.

(k.k) 

[untilmypengoesdry]

I am a hand in my own destruction. Futures course through my veins, they touch my cells I feel unfamiliar will my core atoms reborn, skin renewing I tear myself apart like paper crumble my own thoughts to the ground I am so sick of being this trapped in this sadness, this body is sweating nerves and I no longer care to touch them.

(k.k)

[untilmypengoesdry]

It's 2 am and I don't know how to not be self-aware. I'm sitting on the stairs in front of my dorm wondering how it is I can lay in bed for two hours without finding a bit of peace. I wish I knew how to be asleep. I don't know how it is other people make their brain shut off or how they stop remembering all the ways they do things wrong or how they don't get caught up in the ways they can't be themselves and who am I? I say myself as if I know what that means and I don't. I feel like somewhere along the way I was supposed to figure that out but I didn't and I know everyone says that they feel that way too but these steps are empty, they are asleep and I am not, and I can't help wondering that's the reason that I'm so lost.

(k.k)

[untilmypengoesdry]

The sun reflects off the city scape and it seems the heavens must be opening, blinding brilliance that makes you want to close your eyes, open your arms to the sky and be consumed by the  transcendental moment of bliss. Here you are insignificant: a comfort that lets you be quiet for a little while to soak in the peace of being part of something bigger. You can stop and the world will not, you can bask in its beauty without feeling the need to be part of it and it isn't that special-- to know that even when you are not picturesque, the world can still be.

peace on a sunday afternoon (k.k)

[untilmypengoesdry]

It seems I have run out of ways to make you poetic.

but i keep trying (k.k)

[untilmypengoesdry]

I see a world of colors, shapes, too, images popping into (and out of) my head like a constant film. Fingers that I can move, I can touch but this world is far too heavy for my hands. Sharp pains, I recoil-- funny how I can't always see what it is  that is hurting me or what I will write my odes to when pen hits paper. Pink marks on white paper I wonder how many more mysteries lie beneath this skin (or on it). Thinking is a tricky thing- who is it I am talking to and why do they know my  every inch?

(k.k)

[untilmypengoesdry]

Here's to new beginnings- to new notebooks filled with new stories, new people, new memories, to new loves and new hate. Here's to risks and to failure, old heartbreaks and fresh tears, to learning new ways to be broken, and better ways to be reborn. Here's to acceptance, and feeling, to accepting our feelings, to being vulnerable and being hurt, but waking up each morning and doing it all again anyway.

here’s to being new (k.k)

[untilmypengoesdry]

Cracks on a teapot eyes always drawn to imperfection I know how to spot what doesn't belong spots on what ought to be clean to be perfect. How do you stop seeing what's wrong? My eyes are always drawn to that  which makes people real. something must be wrong of course because if not, what am I? Long ago I forgot how to see past  my scars, I've found myself  tangled in my frizz, in my lanky limbs, stiff like branches how do I get past the limitations  of this body? Let me transcend my skin for a moment so I can forget  what shame is. I've come to know that emotion very well-- inseparable from who  I am and what I've become. I swear we'll part ways, but I  can't see the damn teapot the same way.

(k.k)

[untilmypengoesdry]

fields going on forever stable scenery as the train shakes my pen I appreciate the challenge of painting my thoughts onto the world as it rushes past, a great metaphor for life or love going, going, gone as you anchor your  sight on one hope before that passes too.

train ride thoughts (k.k)

[untilmypengoesdry]

What It Is I’m Choking On I always wake up at the good part of my dreams, the part where I’m about to beat the bad guy, get the girl, and the day is beautiful, or at least that’s what I assume happens after my eyes open and I’m back in this body, about to put on my smile to face the day. On some days, I bask in the sunlight like a flower, soaking in the energy like a power source to grow bigger and breakable like a mirror, on the days I can’t stand in the sun without feeling like it’s reminding me of what I am missing. I don’t ever claim to be an easy person, or a person at all, in fact, I would describe myself as hundreds of little anxieties stacked on top of each other, a comical imitation of human. I don’t know if knowing that is supposed make it any simpler of an existence. Touch for me is a weird thing. There’s so few things I crave so much but also fear, like love or intimacy or anything that requires being seen. I’m trying to get over this, but I don’t think it’s an obstacle so much as a reality. I wonder if accepting that makes it okay. I ask myself a lot of questions that I can’t answer, like when did I become so uncomfortable in my thoughts or why can I open myself up but never for others? I sit with these, write them down, mull them over, and, every time, just find myself with a lump in my throat and an empty page.

(k.k)

[untilmypengoesdry]

There are nights when this lie is easier to swallow than others, nights when I tell myself that I don’t need you and you obviously don’t need me and I believe it and I know I have made the right decision. Then there are nights like this, nights when I find myself being pulled into old poems, old habits, old heartaches and there you are once again, haunting my room like the memories stained on the walls. I'm sitting on the bed I used to stay up all night texting you on, my feet on the floor of where I crumbled when you rejected me, head on the pillow where I buried my face after I typed you my heart and you never even replied. There are nights when I find my heart hurting because I know that we can never return from what’s happened because I know I can’t let us return from what happened, and it feels like my chest is caving in. But then I catch myself. I remind myself that you are not the memories I am choosing to get lost in You are not the friend I am stuck mourning. You are the person who took my heart and stepped on it and blamed me for my recovery The person who ignored my explanations and my texts as if I meant nothing. You are the one who decided to erase me from your life and I’m just the one who had the courage to make it official. There are nights like this, When I sit, hovering over my computer hoping to find a reason to run back to you But then I catch myself and I know I’ve made the right decision.

(k.k)

[untilmypengoesdry]

I'm obviously a work in progress, but I'm a work in progress , and that is something to be proud of.

k.k

[untilmypengoesdry]

1 A.M. Thoughts, On a Thursday This hour of the night is always encased in an orange glow that emanates like sunlight with warm that keeps away the chill. This is the hour when I am most honest with myself I make myself sit and stare at a blank document and try to type up all the things I have kept in my heart. In the silence, I am allowed to admit my defeat and let myself think about the things I have guarded. This follows a usual pattern: deceiving nostalgia, self-critiques until I run out of words to release into the empty room and it once again goes quiet. So what? I have to ask myself. What now? I have emptied my pains into the keys, and released the anxiety bubbling in my stomach. I feel different now; my issues are not quite resolved but they feel smaller. I breathe, and for once, my lungs expand and fill and I am content.

(k.k)

[untilmypengoesdry]

I. Sophomore year I’m brimming with panic. I had set foundations on sand and watched friendships crumble in the wind, supports too easily shaken to build a home. Then I see her. I remember her in passing. Patches of memories from shared glances, and small talk, just enough to know she is kind. I’m nervous. I’ve spent too much time trying to create warmth underneath cold feet. The monsters I know live within my silence, pulling at my thoughts until I am lost in my own head, She becomes my anchor, and when I look at her, my mind is anything but quiet. II. I have long thought my voice to be a cacophony and my presence poignant. Deeply entrained in me is the fear that the only version of me anyone could love is what my anxiety has created: a girl who knows how to listen and how to take a joke, someone who cares just so, but does not need it reciprocated. When she asks me who I am, really am, I am taken by panic and wonder and gratitude. My being is made up of desperation masked by apathy which she has deemed transparent. I am uneasy and for once, I am seen. III. I am most grateful for the warmth of her on the days when I am cold. I cannot feel the sun on my skin or life within the breeze, but I look at her and I feel lighter. Her smile parts the clouds in my head, beautiful moments of clarity in my foggy mind. I have never experienced a person like this: as incredible and powerful as nature and addictive as a drug I wonder if love is looking at someone and feeling as if you have finally caught your breath. IV. I had forgotten that I mattered until I met her. The value written into my bones had been obscured by years of self-taught hate and birthrights. She notices the way my face heats up when I am nervous, says her encouragement is brought about by the redness of my ears, which I had never noticed. V. I put my heart into a song that only I could sing. There had been a fire somewhere in my chest, a passion reignited after being lost in the years. It died out with the song. VI. I don’t know how to look into her eyes without wondering what it is that they could not see. I am a mess, of course, a fact I would confirm again and again until I realized that it it was really true. Is there a way to be rejected without being insufficient? I wonder if she sees me as entertaining and little more, a project to be undertaken and abandoned with time. I hope she has a love she just doesn’t understand or feelings she is afraid of. I learn now that the hardest thing to accept is the truth, because unlike the stories I create for us in my head, the truth is not open-ended. VII. I tell her I cannot speak to her anymore, because her name reminds me what it’s like to feel empty. I don’t think she quite understands what I mean, and I can’t explain it well enough in words (though those are the only words I have). She is angry with me, and I hate myself too because she still makes me feel warm until I am reminded of how she doesn’t love me and then I feel cold again. VIII. I have bandaged my wounds in the promises of time. I remind myself that someday I will hear your name and my heart will not feel tight. I say that I am changing, I am moving on, until a day comes when I feel weak again, and then I find myself writing you another poem.

(k.k)

[untilmypengoesdry]

It's always on the surface of my skin- constant itching I'll scratch myself raw but reddened skin doesn't tell secrets. I pick at loose edges to see what will come apart. First skin then scab then blood and bone. I wonder if my scars are still as noble even if they come at my own hands. Am I worthy enough an opponent to lose to without shame? Here I am fiddling shifting itching itching  as if my skin were being rejected from the body it has covered. Such a public display of inhumanness: scratching and scratching because I do not know how to suffer in silence.

(k.k)

[untilmypengoesdry]

I am a hand in my own destruction. Futures course through my veins, they touch my cells I feel unfamiliar with my core atoms reborn, skin renewing I tear myself apart like paper crumble my own thoughts to the ground I am so sick of being  trapped in this sadness, this body is sweating nerves and I no longer care to touch them.

(k.k)