Fire places are terrible places to raise children
the smoke gets into their lungs
& the flames burn their skin
& needless to say these children never turn out quite right.
Their eyes- forever a smoky blue-gray.
Their hair- a little too dull to be blond & a little too pale to be brown.
Their skin- white. Ashen.
I was raised in a fire place.
Lips stay closed & eyes peeled wide.
Always know what’s happening, never offer an opinion.
This is how the wold works.
They will fix everything
they always fix everything
they have always fixed everything.
No need to think darling,
just breathe.
But the smoke…
It’s good for you darling,
just breathe.
Deep breaths,
deeper,
deeper,
& deeper still.
Flames torch burnt finger tips.
Calluses have formed over time- it doesn’t cause pain anymore.
Our words & our pictures are lost & we don’t even realize we should miss them because we don’t remember them existing in the first place.
Eyes stopped seeing & ears stopped hearing ages & ages ago.
We don’t miss them- we don’t even realize they’re gone.
(I’m sorry. I’ll turn back time & this will all go away.)
her anger tasted like burnt and prickly ash—stuck in that acidic place between wanting something and needing it. if something disappears and you miss it so badly that it sends pangs through every inch of your frame—is that wanting or needing? if thoughts about the missing thing elicit a severe physical response (hands begin to shake and vision begins to tunnel)—is that wanting or needing?
the prompt was: what if pharmaceuticals were available to everyone via vending machines?
When pharmaceuticals became available to everyone, regardless of ailment or prescription, it seemed like everyone was a little bit happier.When you can freely cloud your mind with Xanax from the vending machine, it becomes a little easier to numb the painful monotony that has become your life. Down the hall there’s a line of at least ten at any given time of day in front of the machine. You can cure anything with a soda. Feeling a little too down? Xanax and Zoloft, at your service. Having trouble sleeping? Lunesta, at the touch of a button for the low cost of one dollar. Everyone talks about a time before these machines. When people had to go to doctors to get diagnoses which necessitated the writing of prescriptions to bring to pharmacists to get pills to take with water to numb the pain, to take away the sleepless nights, to make waking up in the mornings ever so slightly more bearable. Think of how much better things are now. There hasn’t been a suicide in the office since the machines went in. Overdoses are an unfortunate byproduct, but their victims are simply casualties of the good life.
I had a nasty bout of e. coli that also involved a very painful kidney infection.
1. You. Is that weird? Probably. I think you’re lovely!
2. Oh. This is embarrassing. I honestly have no idea. I really only check poetry blogs.
4. Paper.
5. Looking For Alaska— John Green (20 times)
Catcher in the Rye— JD Salinger (like 7 times)
Fight Club— Chuck Palahniuk (I think around 12)
6. Well. I don’t know. I’ve never really written when I’ve been high (but I should probably give that a shot) and sometimes I’ll take a shot or two before sitting down with a pen, but I’ve never really been drunk and writing. I don’t think that it necessarily helps my writing too much. It’s about the same as it usually is.
12. Soliloquy, abstinence, melancholy, obsolescence, deception, significant, silence, aggravation… I don’t know why. I don’t particularly like the meanings of any of the words, mostly the way they sound.
26. There are very few things that I actually cannot write about. I usually do not write about the happy things that happen in my life, but that’s more of a choice. I’m usually writing about sad things. One thing I have not been able to write about is the time I spent in the hospital earlier this year. It was very emotionally and physically traumatic, but I haven’t actually been able to write about it. It’s kind of like there’s a mental block whenever I try to write about those two weeks.
I see y’all reblogging these “ask me a number” things, and I’m not saying they’re not interesting (okay, some of them aren’t), but none of them are tailored to the “writing community”. You call yourselves a writing community? Act like it! I’ll start. Here ya go.
Note: you can ask me these…
Do it do it.
It’s actually probably more appropriate that I post this on my writing blog because it is actually specifically about writing.
Reblogged from neverknowingmuch with 361 notes
I can remember the exact moment I fell in love for the first time. I was sitting on the floor of my then-boyfriend (my first boyfriend)’s bedroom and he was showing me books off of his bookshelf. He was older than me and very attractive and more experienced than me and I was so sure he was the coolest person alive and the fact that he would devote his time to dating me, to kissing me, to writing poems about me, was something that gave me butterflies in every inch of my frame. He kissed me goodbye that afternoon and eventually I told him I loved him and he responded with “I love you, too”. Eventually I broke up with him because I could not deal with the dependency of it, how much people who are in love needed each other. I think I told everyone that he depended on me too much and it was weighing me down, but in reality the dependency was mutual and that scared me more than anything else.
I know that I’ve posted this before, but it’s a piece that I keep coming back to. There are some differences and it’s something I am still working on.
flick the switch on the water boiler and wait approximately five minutes. you will be surprised at how fast things boil with concentrated heat. take a diffuser and fill with leaves or, for the lazy, grab a bag. put it into the bottom of a large tea cup and pour hot water over. watch the steam rise. watch it twist and turn its way into nothingness. wait somewhere between three to five minutes. things are still very hot. things are really, very hot and you need to be careful or you will burn your tongue. if you burn your tongue you will not be able to taste anything. wait. cool. blow on the amber liquid. once you feel comfortable, take a sip. take another and another. let things calm down. let things slow down. let everything be quiet.
Quite frankly, dear, I am afraid for you. With your wide eyes that exude innocence and your ashen skin—too easily burnt by the sun, your mother will not let you out of the house. I will keep you inside your bedroom but we will pull a Pollock on your walls. I want you to know what a brush feels like in your hand; I want you to know what it feels like to have total control. Behind us we will not play music, we will play white noise. We will force ourselves to focus on the sound the paint makes as it comes in contact with your cheap-drywall prison. We will layer the colors not as if we were arborists, planting a forest, more like fighter jets, dropping bombs. There is no organization to this art. This is pure chaos—this is what you need.
When we are done we will go downstairs and into the kitchen. Our clothes paint-covered, our fingernails unclean—your mother will assuredly be furious. You will not be sorry. You will not be sorry because this is your sole act of rebellion and it will feel good. She will go upstairs and into your bedroom, she will drop to her knees and cry and shout—you have ruined your beautiful white walls and how will you focus and how will I clean this up and you have left me with a mess and how will you ever focus with all of this color everywhere? You’ll counter her with words about the inefficacy of focus when you’re never allowed to apply your knowledge, when you’re never allowed to leave the house. The two of you will throw angry words at each other as if they were grenades, but this war will end in a stalemate. You will both go to bed angry.
The next morning you will both wake up in your respective bedrooms. One after the other, you will go downstairs and into the kitchen. You will eat your breakfast and drink your tea in silence.
“Memories are kind of like smoke”
you told me one night as we stood and the smoke from your cigarette
curled towards the sky
and mixed with the stars.
You were upset that it was nighttime
because with nighttime
comes darkness and with darkness
comes the inevitable inaction that befalls us when we are confronted with the unknown.
In retrospect, this makes sense.
(In retrospect, everything makes sense).
I tried to apologize for the darkness
then, realizing the pure ridiculousity of that—
decided to apologize for being in a constant state of apology
with you.
That was when you took off running
needlessly fast,
endlessly fast,
past the creek and into the adjacent field,
screaming all the way.
I quickly followed suit.
This was when I was reminded
how young we really are and
how little we know about everything.
