week 9: summer
Summer longing
Sweet cool night air rushes, midnight blue.
Moths and crickets, symphonic hue.
Deer blink sluggishly, hooves on the road.
Rubber death narrowly misses a toad.
A small flame, flickering in my ribcage.
My skin crawls, emptiness engage.
Skeleton aching, muscles of shivers.
Eyes squeezed shut, I sigh for you, noise withers.
We clung to eachother, desperation lead.
Shaking finger tips pressed into your head.
Heat bloomed on our lips, warm roses.
Amber eyes, after image encloses.
The earth comes in through my nose.
Invisible dirt between my toes.
The moon pulls me in, eyes first.
I'm a nameless creature, a spec, immersed.
week 8: dysmorphia
The Body
Underneath these layers I dwell, I live, the being I am is full.
In the mirror I see my shell, hungry and wide, squat and thick, with lumps of flesh sitting on my chest staring back at me with twisted amusement.
With each step I jiggle, my flesh stacked upon itself, rolled and shelved together, stretching out the skin, exploding in slow motion, filling with jelly, a steamed dumpling.
The lumps the curves the weight of all my skin, supported with fat, rested on my bones, spells out female, overweight.
Inside I bang at the walls with my fists I scream throw up, sick with my reflections, hair stuck in my teeth, spitting up flesh.
I am nothing inside, but human and living. Yet my prison portrays me to others as a lie, they smile and call me beautiful, a false and bitter reality.
My bones disappear, devoured by creamy fat, milk turned yogurt turned cheese turned rotten, stinking garbage.
In the mirror I see donuts, ice cream, brownies, cake, pie with every topping, chocolate syrup dribbling down my chin, whipped cream eyes with chocolate chip middles, tears like sprinkles so sweet my teeth ache.
My voice cannot be heard, female teeth clenched around those words, chewing them up and spitting them out, day after day until it is a steaming mess around the body's feet.
week 7: gender
Their eyes speak to me.
They tell me what they think of my husk, inject me with hues
They tell me to get in line
They tell me to wear a mask
They tell me to drape myself in thick colorful robes.
Sometimes they question me, clouds of lavender obscuring their vision.
They dress me with their special words, useless definitions like ill-fitting garbs.
They ignore me beneath the layers of their classifications, conversing with falsities.
My eyes speak to them.
I am no color of cloth
I am a shimmering reflection of the night sky
I am a supernova in slow motion
I am star dust, a galaxy of spinning soot and vibrating energy.
I am alive.
Full of colors, yet full of nothing.
Invisible and illusionary.
Nebulous yet tangible.
Authentic and undefined.
Light peaks beneath the heavy labels they pile on my shoulders, and they wince.
Do they see me, exploding, destroying their ensemble, and turn away?
Do they choose to live in fiction, preserving the crumbling infrastructure of their world through ignorance?
I shed my skin and bones
I refuse to hide
I am naked
I shine
I
am
r
e
a
l
.
This week the theme was ‘gender’. Unlike in the past, I started with the imagery. I was initially having trouble deciding how i’d like to describe my gender in words.
I wanted to use abstract concepts to portray that. I think using an object, or a space like the galaxy works well for that. It’s beyond our own earthly definitions.
I often think of gender as something other people put onto me. I personally never think of my gender when I think of who I am; it has nothing to do with me.
week 6: water
Water holds a certain quality of fear in it. It calls out to us.
‘Come closer,’ it says. ‘feel the soft brush against your skin, hear the rush of movement, smell the sweetness in the air.’
But it hides a deadly truth; an end-all solution to life.
10 days before Christmas 2018, my heart broke for the first time. In my mind, we’d been together for 2 years, but in reality, it was 5 months short of that. I was only in my first semester of college, but I was thinking about proposing to her. I knew several people my age with families and homes, despite being teenagers. I wondered how I could now have no connection to someone I wanted to marry, all within minutes. I think I cried for hours without moving, frozen.
I won’t say it was only the breakup that made me lose feeling in my body; numbness was a recurring symptom of mine, starting some 9 years prior, with intermittent phases of abject sorrow. That Christmas I felt no joy in my body, and on new year’s I went to a stranger's house and drank myself into oblivion for the first time.
How could drug abuse not appeal to someone who wanted to disappear? Anything to stop my brain from assaulting me, anything to fall asleep, anything to slow down. Alcohol was never very hard to procure, even as an 18 year old. There were always wine bottles in the refrigerator door, or a huge box of white claws which would look the same with just one missing as it would without. Not only that, one visit to a siblings house could allow for a bong rip, or even a dab circle.
I didn’t do any of that. I suffered in silence. I reveled in the pain, the self-inflicted bullying, the worthlessness of it all.
I don’t know at what point I became obsessed with the bridge. I never walked across it, but I have a vivid memory of it anyways. It would always be nighttime, but the lights of the city would drown out the stars, with only the moon beaming down on me. I would grip the cold metal of the fence on the edge and stare into the churning dark mass hundreds of feet below. It was then that I’d hear it.
‘Come closer.’ It would say, and I’d want to, with a vile, poisonous passion that made my knees weak.
Many times, I’d come back from the memory in the driver’s seat of my car. My therapist said putting my windows down would help me ground myself, but I took it too far. It was always down despite the weather, even if it would turn my fingers blue. My knuckles would twitch on the stirring wheel, and I could hear the river calling me, telling me to visit. But I’d squeeze my eyes tight instead, start my car and drive the other way. I swear I could feel its gaze on my back the whole way home.
I have a thing with dreams. They're always vivid, to the point that if they’re realistic enough, I will mistake them for memories. Every night without fail I dream. Sometimes I’m even lucid. I have a favorite, a rare one, that leaves me light in the morning. Soaring through the sky, floating, breaking free from the constant drag of gravity; the definition of a dream, just without the ‘come true’ part. Flying. I attribute this to my love of heights, and to falling. Drop zone is one of my favorite rides, next to the big swings. I’m obsessed with the wind in my hair, the views, the free form feel. I always said I wouldn’t mind dying if I could just fly once.
I had to quit working as a host. It was partially the environment, the people, the stress. Most nights I’d close, leaving the building at 11:30, bone weary, feet aching, driving those windy back roads in the pitch. One night a black cow appeared suddenly in the road, and I swerved at the last second, death chuckling as I passed him by at 50 miles per hour. I let myself sob the rest of the way home; I was sad that I wished I had hit him.
The main reason I had to leave was the broken glass and the knives. Clearing tables with 4 hours of sleep in me, it wasn’t hard to break a dish. I’d freeze up at the sight of the shards, mind captured, fingers reaching out, watching the deep red trickle down my peach skin. Someone would say, ‘Go get a Band-Aid.’ It would sound like an echo from far away, and I’d think about broken glass all night long. Steak knives were just as bad. Look at the twinkle in the low light, they must be so sharp. Would it cut me open if I slide my digit down the side?
The winter nights piled snow up on my wind shield. I’d sit in my car blasting the windshield with heat, wrapped up in a blanket, alone in the parking lot. It was always so quiet. But winter ended and so did my job.
The spring time came and with it, my cat’s diagnosis of diabetes. In those early days I’d shake with anxiety thinking if I missed her shot by an hour, she’d die, and so would my last bit of heart. My lungs would empty, and tears would leak from broken pipes in my head. Bathrooms became my public safe haven, sobs muffled by the palm of my hand, fingernails biting into my cheeks as someone pissed in the stall next to me.
I always hated the summer. The heat filled up the moisture in the air, making Kentucky a perfect oven. My body insulates heat, perhaps due to the fat, and I melt away, my brain slipping out of my ears.
That summer, we flew into New York, and the concrete around us baked the garbage on every corner. Manhattan was surrounded by bridges, and the water grinned evilly from below them. The city was full of poison, capital driven mindlessness, nature artificial in the best of cases. I felt my humanity drain away every night that we slept in our dingy air bnb, dreadful mug reflected in the shady mirrors on every wall of the room. When we came back home, I knew I had lost part of my soul there.
In the fall, school started again. I thought I was ready to date, but I was lying about that empty hole in me. It was only shaped like her, and no one else would fit.
One night after work, I drove up to UC to meet a girl I didn’t know. She was 6 years older than me, with silky black hair and olive skin. Her eyes were like a panther, ready to pounce and devour me whole. I found her in a bar, sipping whisky. It tasted like oil and felt like fire in my throat, becoming a bonfire inside me. We laid on stones and looked at the constellations, talking about life, about nothing, about the end. She invited me back to her apartment and I went. I chose an empty wine bottle amongst the collection in her closet, and swung with all my might, shattering it on her back porch. The shards excited me and we laughed like mad men, before she took me by the hand to her bed.
‘Stay the night,' she said, brushing my cheek.
I didn’t.
It was 9 o’ clock when my shift ended at the rec center as the new graphic designer. I dreaded the long drive, the temptation of letting go of the wheel, of closing my eyes for the last time. I wandered through the building next door, peering through a window to see an old lady staring back at me. She was cleaning the floor, all alone, and asked me if I was a serial killer.
“I don’t think so.” I said, and she let me inside. She smelt like cigarettes and her name was Susannah.
Susannah found out where I worked and would visit me every Friday night. She would talk about politics, the liberal agenda, her experience with homelessness, god. One day she suggested mental illness was fake, all these labels kids seemed to have now a’ days, a ruse for the medical industry to profit from our poor stupid brains.
“I THINK ABOUT KILLING MYSELF EVERYDAY.”
She held me in her arms, stroking my head, cooing in my ear. She squeezed me so hard that I couldn’t forget I was alive.
After a couple of weeks, she stopped visiting me. I came in and found a manila folder of my desk, full of print outs; suicide hotlines, counseling offices, resources galore. She left me with a story; her sister’s suicide. She wished she had reached out to her, she wished she had been there, held her like she had for me. She told me that God wanted me to be here, that the people in my life, wanted me, to be here.
Because of her, I told my mom how I felt.
I was driving to school afterwards and my Dad called me. His voice was thick.
‘I’m sorry,' he croaked. ‘I’m sorry you feel that way.’
He told me that if I left, he would too. He told me he loved me more than anything in the world.
When I hung up, I had to pull over. My heart was breaking too loud.
Afterwards, I went to the doctor. I answered questions, baffled them with my responses. They asked me if I wanted to go to a mental hospital, and I declined, scared of disappearing, of people knowing that I have a problem. They prescribed me anti-depressants, ready for pick up immediately. I cried in the Walmart parking lot, shaking, knowing I was finally doing something, anything, to get better.
For a while all I felt was tired, and the call of my bed, but that was fine by me. I stopped hearing the whispers when I was near the water. I never thought of the bridge when I climbed into my car after a long day.
It took a long time for me to thaw out. I didn’t realize it, but I had been stuck in the winter, 10 days before Christmas. In the spring of 2020, the sun reached me, and I melted, smiling for real.
This week the theme was ‘water’. I took this theme and twisted it more into a ‘drowned’ theme, as I reflected on the things that happened throughout 2019. This is a longer piece, more of creative non-fiction. It is obviously a very sensitive and personal story of mine, but I wanted to finally tell it to the world, or at least let it out of myself.
week 5: coffee
Bleary eyed, feet tied up with invisible 5 pound weights, the air is mingled with whirring and quiet murmurs between customers and baristas. Earthy sweet scents caress the hair on the nape of my neck and push me around like a puppet. Sleep whispers demonically, tugging on my eyelids, so I reach out for encapsulated warmth. It soaks into me, a deep, rich river of energy rushing through my canyons and mountain paths.
Eyes dark, chocolatey, hair like bark, skin speckled with earth, and Brown elixir spilling down my throat, nature is recapturing my muscles and bones. Breath snakes out of me, pigments of grounds, warmth, whipped cream on top.
Brushing finger tips in passing, static love evaporates my forcefield. I feel life loosen my limbs, spread like roots into my sleepless brain.
You are tied up in twine in my head; bookstore, soft couches, cardboard slips to keep our palms from burning, sweet lips like cinnamon. We pass these cups, a ruse for our overwhelming hearts, back and forth to each other. Porcelain accompanied with bird song and brewing; you're tinted with the smells of coffee. Kisses deep, hot, fill me with a rush of life, want and need for existence.
The sun is slipping up, clouds are its guise, but we know with certainty. Huddled together, sides fused, steam framing out cheeks. Silence is full of sounds: sipping, heart beats, clothing on skin, eyelashes closing, irresistible smiles. I feel it when I look at you, a warm river rushing through my landscape, soaking into my blood, becoming my reality.
This week the theme was ‘coffee’. I wanted to write about coffee as an object, through descriptions, but also as an experience. I drink coffee every day, so I have a lot of memories associated with it.
I have also had the pleasure of waking up with the person I love in the morning and brewing coffee together. I know it’s a simple experience, waking up with a cup of joe, but I find so much joy in the little experience. I can’t help but revel in the love of the little things.
Initially, this poem was meant to be just that. But as i continued to write i realized that a lot of my recent memories were tied to my partner. We had our first date at a coffee shop, in fact.
In addition, Painting with coffee was a really fun and interesting experience. It came out much darker and more beautiful than I could have hoped. It also holds the smell well and is extremely calming to be around. The coffee grounds in the darker part of the painting hold a wonderful texture.
week 4: wood
Old yellowed memories like spotty footage play in the private theater.
Palms ruddy, rough bark, scraped knees.
Precarious seating, perching in the sky.
the tree and i, woven fates, were a pair.
i swung from them, made my den, hiding in their canopy.
the sunsets, when together, were never more beautiful.
The pages turned to red hot resentment in the ribcage.
Damned mirrors, lumpy flesh, whispered words.
Jealousy running wild through the veins.
i wanted, nearly needed, to be them.
life would flash past, like a blink, to my woody eyes.
the peace, ingrained bark, could never compare.
Outside, drawn to the spot, soaking into the horizon.
Sliced up, headless, mushroom infested.
They are nothing but a dream in the ground.
if i had succeeded, tree transfiguration, i’d be here.
stumpy corpse, disintegrating, sparking envy.
our fates, throbbing pain, severed.
Yet still, legs carrying it all relentlessly forwards.
Cursed growth, new knotting, joy?
Precarious grounding, planting in the earth.
This week the theme was ‘Woods’. The story was inspired by my childhood experiences with my favorite tree in my backyard. I was quite the climber as a child, and it was a the favorite form of play that I had.
The second part of the story is inspired by my dysphoria, triggered by puberty, which particularly drew me to dreams and wishes to be something nonhuman. I was so out of connection with my own body, and disgusted by it, that I couldn’t think of any better alternative than to be something like a tree.
week 4: (special event) easter
The day before we left, I had pulled my back out. Mom insisted that I take one of Dad’s muscle relaxers. The car trip to my Nana’s is 3 hours; I thought it was normal to drive this long to see your grandparents when I was little. I fell asleep only 45 minutes into the trip. My body felt loose and numb all over from the medicine. I wondered how it was legal to be high like this.
Nana’s house was a magical far away land, like Narnia or Oz. She lives in a ranch style home on an expansive cattle farm. The barn was always full of a new variety of cats and sometimes we would swim in the nearby creek and catch crawfish or have a bonfire up by the lake. Once we started to get older, the farm slowly transformed into real life. We realized that the cats were different every time because they would die often, the creek was contaminated by cow manure and my grandparents were too old to drag logs and sticks up for the bonfire.
I woke up on the long driveway; they had had it filled up with a fresh stock of gravel, and the tires crunched and shook the car back and forth. I glanced out the window in a tired stupor to see a baby cow bucking and chasing after us through the muddy field. The grass was bright with spring despite the sudden cold that had descended onto Kentucky the day before; it had even snowed in Cincinnati.
Last year was tough. We had only seen Nana and Papa Jack three or four times, and when we did come down, we had to sit in the yard in lawn chairs under the relentless summer sun while they sat in the shade of the porch more than 12 feet away. The warm, hard squeezes and cheek kisses were just memories driven away by the fear of a premature death. But today was different; It was Easter and most of us were fully vaccinated.
All of us were full of an unprecedented joy for each other. We were quickly pushed into the sweet cinnamon smelling house with immaculately clean surfaces and eclectic collections of coffee cups and barbie dolls. My body was floating, and we were having Pizza hut for dinner; tomorrow would be the big Easter Lunch.
Nana’s yard was huge to us; It had enough space for a front porch, a back porch, a play set, a garden and a full-sized pool (not to mention two sheds and a full-sized parking lot.) It was perfect for hiding brightly colored eggs. The five of us, my cousins and two siblings, would excitedly wait on the porch, clutching our wicker baskets, waiting for the announcement of, ‘GO!’. Then we would fly out, forgotten sandals flinging off of our feet behind us. The grand prize was a ten-dollar bill stuffed into one of the eggs, but we wouldn’t mind a five, a one, or a piece of candy, if we got it.
It was tradition to play cards after dinner. We all loved to play games, and I especially had a competitive streak. Winning games was expected of me, and I silently reveled in my victories, projecting an unconcerned benevolence. That night I was so tired. I had fallen asleep again on the loveseat, but I was roused by the exhilarated musings of my 16-year-old brother. We played spades in partners and the two of us were victorious by 9 ‘o clock.
Five years ago, I would’ve been pessimistic about the bunny littered house and the decorative lights shaped like eggs. Now, 20 years old, I possessed a love for these things that I could hardly contain. I was fascinated and enamored; not with the consumerism of it, but with the charm of a grandparent’s compulsive decorating and the way little things like it create a fuzzy atmosphere.
Lunch was made up of numerous dishes, enough to 10 people. There were crockpots lined up on the countertop and the stove was crowded with porcelain baking dishes. We greedily loaded our plates, the edges of each dish mixing into horrible concoctions and stuffed our mouths like chipmunks. Afterwards we draped out sluggish bodies over the couches in the living room, lost in edible dreams. A reminder of the pie in the oven was like a punch to the gut and we urged our digestive tracks to hurry.
Sunday morning, we packed the car full of our overnight bags; mom’s minivan had plenty of room to accommodate for the four of us. In three hours, we’d be home again, away from the field covered hills and abundant cow smells. As we waved goodbye to our grandparents behind the screen-door I wondered what it would be like if we were closer together. Would it have ruined the magic of it? Would more frequent visits taint that importance of the memories we had of them? I couldn’t imagine them living in Northern Kentucky, nor us living in Central Kentucky. We were part of those worlds; it would be wrong to remove either of us. I smiled out the window, excited to see them again in a couple of months, and let my eyes droop down, the car lulling me back to sleep.
week 3: spring
It’s waking up on a cold early morning to an orchestra of bird song and the pattering of rain on the roof tiles.
It’s the light, chill caress of the breeze slithering through the curtains and whispering past my earlobes.
It’s the warmth of them soaking into my skin, the novel and familiar sensation of their arms snaking around my waist and tugging me closer.
It’s the first thing I see when I crack my eyes open; freckles, golden hair astray and butterfly lashes splayed out on soft, pink curves.
It’s an uncontrollable smile, a searing growth in my chest that spreads through my blood like a wildfire.
It’s the green seeping into everything and the tingling of it in my head as it infects me.
It’s the sun seeping into us and thawing us out, exploding into life.
It’s every new thing we do together for the first time shooting my skull with lights and serotonin like some new age medicine.
It’s kisses in the dark under a full moon, and a million constellations smiling down on us.
It’s the little buds peeking shyly out of every corner and the backdrop of eggshell blue skies.
It’s my heart flowering, spreading its roots through the cracks in my brain with memories of their scent, skin and subtle sounds.
this week the prompt is ‘spring’. My poem celebrates the sensations of winter ending and the physical, undeniable signs that spring is finally here. It’s also a love poem about my relatively new relationship.
I’m still learning things about my partner. Every new thing that I learn is like a profound archeological discovery; I make sure to store it away in a place where i will not forget it. It’s extraordinary to be so close with another person.
week 2: moths
I'm alone, except for the dog two hills over shouting a beat into the midnight blue sky. I'm too fascinated by the smell of subtle rust on the skin of my palms, and the feeling of old rain oozing out of the dirt and kissing my soles, and that light whispery breeze giving its best attempt at pushing me over.
I let myself be a moth, drawn to the only warmth in the Blackness, the only reality in the entirety of existence. I draw that darkness around my shoulders like a blanket, and I revel in my silence, in the sleep heavy life, in the dirt on my toes and the stains on my fingertips, smiling smiling smiling.
I pretend that my eyes aren’t heavy, that my brain isn't foggy, and that I'm rising up, only my toes touching the earth now, gravity be damned.
The streetlight is like citrus and singles me out as I stand on the new pavement from last summer. My eyes are fixed to another time, neck stretched out, a lone pillar to the heavens. I was drawn to it (the specks in the sky) and the moon beam traipsing through my window, as I lay restlessly.
The smell of Kentucky seeps into my bones, pebbles of earth are lodged in my feet and I am assured by the waves of wind weaving their way through the winding hills. For just this moment, I am a creature of the night. I belong to this world, and my wings will carry me through the air, (little sound) imperceptible to the slumbering. It belongs to us (the moths) and the dog two hills over.
I wrote this poem when I couldn’t sleep at night. I found myself getting out of bed and making my way into the street. Even though it was past midnight, there was plenty of light from the street light, the mostly full moon and the stars. I felt a bit weird standing in the middle of the road; I wasn’t scared that I’d be hit by a car, but I wondered what someone would think if they saw me standing there, my arms wrapped around my sides staring up at the stars. Truth be told, it really didn’t matter.
I’ve had a fascination with moths for a while. I had researched them to see how different they really were from butterflies; there are very few differences. Basically, they’re just cuter, night version of butterflies. I’m fascinated by the thought of a creature that lives its whole life without harming any other living thing. How could anything be more lovely than that?
week 1: mushrooms
mushroom inspired imagery
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