sleep has left its dregs in my head.
it is dawn and i
am splashing through the motions of the morning,
the resistance of my world like
aerobics at the municipal pool,
the air too thick, too thick, too thick.
it is saturday morning, it is dawn and
we huddle beneath blankets that protect us
from more than the cold. it is dark.
your fingertip moves against my side, i
wonder if you notice. i wonder if
you feel my breathing, how my heart tries to
rip through the skin of my chest. your mouth
falls open.
it is saturday morning. it is dawn and the sun
is breaking over the horizon. it is dawn
and the kitchen window gives the best view of th
i promise it wasn't you by Mercury-the-Queen, literature
Literature
i promise it wasn't you
one:
that boy taught me that girls who speak up
are not fit for loving.
that bastard taught me that girls who say no
are not fit for loving;
it was my voice or my heart,
and i chose love.
(after all,
isn't that the greatest thing?)
two.
when the pain weighted my
body to the floor,
when the carpet covered me with dust
and claimed my bones,
my friends called me lazy.
"where are your wounds?"
i cupped my glued-up heart in my hands.
they rolled their eyes
and turned away,
asked me why i'd turn myself
into some craft project
for a hopeless, wandering boy
and night after night i cried
"i don't know, i don't know,
i don't know."
three:
well that virgin never kept them from littering by Mercury-the-Queen, literature
Literature
well that virgin never kept them from littering
before this ugly, flowered couch
bobbed down the river
and came to rest
where water lapped semen
from its edge,
someone slept here unalone.
the stains in the cloth spell promises,
"my body goes here,
yours belongs there,"
the cigarette burns on the armrests
sketch stories of every
so-late-it's-early night.
the couch now sleeps with the water
and the lilies
and the riverbank,
the fish now suckle waterlogged cigarettes on
flowered, moonless nights.
and this sink, before they ripped the kitchen out,
held his dishes-
food-caked, abandoned dishes
broken in anger against
her shoulders and her forehead
and her screaming, ugly face.
this sink
tonight i am old again by Mercury-the-Queen, literature
Literature
tonight i am old again
tomorrow morning i will be
two again and scared of the shadows.
i will be two again and i will not
look out the window unless you are
holding my hand,
i will be two again and my father will
be the biggest man on earth again
but tonight i am eighteen, i am
eighteen, i am
holding the world in my chest and it is
beating like a heart (well then it must be my heart)
china digs a pattern in my backbone and i
am red red red red
i am a communist daughter and
the trains to shanghai will leave something
to be desired
i am eighteen, i am
all the life in the world
stacked around a schoolruined spine
and the world moves softly and she
touches me gent
those burning nights in paris by Mercury-the-Queen, literature
Literature
those burning nights in paris
if paris is easy, then easy
is the way i like my love.
there are souls folded into cafe corners,
there are lives we'd like to taste and try on.
(whose empty eyes? whose wrists are these?)
and they will beg of you
"oublie moi, chers amis."
and you will forget them.
paris is easy.
i have probed her underbelly,
felt the warm rumble of the coming rain, and
she has shown me her metropolitan drunkards,
stray cats and
women of the night:
the girls who slither through back doors,
barefoot.
(a feather lost floats softly,
kisses the ground and blows away.
"c'est la vie," she croaks,
and in her voice i hear diamonds,
cigarettes,
wine bottles and a
since i met you i have fallen
for the way my fingers curl around a pen.
you told me once that my poems kept you breathing,
and if these pinkish branches keep your heart beating
then i love them and i love them
and i love them.
(you said my eyes were cornflower, forget-me-not,
blue jean shorts on a summer night.
you said my eyes were oceans, not for the blue
but because the sirens on my lashes
fell on your cheeks and sang to you.)
and my stomach has held a hundred moons
but you never told me that the blood i shed
was shameful,
even slumped on the floor when i cried in the night
you held me and told me not to be afraid,
you kissed my fac
Well, it's been almost two weeks since I've been back home. I've found my place in the family again, though it's been hard. The people I love have changed and I have to learn to accept that and not spend time searching for the people they once were. I tell myself that I too have changed, and that it's only normal for my world not to be the same as it was when I left it. I'm getting better every day.
My welcome back party was three days after I got home. I had a great time being with my family again, hiking all day, swimming in the creek and playing in mud, having bonfires, ect, ect, ect. My whole family was there and my best friends came dow
By the way, I think I forgot to mention that my host mom is perfectly fine. :D Thank you all for your support!
Being in Nice was probably my favorite four days here, actually. :la: My host brother and sister were busy and didn't go with us, so it was just my host parents and I. Which was enjoyable. I got to be the only child for four days. :D
The first day we walked along the seaside a bit after lunch, and then we took a little train up to the top of this huge hill with the ruins of a castle that used to overlook the city. Night was falling by the time we were done, and we walked down the hill on foot instead of taking the train. I'm glad w
we crash seafoam
when my bones are driftwood,
breaking.
i dive for pearls in your hair,
lose my breath and realize that
i don't need it;
your sighs suffice to fill my canvas lungs.
our bodies carve castles in the sand.
("you've practiced," you whisper.
"tongues in tidepools have taught you to love.")
the moon swells the waves.
your kneecaps remind me of
dolphin noses,
your fingertips are hermit crabs
that scuttle on my skin.
(we howl like seaside wolves, and then)
when morning comes i can't help but see the way you
sprawl like yawning waves in the early morning tide.
you are a shipwreck.
between sailor's-knotted sheets