waves crashing on our hometown shore

i know you love to watch the sky but look at the rain, my love. it comes every fall, hurricanes lining the coast. we have lived it--the wind and floods have raised us. you stare at the sky when it's beautiful and i watch the rain as it pools on the road, remember how i used to jump in puddles. i never had rain boots, and i guess that was the best part as a child, to feel the water in your socks. now i don't leave the house when it rains because the thunder scares me and i watch the raindrops through my window, i feel them through the thick glass. i'm older and a bit of a cynic, i never let the water touch my fingertips.

my wrists are bruised watercolor-skies
from where she grabbed my hand
and dragged me along.
i don't bandage them anymore,
i wish i could tell her that.

our dirt path no longer exists,
eroded away by the same wind that blew in her hair.
i kneel and pick up the pebbles to catch a glimpse of
some sort of lover that i could have been.

our love was a series of little aggravations--
perhaps she pulled me along by the elbow one too many times.
she was always the one on the other end, speakerphone echoing against tile.
no matter what i said, frozen dew couldn't glue us together.

there is a new girl now. she kisses me and tells me there is sunshine in my eyes.
laura, you never got to see me be happy.

your lips on mine were a mere wisp in time

and yet i can still feel them when i speak—

all my words are tinted, such a blessing for

someone whose speech tends to be tar-black.

laura, i used to scream your name like you would come back if my throat burned enough. a parasite, you fucking burrowed your way into my neck until i was sick with a nostalgia that bleeding wrists couldn't fix any longer. laura, laura, laura, laura. you're a curse on my lips, the whisper between choked-back cries. cut myself on our origami butterflies, how do you feel about that? do you hate what we never had, potential you slashed to the ground?

to tell the truth, i don't think you remember how we loved, like we were thirty with a failing marriage. perhaps you splash me into conversation like white wine--i had a girlfriend once. you wouldn't know her. no, she faded into the background.

Spoiler

an older one for y'all. dw dw i'm fine guys but moms with anger issues...really mess you up, I guess.

when i get mad

i think of my mother

and then i break down crying

because i told myself i’d be better.


she passed her anger down through her blood

i have her eyes and i have her polarity

and i wish i had nothing at all.


my whole life

she told me i had her curly hair

and i suppose i do

deep beneath all my issues

but i straighten it just in case


i wonder what i’ll be like when she dies,

might not be invited to her funeral the way things are going

but oh well, when she’s dead and gone

i’ll cry and i’ll lie to myself

tell my notebook i’m nothing like her

but look in the mirror and see her manipulation staring back


but she’s staunch as a brick wall

and falls apart at the drop of a pin

and i love you, i hate you

i think you’re strong

but you break down when i look you in the eye.


he beams with pride

when you tell him he has your brown eyes

but he doesn’t remember the days i suffered

you weren’t a good parent at all until he came along

i guess i got the short end of the stick

and i guess i always will

because i don’t think ten years old

is young enough for your newfound discoveries

to make a difference in my brain


you said i couldn’t like a girl

and that was weird and unnatural

but you created me deep in your womb

so i must be natural, right?

how could you hate what you worked so hard to create?


i don’t have a role model

and i don’t think i ever will

because you taught me not to look up to celebrities

and i never was obsessed with hemingway

but everyone in the room looks up to their parents

yet i’ve always looked down at you.


i don’t want to scream at my daughter

but i’ll probably do it anyway,

i’ll run to my room a wreck and

i’ll apologize but she’ll never be the same

and it’s all my fault

because i swore i wouldn’t be like you

and it’s all your fault, mom

because you had me when you swore you weren’t ready

laura is the rainwater pooled in my front garden. i am still trudging through, trying to save those poor table-roses. she is january incarnate, the bitter cold that never quite brought snow. got my hopes up for a fortnight. 

why is it that we could never truly speak? our fingers mere centimeters apart, i ponder how our minds are on opposite sides of the continent. do you trust me with your thoughts? i ask. she is lost in my eyes. my hand brushes her skin, where there was once a sharp spark is the newfound dullness of a love overdone. 

ours is a earth-shattering love. darling, you are in every pen-stroke. the back of my hand seems to yearn for your lips again. press yourself up against me, you told me you loved me last night, prove it. you lay your head in my lap, my fingers throb as i run them though your hair. i am not close enough to you. i fear i never will be. 

such a peculiar thing, new year's. at a point in time it was my only solace, the fact that miraculously i had survived another year. by this time in 2023 i was begging for this sordid revolution to be over, so that maybe when 11:59 on december 31st came, i'd be a new person. perhaps the scars would finally fade.
you see, the winter has always bitten far too close to my vital organs. i feel the doom in my liver, anxiety heavy in my diaphragm. i breathe too much but my lungs never quite fill with the icy air.

my mother’s fabric scissors were sharp

until i came along.

they sliced so perfectly through satin,

blades cutting through lace, and eventually,

my skin.

they stayed under my bed when pain didn’t come to my fingertips.

she would panic if she saw the blood-stained steel.

my heartbeat like sewing-machine stitches as i scratched them along my wrist.

my mind louder than the pulse in my neck.

i used to write poetry, but what was the point

in such an evocative beauty

when there was one carved into my thigh?

but sweater sleeves that my mom knitted

couldn’t cover up scars any longer.

i pulled the scissors from under my bed one day

—rinsed the blades of all the static that had once filled my head,

and handed them back to her.

“where were they?” she asked.

“it doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter.”

i sit here in front of you today
to sincerely apologize for my inadequate existence.

the sky was grey when i was born
and you are free to assume that as the reason i am so dull now.

perhaps when you took my hand and raised me a reader
i became infatuated with a reality other than the one i suffered through.

you handed me a list of things i needed to be
and through all these years i think it never truly sunk into my head.

i have always been a dreamer.
maybe i dreamt too hard and made you angry at my fantasies.

i think this could be goodbye.
you raised a child then alienated her so that she'd never want to return to the place she grew up.

i love everything here

@ash120819
thank youuuu
this thread is my pride and joy, lol

as it should be! everything here is magic

theromanticchemist wrote:my mother’s fabric scissors were sharp

until i came along.

they sliced so perfectly through satin,

blades cutting through lace, and eventually,

my skin.

they stayed under my bed when pain didn’t come to my fingertips.

she would panic if she saw the blood-stained steel.

my heartbeat like sewing-machine stitches as i scratched them along my wrist.

my mind louder than the pulse in my neck.

i used to write poetry, but what was the point

in such an evocative beauty

when there was one carved into my thigh?

but sweater sleeves that my mom knitted

couldn’t cover up scars any longer.

i pulled the scissors from under my bed one day

—rinsed the blades of all the static that had once filled my head,

and handed them back to her.

“where were they?” she asked.

“it doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter.”

this is so amazing. i have unfortunately similar experiences with scissors and this felt too real

i'm sorry you've gone through that too, ash <333