tacenda

yay! rhymes! i love rhymes!

For what is life but numberless goodbyes?
Two thousand miles; I think of stars, and you.

my heart aches.

Thanks @hiraeth! <3 It is (or is trying to be?) a sonnet. lol my heart aches too.

Ahhh a sonnet! The theme is beautiful and consistent, and that last line at the end is the perfect small twist. I love it!

Aahhh thanks @Ventomology, I'm glad you appreciate it!

tacenda vii


I forgot what anxiety felt like
settling in my throat,
like a vicious rose in bloom,
growing, thorny,
choking me.

the little bubble of giddiness
that rises in my chest,
pop!
when I skip my first
assignment.
(I tell myself it’s only
delayed;
I’m lying.)

to long for the sweet escape
of sleep, so desperately,
but lie abed instead,
trembling with stress
forcing my eyes open
and doing absolutely nothing
about anything.

I thought I'd left those dark days
behind me, when I left home and high school alike;
I guess because I’ve had to come back,
my own body saw fit to
teach me a lesson.
again.

Spoiler

I rewrote this one like three times because it was really emotionally charged to the point where I couldn’t even look it in the eye. Now I can, but I’m not sure if it has the same effect? I think it deals with some of the same issues but is hopefully a little less intensely personal than the previous drafts.
Just a fun fact! Thanks everyone who’s been reading my NaPo, whether you’ve been commenting or not. <33

tacenda viii

I lie here, just that,
watching the past six months
run through my mind on a
neverending film reel.

I keep seeing us together and
telling myself that I’m not her
and telling myself,
“That’s a bad thing.”

I call her to ease my
guilty conscience;
she thinks I’m trying to be
a good person,
but I’m not so sure I’m
trying to be anything.

I must still care about your good opinion
more than hers,
more than my own;

else why would I have dreamed this moment and
awoken in blinding terror?

tacenda ix

she was far from home,
and I was fascinated.
a girl from the midwest, I’d always
longed for a taste of the world.
she’d had far more than a taste,
and the dust of it still crusted her shoes.
the memories.

a year younger than me at least,
she was more woman
than I.

it was hard for me to feel
for those she’d left behind;
for hadn’t she been living this way
since she was a child?
hadn’t I refused to look back on my own origins?

but I did not understand.
not then.

we were the first to walk together.
it was the first time I truly
knew another soul.

we moved quickly past pleasantries
to the deeper world beneath,
discovering each other
and respecting each other
for what we were;
no more,
no less.

“home” meant little to me
since I’d been fighting to leave,
to make my home in the west.

now, in my house,
I realized that I did it.
made my home there.
and only now do I feel the full force
of its loss.

only now do I think
of her travels, never settling,
a constant cycle of
loss and renewal.

she never let it harden her.

full of compassion,
endeavoring, always, to understand,
she is a woman created
of her trials,
each time stronger than before.

what’s more is that she tells me
that I am,
too.

tacenda x

when words cannot give voice
to the force of my desires,
i don’t know how to give up.

so i give all i have.

i write on seas of pages,
making waves of words.

i write to reach the stars.

it is still not
enough.

tacenda xi

spring rains fall on my hands
my hand on the piano keys, I play
a song for you I don’t know the words
words are harder and harder to find
these days, go read a dictionary, maybe
it can help you get cultured; know your art
your art is something I always admired,
I could never be good enough at it but
you make me want to try.

if you’re reading this keep reading
reading makes the monsters go away
because in books, the monsters are
imaginary; don’t think about the monsters in
the real world because they’re scarier.
scarier than all of this is the possibility
of not-seeing-you-again even though
it’s a lie, I’ve seen the house for next year
next year when the rains will come again
and I will be home.

sit on the back porch and swing in the
hammock; remnants of summer like
four-leaved clovers pressed in dictionary pages
pages of my journals in my mind
all I have are the memories like flowers
flowers bending down beneath the
spring showers, as if they hear the music
music I’m playing not for them not for you
but only for myself, and the rain.

tacenda xii

inspiration is
skipping stones across
the deep waters of my mind,
a lake so blue and clear
you can see right
to the bottom of it.
the stones sink,
ideas settling against
each other,
finding their resting place.

love is
tossing a penny into
the deep well of my heart,
wishing it will bring you
luck, watching it tumble,
a bright copper in
the vastness
of my potential.
gleaming in the
quiet darkness.

but stones and pennies,
who knows what becomes of them?
not I, for each is only
one among many,
and I have my own
to throw.

Thank you @Arcticus! That means a lot coming from you.

tacenda xiii

Time heals all wounds,
they say.
I wonder why
it took me so long to admit
that I had a wound in the first place?

It’s true that I’ve been
aching less, these past few days.

No one could help the feelings
that took root in my heart.
I guess the soil was ready for
whatever would take hold in it and grow—
and grow they did.
(the feelings, I mean)

It’s hard to want to weed out
something so beautiful, even though
I’ve felt the pricks of the
thistle thorns.
Maybe it takes pain
to be beautiful in the first place.

Still, I think it hurts less
than before.
I won’t know for sure
until we meet again
(soon).
As they say,
only time will tell.

tacenda xiv

collect my scattered thoughts and
sew them up;
tattered rags might yet make
whole cloth.
maybe that can stop the
shreds of memory
from ghosting in and out.

stitch these strands
into your heart
so that when things fall apart
there’s something left to
remember me by.
for I, too, have felt the
needle prick
of your threads being woven
between mine.

so miss me, kiss me,
hold me close,
circle my wrist in twine.
for it only takes a pair of
scissors, sharp
(and a hurting heart)
to cut me loose.

Spoiler

If this one makes you feel like one of us is going insane, then I’m setting the right tone. :]

tacenda xv

help me, please,
because I don’t know how
to help myself.

like a fever dream where everything is
too big/too small
this house is warping, changing
shape and size,
the four walls are
breathing
(i can hear them)
and I’m screaming at them,
pounding on them (release me!),
falling to the floor in tears,
disheveled.
in my dreams.

my brain can scream,
just like my brain can travel back
to the past when things were o.k.,
but my body sits,
slack,
in front of a blue computer screen,
staring at itself
(doesn’t feel like myself anymore).
I can’t absorb another word,
don’t want to, I DON’T WANT TO,
I WANT TO GO HOME.
please.
tell me when i can
go home?

without my mountain
to orient me,
without my people
to ground me,
I’m floating away and my body
is a hollow balloon,
filled with hot air and
memories and
the last breaths I took
when I was free.
but now I have to force myself just
to breathe,
to eat,
to move.

(my limbs are shaking
with the tension,
with the cold that comes
from an absence
as deep as the lake of ice
in my heart)
if I close my eyes hard enough
I can look at the chemical structures
of my soul.
something acidic in there and
if I didn’t have double vision,
maybe I could tell
what it was.
if only my brain would stop its
flickering in black and white.

someone help me,
please. someone
hold me.