exhaustion is a one-way ticket to a hilltop station with an obscure name where we sit with our sandals in our hands, feet propped up on the armrests of hot metal benches spray-painted green, our legs aching with the fatigue of too much collective worrying and too little to worry about. there is only one roof and our tongues loll in time to the ceiling fan's slow whirring as it bats the flies away; they fly toward us instead, sticking to our skulls, tiny wings flapping
[do not let us go].
in the humidity of a place i call a standstill call a temporary home from unrest and territorial cacophony, my heart rescinds all the force that comes with grieving, and i find myself wishing i had [taken back all my names from her] never given her any of my names before she walked beyond the ticket booth and into the real world. my straw hat chafes my nose and my heels are skinned and my knees are bleeding and you puncture my sad bubble every time you say something vaguely funny and unassuming and bitter with a subtle twist of why-does-this-hurt-so-bad.
[why did the chicken cross the track?
because he was tired of being cooped up in somebody else's heart.]
it makes me far happier than you suppose it ever could, though, listening to you, listening to the buzz of my pulse under loose skin coverlets every time your hand moves over a gulf of air to clutch at mine. if there's a tune to our universe, i am a failure at determining the song, but it's okay because we're not waiting for a train and we have a hell of a lot of time to figure out what the words mean. there is only one roof; beyond is a dictionary of clouded reason and irrational discomforts; they strike the planes of your face like drums and my heart like it's always been a bassoon. the day is
heavier than you would suppose. the day is
heavy.
we are the nails in somebody else's coffin and i'm still figuring out the ropes. here, our faces hot. here, my heart guilt-wrenched and face tear-stained with the melody that comes with i-no-longer-have-it-in-me-to-find-the-weeping.
'do you think,
we should walk home instead of waiting?'
a pause. my heart rescinds.
'i wouldn't mind.'
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,857 Reviews
this is wonderfully written! it feels so abstract at times, so unreal, as if the setting were a sort of fever dream, and yet the raw power in the language you use describing the way others (specifically, one) make you feel just adds to the myriad dimensions in this poem. your writing style flows perfectly; i can tell just when the rhythm stops with a jerk before resuming. it mirrors thoughts almost perfectly. once again, noticing this, i feel that conmection between an unreal situation and real feelings. this is strong and sorrowful simultaneously and it feels like the perfect poem. good job with this!!!
this was a very interesting and well-written poem. a lot of poems put emotions and backstories straight out there, but this one makes you think. what happened here? what is the relationship between the narrator and the person they address? except, a thing that i find common with poems that make you think, there are things that are very confusing tucked in between things that aren't and the reader just accepts them along with everything else. so, on to the portion of the review where i nitpick things that i found confusing. they're questions as well, if you'd be open to giving me more hints to what they mean, and please tell me if this became rude.
- "there is only one roof", succeeded by the narrator talking about the effects of the heat. what significance does the amount of roofs place on temperature? this is repeated in a later passage and there, i do not understand the meaning.
- "a place i call a standstill call a temporary home" i don't see any grammar mistakes in here, so i assume that it was written this way on purpose, but i just can't seem to understand the sentence. so, the narrator calls it a standstill, and is the standstill calling it a temporary home?
- "i-no-longer-have-it-in-me-to-find-the-weeping" what do you mean by "the" weeping? if the sentence is talking about not being able to cry, maybe "i-no-longer-have-it-in-me-to-find-energy-to-weep" or something such as that.
but all those things aside, this was emotion-filled and i admire the clever wording, and i do believe that i have become a fan of your poems.