“You Are Not Real. You Are A Dream Of A Dream.”

You seem like the type that would happen anyway.

I smile politely and listen to him as he went on about how sexy he thought my vulnerability was.

My trauma a commodity, a mere accessory to him.

I am the saint in the stained glass window now.

I wonder if I’m the type when he kept his hands where they were even when I asked him to stop. 

The way he mistook my shrinking for permission.

My fingertips were so thin then, 

Pale, peeling skin and a wrecking ball in the empty space in my chest.

I wonder if I’m the type when a man I don’t know follows me home,

The way I tried to swallow the problem, to drop my throat into a whisper. 

To survive by blending, by not being the victim, 

Maybe I had always asked for it. 

Maybe this just happened to girls like me.

To be loved is to be eaten, ripped to the bone, skin tender and pink. A blush so bloody, my sweet killer, collaborators in each other’s demise.

To love is to attend hundreds of funerals of the person they used to be. How many did I create? How many did I kill? Have you done the same to me, my love?

To be loved is to die and to be reborn in their kiss over and over and over again, the resurrection painful as my bones rearrange to fit the mould of your body.

To love is to kill, heart in your hands and safety in your mouth. I am the funeral pyre and you are the onlooker, crying tears of grief but warmed by the flames. I burn to keep you safe, lover.

To be loved is to consume, gag, swallow everything whole, the sugar too sickly sweet, body unused to softness like this.

To love is to scream, is to lose in this battle for two, is to be vulnerable and hopeful and innocent and lost and found. A paradigm of desperate emotions.

To be loved is to kiss and suffocate but not pull away, no, never pull away.

“Nemesis inhabited a dark paradise of her own making. She never held back. I loved her for her frightful hatred, her frightful love. I admired her stunning passion for revenge; the mercilessness in her eyes.”

— Lola Ridge, from To the Many; Collected Poems of Lola Ridge; “Hellish,”

I write about love obsessively but how can I call myself a poet and not find a muse in our love? in your eyes? or in your kisses?

you, my love, are Michaelangelo’s david (your head turned to the sea and your eyes alive, god you are art in the skin of a man), Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (the way your smile tells me things your words could never, the way I can’t help but stop and stare whenever your lips turn into a crescent moon), Van gogh’s sunflowers (blonde hair and green eyes, the colour palette of a man driven by the madness of love. you should sit in a gallery, honey. you’re the most beautiful thing these eyes ever laid on).

beings like you inspire the most wonderful art. and although i do not create the most beautiful words or the most stunning paintings, I am curled up in the corner thinking of you. and all my fingers can do is write. and write and write.

this is how Michaelangelo felt in the chapel, painting stories of god and trying to bring this divinity to the earth.

this is how da Vinci felt, drawing the smile of a woman he had only seen in passing. her beauty seared her into his brain, how could he not make art out of her face and call it a masterpiece?

and this is how Van Gogh felt, broken by the world but seeing all the wonder of nature in his lover’s eyes, deciding there are good things if only she exists.

you, my dear, are art. nothing less.

yeah i know u miss me it’s pretty hard to forget an angel

tender quotes:

1.  “The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it.” (mikko harvey, from “for m,”)

2.  “I still feel like the world is a piece of bread, I’m holding out half to you.” (eileen myles)

3. “Wherever you are it’s okay. You can come back from it. Whatever happened to you down there, whatever the world looks like now, that’s not how it always looks. That’s not how it’s always going to look. There’s more. There’s always more.” (patrick ness, from “more than this”)

4.  “I was making dinner and I got a message. Go look outside, she said, go look at the sunset. My apartment is small, with four rooms and two windows that don’t see much light so I had no idea. I pulled my coat on and hurried out. I was running to this sunset, suddenly the only thing that mattered. I hurried past the taller buildings to the park and the sky was leaking shades of pink and purple. It was beautiful and fleeting, there one minute and gone the next. I would’ve missed it; I almost kissed it. And so I started thinking, how great it would be to get a nudge, a tap on your shoulder, a moment or two before your life changes. Stop what you’re doing and look around, you’ll want to remember this later. In a minute, you’re going to fall in love.” (kelsey danielle, from “unexpected sunset”)

5.  “Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a little sunshine, a little rain. Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another―why don’t you get going? For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.” (mary oliver, from “black oaks”)

calling your lover "my lover" is the most TENDER and SOFT and HOMOEROTIC thing you can call them and we should do that more often as a society

watching you dance is like witnessing something you never thought existed till now. it’s like finding god after swearing him off. the fluidity of your body, shoulders thrown back and chin raised. the way your skin calls me, body free and mind far far away. aren’t you a miracle, baby. aren’t you like water turning into wine. I can’t take my eyes off you, this gorgeous mess of a man. the way you move with me, holding my hands like you’ll get lost if you let go. then my waist, like I’m the only thing keeping you from floating into space. wander too far from reality with me, my love. move the way you do, my miracle boy.

“Lips of honey, eyes of fire.”

— Meleager, tr. by Peter Whigham, from Greek Anthology; “Epigrams,”