A Conversation With Sappho

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

texts between angels trying to live as mortals by keaton st. james

breaking breaking breaking

I ask for forgiveness,

for a sin I haven’t committed.

bow to the pillar of greatness or madness or whatever there is.

hospital bed number 5,

you’re not here. you’re not here. you’re not here.

(I don’t want you to be).

suicide wraps it’s fingers around my neck and whispers sweet nothings,

flashes of blood and the noose and the pills the rush and the silence

the silence the silence the silence the sil

(I can’t breathe)

i close my eyes and wait and wait and wait

it’ll pass, I tell myself, just breathe and let it be.

I hope you find yourself whoever you are

I hope you listen to music and fall in love and go dancing

find your happy ever after,

with ur messy hair and teary eyes

hospital bed number 5.

a love letter as a hug, as your head in my lap, as the romance of room 56, with the lights turned off. there have been so many nights i wished i was crawling into bed beside you, so many late night library sessions where i wished you were across me, eyes glued to your laptop, days where i wished i was reaching across the mattress to rest against your tenderness, the sweet softness of you.

things my abuser has tried to take away from me but failed:

1) Love in the form of sunflowers and surprise dinners and intertwined fingers. Romance and deep kisses, warm and safe. Dancing and giggling with him to Lily Allen. Kissing him and wondering what I did to deserve a body so soft, a love so raw and honest.

2) Love in the form of looking after this heavy body, even when it doesn’t look after me back. Face masks, showers and brushing through my matted hair, knotted like a unkempt garden. Dragging myself to therapy and loving all the charred parts of me. Loving me flawed, loving me regardless, loving me unconditionally, loving the me that survived.

3) Love in the form of a best friend. Nights spent sleeping next to her, nights spent crying into her lap, nights spent singing at the top of our lungs. She loves me silently, knows me when I’m down, knows me when I’m up. She doesn’t love me different, even with all the flaws.

4) Love in the form of family, with their misguided love and tentative support. Love in the form of my mother’s perfume and food she tells me to eat even when I feel I don’t deserve it. Weeks spent in hospital, bringing me my favourite food in the ward. Love in the form of her imperfection and how I wouldn’t change it for the world.

5) Love in the form of music, of dancing around in my room to the anthems of my youth. Of belting it out as loud as my lungs will allow. Songs I’ve cried to, laughed to, kissed to, lost to. Songs that held me up and gave a melody to all the hurt.

6) Love in the form of the poet in me. On my best days, she is all that I am. On my worst days, she is all that I want to be.

7) Love in the form of hope. A love that screams I made it. A love that believes it happened. Recovery has finally, finally begun to taste sweet.

Kim Addonizio, from ‘Blues for Roberto’, What Is This Thing Called Love: Poems

you are like clockwork, like misguided irony that you can’t yet identify. I see you’re still chasing me though, even if its only subconsciously now. She doesn’t pull off what I am though, and never will. Happy hauntings.

“Lips of honey, eyes of fire.”

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

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