Things My Abuser Has Tried To Take Away From Me But Failed:

womanhood is so divine. the world attempting to desecrate and compartmentalise it only makes me realise how holy my body is. every scar and curve and pore and hair. there is genesis between my legs. godliness. life that brings life. how dare you attempt to spit upon scripture. how dare you attempt to destroy something you can’t touch.

Hozier, “As It Was”, Wasteland, Baby!

7:59am. did I tell you he’s kept every single one of my love letters in his wallet?

you’re right across the bridge, laying in bed and my hands are shaking from holding back from you so I’ve turned to writing. this is the way I kiss you when you’re gone.

I write so much about love because I’ve lived a life of so devoid of it till now. how can I not write about you? this beautiful break of sunshine in my otherwise cloudy world. how can I not weave through the gardens of poetry trying to pick out the most beautiful bouquet of metaphors for you?

those green eyes in the summertime. clammy hands in the winter. bronze skin shining under the sun like you’re made of gold. tender breathing when you lie next to me. the way the breeze plays with your hair in spring. it seems like the universe loves you just as much as I do.

my love, there’s never enough time is there? I always say to myself after I’ve left you that I wish I had kissed you harder, wish I had hugged you tighter, wish I could’ve stayed a little while longer. the clocks are just never on our side, are they?

please, leave your phone in my bag and come visit me tomorrow to get it. please, call me when I get home to check I’m okay. please, spend your evenings at mine, curled up on the couch like you belong here, next to my notebooks and coffee mugs and paintings. It seems that I don’t quite know how to midnight without you.

when I turn to leave you after I’ve kissed your cheek goodbye, every single time I wish I could run back to you and say “oh, 5 more minutes won’t hurt”. every single time, I turn to look at you and find you still waiting where I left you, smiling, saying that you love me. you love me. you love me.

my bed for one feels so empty without you here. come over, let’s eat shitty chinese and watch bad tv (which is inherently never a bad idea). kiss me. let’s dance to frank sinatra. kiss me again. sleep next to me, tell me you’ll be here in the morning. tell me you’ll meet me in my dream tonight. kiss me again and again. and again.

“Don’t talk to me, please don’t talk to me. My words in the dream are like Hamlet’s ghost, the prophecy spurts old blood, one hundred Ophelias of thought have died. Don’t talk to me, please don’t talk to me.”

— Moikom Zeqo, from ‘Don’t Talk to Me’, I Don’t Believe in Ghosts: Poems from ‘Meduza’ (trans. Wayne Miller)

“….” by Emily Byrnes

it’s getting colder and I miss watching the condensation of your breath form and disappear in the air. the iciness of your blue eyes, the chill in your stare. winter boy, you said you never loved me. winter boy, I have so many questions: was it all real? why can’t you look me in the eye any more? how did you forget me that easily? 

winter boy, how did our love get so cold?

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.