Latest Posts by violets-and-honey - Page 3

Be softer with you. You are a breathing thing. A memory to someone. A home to a life.

Nayyirah Waheed

— Carolina Outcrop

A great Hope fell You heard no noise The Ruin was within Oh cunning Wreck That told no tale And let no Witness in

The mind was built for mighty Freight For dread occasion planned How often foundering at Sea Ostensibly, on Land

A not admitting of the wound Until it grew so wide That all my Life had entered it And there were troughs beside -

A closing of the simple lid That opened to the sun Until the tender Carpenter Perpetual nail it down -

Emily Dickinson, from Envelope Poems

Henri Gervex, Rolla (detail), 1878.

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux.

To My Twenty-Four-Year-Old Self - Elisa Gonzales

Sometimes you feel more intimacy with the woman who lives

in the apartment opposite—twenty years older, probably,

though she looks barely ten, devoted to evading age—

than with anyone stroked or kissed or otherwise handled.

You sit naked on the white sofa, lights on, looking into her home,

lights on.

She paints her toenails, watches a black-and-white film,

Hitchcock, maybe: there’s a woman with a platinum chignon.

She applies a green mask. A cream. A mystery ointment.

When you meet an older woman who resembles her, enough,

you do the obvious thing.

That woman says, after, Don’t ever leave me

but when you report to your friends

you change her words to Don’t ever forget me.

Typical of us, the lie and the lie.

Why couldn’t you tell the truth? That’s what I’ve come to ask.

Not to her—to your friends.

I can’t remember why it embarrassed you.

Was it that she was old enough not to bare her throat?

Or was it shame at yourself, for misunderstanding

how well you were understood?

(It always comes back to knowledge with us, doesn’t it?)

Maybe it doesn’t matter: you’ll think of this woman

so often throughout the years

that by some lights

you’ll have kept your vow.

I listen to and read poetry

Not just to create poetry

But because I want everything I say to sound like poetry

To become more beautiful through the beauty that I speak

To make my great-grandmother proud

To become art

What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade

by Brad Aaron Modlin

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took questions on how not to feel lost in the dark

After lunch she distributed worksheets that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—

something important—and how to believe the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts are all you hear; also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,

and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking for whatever it was you lost, and one person

add up to something.

Just because I worked there does not mean I am not sick

I should be institutionalized, but I know all of their tricks

(I know I’m slipping further into mental illness to an alarming degree but I’m too traumatized from working in a psychiatric hospital to seek more intensive help than my weekly therapy and nightly Lexapro. I saw how my patients were treated and I quit because of it. Becoming one of them is a terrifying prospect)

Sylvia Plath, from “The Jailer.”

Be, be as you've always been

Be like the love that discovered the sin

That freed the first man and will do so again

And, lover, be good to me

Be that hope when Eden was lost

It's been deaf to our laughter since the master was crossed

Which side of the wall really suffers that cost?

And, lover, be good to me

Be as you've always been

Be as you've always been

Be, be as you've always been

True to the time and the placе you've been given

Your heart in thе world, and a world there within

And, lover, be good to me

Be there and just as you stand

Or be like the rose that you'd hold in your hand

That grows bold in a barren and an uneasy land

And, lover, be good to me

And, be as you've always been

Be as you've always been

Be as you've always been

Be as you've always been

I need to stop going to YouTube shorts or Instagram reels when I’m seeking auditory or visual stimulus. I just keep scrolling for that dopamine hit and it wastes all of my time because a lot of the content isn’t worth it. I keep telling myself to go to Spotify and listen to music instead, but I think the issue is that Spotify is just auditory and I need a visual component to go with it.

My jaw has unhinged itself again.

And I am shedding my skin.

It flakes off in small pieces,

revealing the delicate newness within

Nicole W. Lee, from "Even the Dust"

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

Robert Frost

I have nuked the old account that I’ve had since I was probably about 13 or 14 years old and have started a new one to keep as my personal commonplace book/journal. I cannot seem to keep up with a regular journal, and I hope that the idea of posting things publicly will hold me somewhat accountable. However, nothing that I post here is really meant for anyone else’s viewing, only my own. With that disclaimer, please note that I may speak of my own trauma and some things may be triggering to others.

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