So, I had a hard time keeping up with my blogging during classes but here's the final versions I turned in for my course.
The Jump
She surrendered to the dream
within a café and the hope
of once dying embers
expanded out.
Anticipation arrives as restless wind;
their future, vague,
yet full of trepidatious longing.
He has been gone all
of two weeks, and still
he appears on the train
at her door
with open arms
promising a life together, shouting
his words skyward:
I
need you like air, nicotine,
and
conflict. Three years
of
heartache will endure…
She reaches to him
and touches his hand –
he is not yet there.
hot sauce
red stains on the wall,
a reminder of shattered glass,
kool-aid dripping to the floor.
stale whiskey on his breath,
spoiled hot sauce in the trash,
an unforgiveable offense.
the red stains weep
for the shattered girl upon the floor.
self loathing
droplets of blood welling up
in half-moon tears up and down her arms.
scar tissue gouged
in the depths of one too young to
comprehend
that the horror he felt
for his deviant genetics was not
her fault.
when his own blood splattered
hotel walls, she understood,
her love could never save him from
himself.
she commemorates with ink
‘Ruin is a gift’
where he’d left his mark
so many years before.
Seeking
My longing is a hole that is nothing
but what remains around it. Once,
I wanted to be the white wind. Once,
I wanted anyone to fill me. I reach
for anyone willing. A soldier buttons
himself
back into khaki, he looks up at me
and rubs his eyes, but I
am not there. A strange lostness
bodily present, the same body
broken open. Tell me what you know
about a body, and I will tell you how
it turns against itself. Letting the
space
I free up remain vacant, a room that
remains locked, pieces of the moon
leaving for an empty home.
Nobody loves this genius child.
