And Yet You Loved Him?-ray Bradbury, The Utterly Perfect Murder

and yet… you loved him? -ray bradbury, “the utterly perfect murder”

even after this you loved. it took a long time. did you ever realise, in the beginning, what it meant? that no one came to your before-the-sun-rose almost morning cold glass window, painted blue with longing all alone did you know then? did you know then, maybe when you wanted to die. maybe that was a long time before you ever even thought of love. or did you know before the terrible, unutterable betrayal. did you know and so you left. and even after all this time. you held it inside of you, that inalterable past, without ever knowing why. held it in the hollow in your chest, the gap between your collarbone and the line of your ribs pressing against your skin. could you feel it when you held the edges. every morning after that you could see phantom bruises that love in the way boys love boys when they are young, you said, and evil but innocent, and evil. how did you fit such emotion inside of your mouth to swallow the pain. how did it come out in words like those. when did you stop using question marks to say why because you knew you weren’t getting an answer. did he ever call you after all those years, after all those years did you ever call him? and still you knew you loved him without ever caring when or how or why. all of that, inside of you, years and years and years- how could you stand to hold it and how, upon taking a train, bound into the past you thought could not have ever been returned to, years locked up inside your chest those bones old lives and leaving and broken windows how did you learn to let it go.

little teeth, little fists.

i never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. little teeth, we talk in small manners. cut sharp. little fists, hold on to what you know. don’t let go. we take what we want when we want. we are wanting, hungry, all the time. little, little body, draped in ugly hauntings. bite into the flesh of our wounds, ghosts claw to let the dark come out. see scars from needle teeth and swollen hands. living in the wild is what you know, hold, what you know: how to ravage. roll the skin you wear through your fingers, trick your body into thinking you don’t know. what it means that you can feel the crescents of your nails still digging in, the shine of a tooth aching with the rest of your moon-light jaw. carve your name with a knife into the trees, talking soft when you say i’m sorry, in a sharp twist spell out what lives inside, what’s taken over those ribs, you monster, monster, monster, monster thing without a home. don’t feel sorry. never for anything. not even for the wild thing eating you whole. little teeth, little fists, wanting always to forgive. forget. you could die and still you should have never once felt sorry for your wild, awful self.

poet ask meme

a. what other poets style do you emulate the most?

b. do you write with too much imagery or too little?

c. write four poems in one day or go three weeks without writing anything?

d. do you have your poetry organized or are you more likely to write half a stanza on a one dollar bill and then spend it by accident?

e. bird imagery or ocean imagery?

f. what was the last poem that you loved?

g. do you write about people or landscapes?

h. dreams or real events?

i. who do you write for?

j. what is the worst thing about your writing? what is the best?

k. what’s the best line you’ve ever written?

l. how much do you edit a piece before you consider it complete?

m. how long does it take you to write a poem?

n. ghosts or angels?

o. god or sunlight?

p. soft or harsh?

q. safety or happiness?

r. how long have you been writing?

s. who is your favourite poet? you have to pick just one.

t. what is your favourite line of poetry?

u. would you be okay with never being well known?

v. slow or frantic?

w. what colour is your poetry?

x. who, if anyone, do you send your new poems to?

y. is your poetry light or dark?

z. write a couplet (a short poem with just two lines) about pulse points.

it’s my blog’s first birthday today! i wanted to do something special to celebrate all the work that’s gone into it and all the lovely people who’ve decided to follow and support my crazy mess of a self, so here we are. send me asks from the ask meme i posted please, or questions, or anything at all, really. :)

an uneasy grace

we balance on the line of an edge running perpendicular across a point. tell me the world and its beginnings, a creation. tell me a lightbulb lightening-flash scorched earth sound. waves unfolding across a desert, land rising from an ocean. fire to water to earth to air from chaos and it burst forth: from chaos in a cacophony of light because nothing miraculous ever happened quietly, except, perhaps, that instant before the whole tangled mess broke and the inhale before a silent peace cradled down upon a body unbroken. the quiet god of a girl. is there a beauty in the quantum mechanics of things, black hole event horizons tell me how she does it. how she breaks down and gets back up again. nobody made a world in seven days, not even her, still sleeping it off like a morning hangover. tell me what god wakes up to. a graceless existence into which the descent is easy and we have fallen. sorry god. i believe in you. i just don’t believe you.

post-it note poetry

leaving letters at bus stops that say ‘WE ARE FOREVER’ when i mean to say timeless because forever doesn’t exist. the difference between me & you? i understood what would happen when i left and did it anyway. you mean to say forever but say timeless because you can’t remember the symbol for infinity but want to know how being left is a metaphor for buses leaving. somewhere we are strangers together ‘WE ARE’ on a post-it note poem someone’s version of forever because they thought red lips on two girls meant roses meant timeless.