Original Poety - Tumblr Posts

That Woman Who is Not My Mother

The woman before me,

With her careful hands and patient smile,

Speaks with such soothing softness.

She is smart—

Not the kind that announces itself,

But the kind that slips beneath the surface,

It makes you furious,

Then she says something so dumbfounded

You wonder how she ties her shoes.

And you laugh,

Like any anger has no choice but to spill into humor.

This woman cares for me,

Shows up for me,

Treats me like I am something precious.

She loves me.

But that woman is not my mother.

My mother was lost,

A shadow of who she could’ve been,

Buried beneath anger and bitterness.

A walking wound that never closed.

She had a small crooked smile,

Her teeth would show, and she looked, content

But her eyes—

Filled with such a disdain, so deep

You could feel it in the silence between her words.

She hated the world, hated me,

Hated the life she couldn’t escape.

She hated being my mother

Now, I see a woman who cares,

Yet I still carry the weight of who she was.

This woman before me offers love,

Yet I am both furious and tender,

Both broken and healed,

Caught between the shadow of who she was

And the woman she’s become.

The woman who helps me now,

Who laughs with me,

Who reaches for me without malice.

That woman loves me, yes,

But that woman is not my mother.

My heart is full My spirit free

-Flynn Caulfield

TW//: MENTIONS OF SELF HARM, EATING DISORDER AND SELF DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOUR

Red

Love is red. Blood is red. Eyes are red. The world is red. Forever is a theory. The world is a mess but so are we. We bleed everyday, for money, for family, for debt, for love.

Love. The most cruel of them all. The sweetest poison. It is better to be alone than to have loved at all.

I bled for it. I cut myself to fit in. Piece by piece. Slash by slash. I felt prettier.

I starved for it. To look beautiful. Day by day. Plate by plate. I felt prettier.

I criticized for it. To do better. Word by word. Hate by hate. I felt pathetic.

Stupid. Ugly. Pathetic. Fat.

I called myself with such love. A slash for each word. Engraved into flesh. The floor is red. My arms are red. The water is red.

Why? It looks so pretty. Red. Red. Red. I love red. You are red. I love you.

The world spins as I lay on the grass. The grass is red.

Red. Red. Red.

He must have seen our souls and thought let's intwine their fates. He must have us together and thought let's rewrite their fates. They must have seen us apart and thought let's fill them with spite and hate.

We may be apart my love but I could never hate you, at least not when you were mine.

🅼🅾🆂🅰🅸🅲

Sometimes falling in love means shattering on impact. What follows is a mosaic. Pieces of you, and pieces of me, fitted together. Sharp patterns, our edges pressed tight into a single being. Endlessly broken and endlessly mended. A mural of tender wounds held together by trembling arms. © JM Tiffany

Vocabulary Definitions - Lesson 1

Radiant – An all-consuming flame. Sadistic – The song of hope. Insecure – A knot undone. Atrocious – A gilded lie. Forlorn – The tattered truth. Rejected – The emperor’s new heart. Loathing – A familiar face. Vulnerable – An exit wound. Horrified – The look in your eyes. Ruins – What’s left of us. Unresponsive – A shovel full of dirt. Blessed - The dead. © JM Tiffany

Vampires

Light as windborne leaves, you were soft and pale as down, your cornsilk mane a midday fire that framed haunted wells of profound blue. You were prettier than anything I could have hoped for and crueler than anyone I’d ever known We had both been torn from the bellies of our worlds and met at the bottom, on the cutting room floor, with scalpels in our hands. Pain filled our cups and told us stories of happier days as we drank each other like vampires in the dark rooms of our hearts. It was no secret that I was a mad dog, a stoned stray, feral and desperate, and you howled with me in the canyons of my wounds. I clawed at your back as you drove a stake through my plans and I paid you, happily, for the pleasure of losing my mind. I carved your name in my chest. Parts of you were stitched into the closing gaps, like buckshot buried in the scabbed-over graves of a few brilliant moments. Hot breath and cold kisses. Love-drunk and wine-stupid. Children making children in the shadows of oblivion. © JM Tiffany

Soil

What did you hope to find here? An idol to worship? A thing to covet and to keep? You had love, and it bared its teeth when I sang. Was it me you wanted or just an escape from the prison of your choices? I could hear the voices in your head, your secrets gaped like wounds in my back, and the wife of your misery sat like a stone on my heart until my insides burst forth. I told you everything, and you took me for a myth. And still, you chose to worship me. You called me your angel even as you stole fire from my sky. I gave you all the mercy and grace I could fit in my fists until I punched that hole in your chest. I poured myself into that pit and swam in the dark. You drank of me and I drown in your mouth until I was spat out like something unholy. And that was your gift. I fell away from you like rain until brighter things grew from the soil of my life. © JM Tiffany

Ninety Seconds to Midnight

They displayed her to us, a sweet, battered doll. Coy and precarious, they called her uncertainty a victory. She was small and quiet. As I looked at the savaged girl, I watched her wringing her hands. A tired young woman, shifting and slightly broken, she was like a pink petal tugged and battered by the swift dark undertow of privilege. They promised us that she would return to the world what was stolen from her, and the absurdity of it curled my lips into a snarl. The stupidity of the insult drove a stake into my chest. but the subtle cruelty of the display was lost like the years trailing raggedly behind her. If they saw my tears, I do not know, but they bled like acid and burned as I swallowed each one.

I marked the time: it was ninety seconds to midnight.

© JM Tiffany, 3.16.2024

The Open Mouth of Time

I don’t want the ugliness of the world today. Please, don't make me. I don't want to. But it drips from everything. Crimson rivulets run into headline horrors that fall and splatter from the lips of liars. I grip the sharp end in self-defense and pull the darkness close. Please, I say, make it go away. And so I cleave until nothing is left. This is not what I wanted. I wanted softness and warmth, and held hands in a house of hearts. I wanted a kind place to grow, a place unknown to murder. But the walls here, they are red and the dead, they are with us, and tomorrow stands in the open mouth of time. The trees are on fire and more babies are lost in the rubble. I drink my coffee, shout at my cat, and spend the rest of the day with my eyes closed. © JM Tiffany 3/25/2024

Unsolvable

Long ago, possibly in the late 70s, someone replaced a single piece of this bucolic jigsaw puzzle with one from another box.

This single piece is neither the right size nor the right shape.

Its colors are brighter, and it clearly belongs somewhere else.

The mocking lacuna reminds me suddenly that there are two puzzles that will never be solved.

Each is forever incomplete.

Each puzzle is missing a critical piece belonging to the other, and each piece is somewhere surrounded by others, yet utterly alone.

But then I consider that perhaps these puzzles willingly exchanged parts of themselves.

Conceivably there was an oath, and maybe they were in love.

I ponder how many pieces of myself I have given away and wonder if I, too, am unsolvable.

© JM Tiffany 2024

Después de 4 años puedo decir que me liberé de un amor que me destruía, que pensaba que me quería pero al final solo me usaría. Nunca debí hablarle ni mirarle. Si pudiera volver al pasado no me hubiera levantado y ahora estaría con mi corazón armado y no derrotado ni marchitado.

You.

You terrify me.

How could that angelic face be the one to destroy my soul?

How could your words of honey be the ones to trap me in a black web swallowing me whole?

You've stolen every breath as you pushed me down into the hole of insanity, every one of my thoughts shredding me apart as my lifeless body lays there.

You hold my heart in your hands while you are barely connected with me.

You know every curve of my body, every birthmark and inch of skin.

But you do not know why I am scared of tell you things, why I am wary of my thoughts at night and why I must have good lyrics to a song.

You do not know why I love the colour yellow, how the my imaginary friends saved me, why the stars keep me living.

I could wait for you forever but you can not wait for even five minutes.

I idly wait around our only device of communication while you leave to have a new adventure.

You terrify me.

You.