SOFT WORDS
An archive of literary works (in progress)
Peter Pan
Your knees are muddy where the denim ripped.
You sit hunched, a turtle, no child’s pose—
hands in the grass, inscribing the land.
I wait feverishly, for the grand reveal.
Your heart has been full of surprises,
I cannot claim disappointment this time around.
Kids in the mud, bordering adulthood.
You keep me young but my concise whispers:
“grow up child.”
And if I grow,
can I take the boy I love with me?
Sun Sick
Her belly holds the sun,
soothed by the heat.
She no longer remembers the boy she misses,
or recounts the sweets she has swallowed.
Her existence is held by this moment,
and only this.
The heat an aphrodisiac.
Her heart momentarily on fire.
Budding
Joy the size of whales.
Laughter like the tune of a dozen synchronized harps.
So sweet:
the begins of something new,
untouched, dreamlike.
Shiny as a babies cheeks.
delicate as a dove.
It was born to break but I always leaped hopefully,
into love.
Disturbance
Silly me—
I thought it was my heart, not the thunder.
The sharp natural attack of the earth causing the skylight to deepen.
Our limbs lay covered in my striped sheets,
my hands gently held in your tan arms.
Eyes closed: we create darkness.
A summer storm carries the trees in a melodic, vigorous bristle.
The AC rings a relentless hum.
Your legs twitch, my heart swoops to the sound of your slow and temperate beat.
To the thoughts of our day in the sun, our legs wrestling in the green.
We can make it in a city, and we can make it in the great outdoors.
Love beats a proud vibration.
Echos in the room,
the walls are yelling and finally, we are silent.
Trying to Talk with a Boy
I hope you understand me.
laugh at my girlish innocence I put on display for you.
I know my cards, and I know yours.
You love to take care, assert your dominance, feel like you are providing.
I shuffle the deck and hide the ace.
I am a magician.
The cards are all mine.
Tell me your stories of late nights and cigarettes,
butter and jam my toast, serve it on spotless china.
I will chew slowly and delicately like the woman in me, you adore that I am.
The power is easy to posess, hidden behind my feminine facade.
You love the mask I carry.
You kiss the mask I hold.
You murder the mask, search for the girl, and find a woman.
Utter disappointment—
she’s all grown up.
Bitter
I wanted to bathe in the palms of sweetness.
Lick the honey off her glossy lips.
Kiss the hairline where the color bleeds a golden sun.
Nestle upon her shoulder while she gently untangles my hair.
Become one with her touch—
so I no longer sing sorrow, hum hardships,
or dance with the weight of the world holding down my hips.
In sweetness,
I’d make the edges of love soft.
I’d paint the rivers of red a dreamy blue.
In sweetness, I found you.
I wish you could say you found me too.
Leaping off the sweet lips of truth.
But my weight is endlessly tethered to the darkness of blue.
Not the color of warmth,
not the color of you.
Entanglements
I wish on dandelions for love and adoration.
I watch the sky grow blue as February fades.
I find hearts in nature, by the bending of branches and the weathering of rocks.
I was hardly hopeless, but always hopeful— and it hurts.
To have your heart set on something, so far from the control of your mind and matter.
But the grass grew, and the air tasted warm, and I loved.
I loved.
And my heart could hardly break because I loved.
And if it ever broke, I’d still love you the same,
because it is not in my nature to be anything less than hopeful.
So I am hardly hopeless,
If I can so easily find the sweetness in nothingness.
And I do.
The love you cease to feel for me,
is doubled in the love I feel for you.
Made with Love
The fabric of my very being is embroidered with bows, and lace that tears.
The stitches are far from symmetrical, the entirety a pursuit of creativity, a failed attempt, but a graceful effort nonetheless
I am created stitch by stitch, and in the found objects etched into my textile.
I am the seashells found in the sand a mile from my home.
The embroidery doily mailed in an envelope from my grandmother’s house in Iowa.
The blue beads saved from a trip to Spain in the summertime.
The pink fabric found in the trash can after a heartbreaking critique in the art building.
The cobalt blue beads bought from Gizmo’s wonderland in the East Village.
I am not sorry that the seams tear
That the fabric is stained with wear and tear with days in the grass,
and nights tasting saltwater, drowning before the moon saves me from my silent surrender.
Because I would never let the ocean take me.
The only thing that can take me is the sun.
I will stare into its golden sphere until my eyes bleed yellow.
And I will lick the tears with a satisfying swallow, and there my fabric will lay,
somewhere between the sand and the sea,
The sun and the stars.
And the angel will wear the art, draped across her arms,
billowing behind her.
She is barefoot in the field, and the fabric of my being
collects mud.
Just Like Honey
This love.
This love so tender so sweet.
Imprints of your two lips on my temple.
And you kissed me so,
brushed my curls out my eyes, to clear the space
where your two lips live and lie.
It came fast,
and then it moved slow.
Slow like honey in the spring.
Honey that cured my sore February throat.
It was in February that I doubted
this love.
The lover in me died with the cold.
And then rebirth.
The love warmed with the sun of spring.
Sweet promise of anew.
And I finally kissed you, to be with you.
And this loved turned raw.
And my lips.
My two lips,
purple polka dots.
Four hands locked in hold.
Your body, my body-
our bodies, us two.
And if it hurt, I wanted it to hurt so all the pain would surface.
And I’d hold both our weight if it lightened your load.
And I’d kiss you, till you missed me,
and I’d kiss you far from home.
Because it was you that would spin me around this globe.
It was you that made it impossible to stand in this room alone.
And I’d miss who I was before I fell for the one I loved.
But the past longed to be the present,
And in this moment,
the present built a home.
A home that held the two of us.
Arm in arm,
hand in hand,
lip to lip.
Sweetner
Don’t call me kind or pretty-
call me sweet.
Sweet like the promise of spring.
Lavender honey melting in a pot of tea.
Sweet, and silly, and yellow all over.
A child and a woman wrapped in one complex existence.
A daydreamer and a painfully aware lover who feels everything
with the emotional prick of a needle to untouched skin.
Sweet that melts and molds.
Static for years-
a sweetness that sticks.
Sticky like honey.
A taste that lingers.
A taste familiar, elicits nostalgia.
Sweet like the child I once was,
and the woman I now am.
Learning it all over again:
I memorize my A, B, C’s.
I remember the way you looked at me.
It tasted sweet and then it got bitter.
So I ate a spoonful of honey.
Hold Me, I’ll Hold the Earth
When you start loving someone,
You carry the weight of them with you.
The weight of their joy, the weight of their sadness.
You hold pieces of them, molded to pieces of yourself.
You carry their fear, carry their compassion.
I hold your damp eyes, in my drowning heart.
You hold my blue hydrangeas in your scar covered hands.
Remember Me, Like the Imprint of August
Early February,
the sky was a static blue for five consecutive days,
the longest week I lived.
My throat used as fabric for a garment, needle dipping in and dipping out, at a constant rate.
My body draping off tangible spaces,
arms flailing reaching for the earth,
fingertips basking in the ground,
awaiting recovery.
My body had never known such evil.
The agony, the pain, made time linger like the cold cold January wind.
My heart yearned for March.
For anew.
A day where I would rise, and the earth wouldn’t shatter against my body,
praying on its demise.
I found grass in my lucid dreams.
Grass warmed by the sun of springtime.
Grass felt by the hands of lost old souls.
And I would be one of them, amongst the greenery field.
Breathing in God’s oxygen smoothly,
from my lips to my lungs.
Twenty Fingers, Ten Toes
It is harder to be loved by what doesn’t meet the eye,
because in the wandering search, your true reflection lies.
Not supple skin, shaggy lips, or eyes the color of spring trees.
The love I feel for you is merely the love I lack in me.
So I patch myself up with what I’d always felt I’d need.
I fasten the quilt with blue thread, the color of the sea.
A love for adventure I naturally possess,
It is in you I find the sweetness of nothingness.
The rustle of a blue jay, the hum of the bumblebees,
I fall in love with pieces of you, you grow to resent me.
Because now I am both woman and man.
No longer requiring the strong grip of your textured hand.
Salamanca
Salamanca slipped down the throat, out into the world in a deliciously rhythmic rhyme. Salamanca lived outside Madrid in the Spanish countryside where the cows and sheep roamed, only speaking in Spanish dialect. I decided I would journey to the city on my mid twenties, early life crisis travels, where I leave the hustle and bustle of reality, for the solitude and hope of the wider world. I would see Salamanca between Portugal and Peru, and maybe stop in Ibiza for a night or two just to silence my curiosity of the island with a raunchy reputation. I knew nothing of the small village of Salamanca, except for its wonderful combination of vowels and syllables that made the word so enticing. Salamanca slithered and the words written on the page resembled an insect with a body of a beautiful vibrant green. It was speckled yellow and probably a silent, murderous creature, camouflaged by its delightful exterior.
God Speaks to Me, In shapes of the Clouds
Do you think this is how Jesus felt?
While he was laying on the cross.
Two arms, two legs, dangling off.
Was he found, was he lost?
Was he in love, was he alone?
Did he look at his life in contempt?
Did he regret where he’d gone?
Because we all reach a moment,
where life and death,
seem to blend rather effortlessly into one marvelous mess.
And I don’t know if I’d pray, or talk to myself,
if I was teetering the edge of heaven or hell.
I think I’d see blue.
And I think I’d breathe slow.
Until my last breathe eventually goes.
Into the darkness, it brightens white as snow.
And suddenly I am somewhere, I never knew I’d go.
There are flowers in places where oxygen lies.
There are flowers by tombstones, where mourned lovers die.
I see flowers of blue, as I breathe my last breathe.
I see sky, I see clouds,
as I kiss the sweet lips of death.
Heat Wave
Cyprus in the summertime must be avoided. It is far too hot in July to enjoy the clearwater beaches, when you are melting under the blazing sun. When that extreme level of heat rises in the air, it is too difficult to eat anything but juicy fruits and vegetables picked from the drying roots. So throughout the afternoon, we munch on cucumbers quenching our thirst and snack on watermelon dripping down our chins leaving a sticky trail. It is too hot to cook, so we scavenge for ingredients leftover in the fridge, careful to only pick the coldest of produce.
Giagia wears linen and a string of turquoise beads. Her hair is tied back tightly in an embroidered scarf to cool her neck which dribbles with sweat. She carries around a floral fan that beats softly back and forth all day long.
My bronzed body is draped in a cotton dress, the color of the Mediterranean Sea. My hair is pulled back in a low bun, a big straw sunhat covering my rosy cheeks, and offering a little shade from the persistent sun.
We sit on the deck to escape the warm indoors. On days this hot we take frequent trips to the supermarket. It is an excuse to escape into the unnatural cold, one of the only places on the whole island carrying consistent air conditioning. We aimlessly wander around the market, killing time until we grow goosebumps and crave the warmth of the sun. Once we return to the outdoors our bones slowly return to a bubbly boil. I long for snow and dream of bathing in a bath of ice. We laze around all day complaining about the heat, until the sun eventually disappears into the sky replaced with the glowing moon.
Oh my Darling, Clementine
There is a bundle of clementines on my desk, and the thing is that I love you.
And I knew this, because we said it, and love means something I guess.
But I didn’t know it until I missed you.
And the thing is, clementines are ripest in the winter,
and you took my heart in the midst of December—
but I swear the love, like the clementines,
would taste better under the blazing sun of July.
You will find me in Amsterdam, in July.
We will walk hand in hand, amongst the sailboats on the riverside.
And I swear love will hold me dizzy,
in its sweet sunburned arms.
And I won’t know the agony,
the cold,
the static of December, turn January, turn February, turn March.
It is always the seasons that dictate the measure to which I love.
And I held your hand in December, turn January, turn February, turn March,
and I loved.
Despite my hearts capacity clinging to the gulf of silence come the cold.
It is your textured hands that keep me warm, that I hold.
And I eat clementines every day in the cold winter months.
To find sweetness in the endless skies of grey.
And my clementines are peeled by your textured hands,
and the sun stays glowing longer and longer each day.
We talk of springs spirit in the winter months.
Like the season is a long lost unrequited love.
And the thing is I am learning how to love
in the skies of blue, and the skies of grey,
as though they are one in the same.
Got it from my Mama
My mother holds her soul in her hands,
and I hold her soul in the way I part my hair and apply my perfume.
Mere reflections of each other,
devastatingly similar.
What a beauty and a burden to watch your adolescent self grow,
in a world
that is hardly your own.
What Hangs?
The flower hangs,
high above my eye-line.
I cannot see its petals.
It might be dead.
Is it better off dead if it goes unseen?
Is its untouchable aliveness accessing the free?
The flower is sensual, a woman on fire.
Her beauty cannot be pulled apart if she hangs too high for the eyes to see.
The flower roams upon the mountain tops.
In an infinite state of peace.
Divorce Vows
I sometimes think I love the world a little less when you're around. Maybe it's because I don't like who I am when you're here.
It's you and it's me.
It's the way you make me nauseously anxious and desirably sick, hiding my hunger between the self-hatred and movement that escapes me from the presence you possess. I hate the way you raise your voice and complain and complain and complain. I want you to feel the real world in between your toes and gripping your hands, not clouded by the sky that envelopes you in a dizzy blue from all the grey. I want you to stop causing so much confrontation and creating such deep anger in my kind nature and grounded spirit.
I am fire around you. I crackle, I burn and burst in orange and red until I return to the emerald earth that holds me beneath the soil, dancing with the daffodils.
So please, whatever you do let me go and be a person without us trapped in a room, dying for escape, awaiting solitude in the space that separates you and me. In the heavenly Great Wall, that divides two faraway lands in between.
Hokey-Pokey
I leap in and out of phases of love and hate.
Adoration, and confrontation.
I am beautiful, and delicate like a swan today,
and lumpy, grey as an elephant tomorrow.
I'm an enigma.
But not like the kind you are determined to crack open, split apart and hungrily devour.
I am too black and white to hold on to.
I fall apart today,
and sing to the sun in a stained vintage gown tomorrow.
My voice echos in the sky, a whisper of a cry, take me as I am!
I'll be better tomorrow, I roar to the abyss fingers crossed behind my back.
Forgotten Letters From the Sun to the Moon
I dream of tasting the sun & swallowing it whole.
I'd carry warmth around me,
wherever I go.
I'd eat the sun,
burn my tongue,
just to keep us warm.
One Ticket Home
I left my suburb for New York City, a train ticket to Grand Central and no return date in sight. Born in New York but not the kind I was proud of. I craved the city like all the other creatively inclined kids who would grow to regret it. I resented the smell and the crowds and often dreamt of the sea. I was so far from my feet in the sand, my toes depravation of natures touch lingered from being strapped in buckled boots that ventured the concrete from Manhattan to Brooklyn. My eyes devoured culture and experience at extremely rapid rates. The kind of plot lines that only a city as ambitious as New York had to offer.
I am forty minutes from my three year old home and through the long days of being wrapped up in the cities arms, I have grown years in months and changed more than my seventeen year old self could ever have imagined.
There are people in New York who enjoy red lip stains on coffee cups and will stand extra long at the stop signs to stare up into skyscrapers lines that blend into the blue. Boys wear patterned scarves and girls dress up in loose pants barely covering their bits, only tied by a leather belt that tethers the thin line of partial nudity and a forty year old man wearing trousers.
New York is grime and grit. But it is also frolicking in the cities parks and picking forgotten flowers out of trash cans left behind by an unrequited lover. I left my home for the city and now the city is my home. New York is hardly a dream but an empty promise only fulfilled by the will to throw yourself into the chaos and come out on the other side a little more secure in your place in this world than you were before. Two feet on the ground, four eyes watching as you cross from block to block, going somewhere even if it is only two steps at a time.
Something Blue
When the sky is all indigo, I revel in its quietness.
The color that blends into shades, dark as night, light as sun.
I hope when they cut me open and remove my parts
I bleed blue.
The incision will be wrapped in ribbons, healed by the touch of saltwater in mid July.
My blue corpse sinks to the seafloor.
I disintegrate into the sand, and children pick me up in seashells they collect from the land.
My life transforms into a relic,
anew,
I am an artifact,
left behind in a room,
the color of a deep deep blue.
Lover Baptism
Don’t be mine, if I can’t be yours.
You waste time worrying about the love I feel for you.
Your quiet passion is hard to believe,
when I wear love
on my hats,
and my gloves,
and my sleeve.
Tell your friends!
I’ll tell mine.
Your sweetness is never something I’d willingly hide.
I want the world to know.
I want the sun to see—
our love is honest, our love will keep.
Show it in the sweet tooth,
wear it on the smile,
hear it in the music,
in your new lust for the wild.
If you never were a lover, now’s the time to convert.
Three heavy words and the world is yours.
Sleep Dreamer
I weave while I walk,
In a post nocturnal daze.
I ate poetry for dinner,
And sipped on prose before bed.
As my eyes hit the ceiling,
There was no sleep in sight.
When the world felt this warm
and untouched—
how could a dreamer dream?
Weepy wind
Never before
did the hills roll and dip forever.
So far that the earth felt impossibly large-
Unscalable.
From the top of the hill,
the sun swallowed by the sky.
The young man cried,
and the wind strong as sea,
whimsical and dangerous,
Took my hair for a dance.
There was love.
But before there was wonder.
The people we loved from the west to the east,
Could we love them coast to coast?
Would the sky ever sing this blue,
When we returned home?
We could roll down the rolling hills until the earth took us whole.
A foreigner taken by the wild wind of the west.
She loved the earth so deeply it killed her.
Born to die between the hills and the sea
A young man wept.