"Dislocated" - Free Verse

Our skin melts so suddenly,
it hurts.
We are nothing but
four hundred and twelve bones and
a reminder of
how nothing is ever enough.
Our smiles come uneasy,
as our skeletons wrap around the other,
and we keep quiet
because we know
nothing fits
like it used to.

And suddenly,
you are you

and
I am I

in the same amount of time
it took to say forever
and make a dislocated pinky promise.

Have you always been this quiet?

"Suicide Martyr" - Free Verse

You're made of the wind now,
and your name rings in my ears
like an awkward doorbell.
I've seen this all before,
and I can't seem to convince myself
not to care

because I never thought it'd be you;
why'd it have to be you?

Your favorite color is
empty silver, which is funny
because I remember
telling you how ugly it is
but I never remembered
how tired you looked and

the way you kept quiet;
why'd you keep quiet?

Well, I get it.
I'm just some skin,
designed to keep you warm,
and you're just convinced
you can do fine on your own.
Open wide,
and let me shove this down your throat:

I don't want to be there for you anymore.

"My Mother's Kitchen" - Free Verse

Needs work... 
The fact that this is three run-on sentences is an attempt at style. Excuse me. 
Second stanza - kittens in the jungle?? I don't know. 
Last stanza is calling for help. 
Will see you all at school tomorrow! Currently keeping track of time and what periods you're in. I think we discussed something like this during English -- not being able to actually take a break when you're not in school and everyone else is. 
:) 


Once, in my mother's galaxy, I was a crawling star

forming on the tiled floor
and I left stardust all over the place but it didn't matter
because it wasn't a hassle to pick up after a child then
and before I had to clean up my own messes
and form on my own,
before she burnt out
and left her galaxy dim,

Mom was the sun

I loved in the morning.

In my mother's jungle, kittens sang
up on top of the refrigerator
and handmade pictures hung by magnets beneath them
because they were my child crayon pride

and before she took them down
and threw them out,
before the kittens and I grew into
stubborn, quiet cats
Mom was a lion
I longed to be in the afternoon.

In my mother's kitchen, tears leak
through the ceiling above the stove
and dust is looking like a fine shade of paint
because every other layer has pealed
and now that nothing's worth repainting
or feeling beautiful anymore,
now that I make this an ugly place
and we changed with the day,
Mom is a love
I wish I could know now in the evening.

"Glossy Eyes, Winter Skin" - Free Verse

I remember the days I lived last August.

I saw castles in the sky,

and beams from the sun shining through us,

and the wind stitching our fingers together,

and a future we could have met.

But you didn’t see the same thing,

maybe it was your glossy eyes.

You could no longer feel

as you threw me a blizzard

wearing your winter skin,

stormed and tore down my castles,

our castles –  

They’re just clouds.

It was the first time I heard your poison voice,

first time I watched love slip from your hands.

Urban Legend

My title is nonexistent once again. Let me know if the idea I began with is too much of a stretch, or if it's too obvious throughout or if it's too hard to catch on to or if it's [___your____thoughts____here____].

            Holly had long, honey-rippling hair and her eyes were colored a blue caught somewhere between the ocean and the sky. She stared into the drowning sun on the horizon, not bothered in the way it made her tear up from its glory and its light. She often spent her evenings watching the sunset to relax and give the day a sense of closure; the next day would bring the beginning of the last week before the third quarter’s report cards were sent out, and Perfect Straight-A Holly was worried. She had a D+ in science and an F in history. There was no real explanation as to why Holly just decided to slack off – maybe it was the teachers, or the stuff they were learning, or the strangely good feeling she got when she didn’t do what people told her to. 

            It was scary how fast the sun ducked under the sea, how fast Holly could see nothing but shadows creepingalong the surface of the water from her patio. Calm and complete, Holly opened the sliding door that led back to her bedroom and stepped onto her rainy-day colored carpet. She made her way out of her room and down the hall into the kitchen, where her mother and father were preparing dinner, together. Holly poked her nose into the refrigerator, then the freezer, and then the pantry, finally deciding on eating a few Red Vines or something sweet.

            “Holly, not before dinner,” her mother said, sounding like a billion other mom’s in the country. It amazed Holly how her mother knew just what she was doing without even turning around. Some type of mom thing. She was chopping up the vegetables while her father emptied an angel’s hair into the strainer, Holly sighing and closing the pantry.

            “When will you guys be done? I’m starving,” Holly replied, standing in the arch that opened the kitchen to the dining room. She watched her mother chop chop chop sweep; chop chop chop sweep and her father scissor the spaghetti noodles in the strainer because he hated long strands and slurping them up. Her mother craned her neck to face Holly.

            “Not long. I promise.” Holly stood a while longer, watching her parents cook dinner without much spoken word about it. When her mother was finish cutting up the vegetables, she washed her knife and found Holly was still there. She walked over and kissed her on the forehead. “Your hair,” she breathed, touching it and running her fingers through it. “It’s getting so long. Todd, look at this.”

            Holly’s father turned. “You need to get that cut. I wonder how many split ends you have, huh?”  Holly found it ironic that he was holding scissors. She shifted, uncomfortable, but smiled. Her long, wavy hair was the only thing that made Holly herself. Everything else – her clothes, her hobbies, and even her favorite things – were all suggested and eventually enforced by her parents. (This would look nice on you, don’t you think? You’d be great at tennis. Try it. You don’t listen to that type of music, right?) Allowing her to keep her hair long was like a small treat, a reward for following their rules. It’s not that they were rude or mean – in fact, everything they did was sincere.  Regardless, Holly didn’t dare cut her hair.

            “How about your grades? The report cards are almost out.” Her mother was wiping the countertops now, as her father started on the pasta sauce. Holly curled her toes on the cold kitchen tile, wishing she had retreated to her room while she could have to avoid this very conversation. 

            “Still good,” Holly said loudly, confidently, letting that settle in her parent’s minds. “But I’m not doingsowellinhistoryandscience.”

            “What was that?” her mother urged. Holly refused to make eye contact, so she pretended to be digging nonexistent dirt out of her nails.

            “I’m not doing so well in history and science,” Holly said more clearly, embarrassed with every word. Holly kept her eyes on her nails, thinking up ways to create an aversion.

            “Well.” Her mother was invested now. Aversions didn’t exist. “What do you have?”

            “B’s. In both,” Holly said, too quickly. It was one of those lies she didn’t see coming. Her voice was flat and it rolled off her tongue like she had been asked what her name was or her age.

            Her father chimed in. “That’s not too bad. You have this week to make up for it. Do some extra credit work or make up missing assignments.” Holly swallowed, sighing and putting all her weight to her left side. She started drumming her fingers on her thighs, not knowing what to say.

            Her mother was a little more pressing. “Holly, we’re not upset with you. We just want you to be the very best.” Holly found it funny how her mother used we and us and ours to give her word more authority. Her father had spoken his mind and said nothing about being the very best. What’s one-on-one when it could be two-on-one?

            “But, mom.” Holly tried very hard not to use this tone of voice with her mother, but this time it slipped and she couldn’t take it back. “History or science isn’t even important anyways.”

            Her mother gasped dramatically, sounding offended. Holly refrained from rolling her eyes. “Now Holly – that’s no way to be thinking about anything. We want you pulling A’s, okay? You’re almost there. You’ve done it before, you can do it again.”

            “You want a good start now, while you’re still young,” Holly’s father said, trying to aid her mother. “You don’t want to end up on rock bottom.”

            For her parents, it was either one-oh-oh or zero. Pass or fail. Yes or no. Holly muttered a lazy Okay, wondering how many times she had heard these words sprinkled in the car and during breakfast. As she walked out of the room, guilt settled in Holly’s stomach. Lying to her parents wasn’t her ideal choice, but it was as if it was the only one. She was not almost there, she cannot pull A’s, she cannot do it again. She didn’t want to. And if she didn’t want to, why should she have to?

            Holly collapsed on her bed, burying her face into her white pillows. She didn’t want to reach rock bottom – that was for sure. But why wasn’t she good enough with anything else but short hair and tennis and Disney music and A’s in all classes? So maybe one D and one F is too low, Holly thought to herself. But big deal. High schools only wanted the first semester’s grades, right? Being stressed out and tense all the time wasn’t worth a pat on the back from her father or bragging rights for her mother. Holly knew she wouldn’t be happy living the life she was told to live. Flying so high in the sky would be fun and all, but once she got there, Holly knew no one would settle for anything less than that. And of course, falling – so deep and down and under. That would put her nowhere. All Holly wanted was to live in a happy medium.

            Before going to bed that night, Holly decided she’d try to do as much extra credit as she could in the next five days. The chance of raising her grades as drastically as she needed in just five days was merely impossible, but trying never hurt anyone.

            Well, not physically anyways – the next couple days flew by, and Mr. Par, Holly’s science teacher, and Ms. Anders, her history teacher, both gave out extra credit, but not enough to bump her up to where her parents wanted her to be. She managed to get herself up to a C- and a D, but she knew an A was unattainable. As the days progressed, Holly found herself more and more worried of what her parents would say or think or do. They never yelled but then again, Holly never got such grades before. And by the time it was Friday, Holly was so afraid to go home where her  two ugly grades waited in an unopened email that she asked her close friend, Shella, if she could come over.

            “Maybe when they pick you up tonight, you can pretend you’re not feeling well at all. They won’t nag you as much,” Shella suggested as they were getting into her mother’s car. “Hi mom.”

            “Hi Rita,” Holly said, sliding into the seat behind the passenger.

            “Hi girls, how was school?”

            “So good. Ms. Hector said I’d be a great actress, like on Broadway or something,” Shella said, shutting the door and strapping herself in. Rita squealed, more excited than Shella. She leaned forward and turned on the radio to 98.7 – a channel both Shella and Holly loved. Holly couldn’t bring herself to nod her head to the beat though.

            “Don’t worry. I’ll get your mind off things,” Shella reassured in a low voice, trying not to let her mother hear.

            When the two girls arrived at Shella’s house, her mother left them on the warm Friday evening to run errands. When Shella took their backpacks to her room, she rummaged through her drawers and pulled out two bikinis.

            “We’re going swimming,” Shella said, knowing Holly well enough to know she wouldn’t object. “I’m inviting my super ca-yoooooot neighbor. Remember the one from Thanksgiving – Connor?” Holly couldn’t help but laugh, nodding, changing into her borrowed bikini. “He’ll have an extra friend for you lying around somewhere.”            

            Holly began to loosen up. She dived into the cold chlorine, feeling it travel through her mermaid hair. Shella jumped in next, her Betty Spaghetti limbs moving like a plastic bag in the wind.

            Holly treaded above the water, spotting Shella’s curly black hair underneath the surface near the deep end. She floated back up to the surface, swimming over to the pool’s edge.

“That felt so nice,” she said, her voice blending in with the ripples of the water. She lifted herself out and jogged to the fence that was shared between her and her neighbor, grabbing a handful of pebbles and tossing them one by one onto a window. She was standing on her tip-toes, barely being able to see over the fence. Holly listened as Shella persuaded the boy next door to visit with a friend for her “hottie bestie.” Shella was in the pool not too long after that.

They swam, Shella begging time to hurry it up so she could see Connor and Holly begging it to take as long as it needed so she wouldn’t have to go home. They played Marco Polo and Colors and tried to see who could hold their breath the longest. Eventually, Shella began to float on her back, staring up at the sky like that’s all she needed to see. She sailed on, climbing to the clouds and planning her life as an actress on Broadway. She tried not to think about how she was taken over so easily, pushed into Theatre I and II, pushed into the life of a star, a cloud, a something way up there.

            “Can you float on your back?” Shella asked after a while, startling Holly, who had been staring in something that wasn’t awe nor disdain.

            “No,” Holly said in the same moment two shaggy looking boys poked their heads above the fence on the side of the yard. They had the swishy hair and almost identical hats, flashing lazy grins in the girls’ direction. Connor – a freckled boy with gray eyes and thick, slicked up hair – waved, calling Shella’s name. Shella’s eyes widened a little, and she began to wag her eyebrows. Holly smiled half-heartedly.

“Get the Jacuzzi started.” She lifted herself out of the pool and jogged to the fence. “Be careful with the –.” Whatever Shella said was not heard by Holly. Holly looked at the other boy, who had green eyes like sour apple and curly, dark hair that reminded her of Shella’s. He would have been cute if Holly could have gotten her mind off her grades and her parents for a tenth of a second.

            Following Shella’s request, Holly stepped out of the pool and waggled her fingers in the boy’s general direction to not be seen as rude. Holly turns on the jacuzzi, turning the switch all the way to its highest amount of time – sixty minutes. Immediately, bubbles started forming and the little sea foam green light popped on. She could feel heat resonating from the water before she even got inside. From the jacuzzi, Shella and the two boys couldn’t be seen. Holly turned, stepping into the water, and tried not to think at the fact that her mother would be home right now, checking her email, calling Holly, hello, hello, Holly pick up.

            Figuring she’d be waiting for a while, Holly decided to try floating on her back. The hot tub was large enough, and definitely shallow enough for her to feel safe on a foundation. When she felt steady, she kicked up her legs to the surface, letting the hot water sizzle on her back, her legs, the back of her head, while her top half was kissed by the breeze. She was still holding on to the rail, and she couldn’t trust her buoyancy to keep her eyes and nose safe from the water.  

            Unlike Shella, Holly couldn’t stare as peacefully into the sky. Shella had looked so relaxed and confident, while all Holly was tense and scared with her eyes shut tight. Holly tried forgetting the rules and geometry of floating, so when she was thinking of the sunset and her long hair and 98.7 and not doing what she was told, she let go of the railing and it surprisingly felt okay.  

            Holly dared herself to open her eyes and peek up at the sky. When she did, she let out the breath she had been holding and her motionless body fidgeted in the water, dragging her back to the thoughts of emails and history and science and worry. She was about to put her feet back onto the floor of the hot tub, but something pulled her back by the head down under the surface of the water. She had no time to take a deep breath. She tried standing up, but something – her hair – was pulling her back. Her head was at the bottom of the hot tub in seconds, and she could not scream.

            She felt her hair getting tugged at by a demon at the bottom. She forced herself to open her eyes, putting up with the sting of the chlorine. She couldn’t see anything but the water and the bright light. She saw nothing but blue. She understood then that her long hair must have gotten caught in the suction drain, pulling her and wanting to stuff her in its pipes. Holly tried pulling her head up and ripping the hair stuck in the drain, but couldn’t concentrate with her lungs squeezing under all the pressure. She tried kicking her legs and splashing, just barely feeling the cool air stroke her toes, but Shella was too interested in what the boy’s had to say.

            Holly couldn’t make a sound and heard nothing but her own heartbeat and her own thoughts. Blue this way and that way and every other way. She started screaming, letting the water enter her body but suddenly not caring. She was scared, and her neck was aching, and she was so close to rock bottom now.  She looked up to the sky from underneath the rippling surface, seeing the sun was just about to set. Her body could no longer squirm, and Holly yielded to the hot water, the suction drain, the bubbles, the everything. Holly’s unmoving corpse swayed, her ocean-sky eyes forever upward – popping out of their sockets underneath the pressing weight of the water.

           

           

"I, Of Course" - Free Verse

Last winter, you took me in.

Best friends, you called it.

Forever.

So I, of course, could not object.

We bought friendship necklaces and I thought they were dumb,

but I wore mine all the time because I never had one before.

We gossiped, we shopped, and we laughed

though we never really communicated.

You led and I followed

but I, of course, could not mind.

We were still wearing our necklaces, though,

and that was good enough.

But I realized my necklace became a leash one day

and when I try to escape,

you hold me back because you said forever

and I, of course, cannot say anything.

I am choking, helpless,

and all I want is for you to ask me how I’ve been for once

but you lead, I follow –

and you, of course, would never care anyways. 

"Never At Bay" - 20 Little Poetry Projects

I, a crooked body of blue, was tracing the tributaries underneath my skin when

I saw you picking your nails with a cautious glance –

I think you were afraid to take me in,

and all I could taste was salt and disorder coming back up my throat

but in spite of this, I still felt you whisper

 ‘I’ve never been this close to anyone.’

The water in which I was drowning smiled, because I was its,

and I could do nothing about it because I am insane. 

In the name of Tomorrow’s, you'll figure it all out and you’ll let me go

in case the real me never comes back again.

mas vous êtes le plus grand;

I can’t come to think of losing the sound of making sense,

the scent of sanity,

you – the only boat sailing by the chaotic, dry harbor of me.

The sleepy hands of slumber cradle me now, and

I fall asleep because I want to wade in my crazy oddity with you by my side

but I actually am just tired, and I’d hate to make you swim with me

because then, you’d begin to drown too.