I love it here.
the view reminds me of life.
The sky the way it paints over our hands and onto our skin,
The way the color doesn’t mix together as much as an artist would like it to.
The lead in our paints is heavier than we were ever capable of lifting, but it’s all we had.
It’s all we are fed.
We closed our coffins with the nails we’re chewing on in hopes that
You need to be undead in order to make a move-
But I don’t want to kiss death anymore
He leaves my body to rot
My teeth hurt from grinding against him
He has violated
All of us.
We are all iron cast replicas forged in the fires of our own hell.
We paint our bodies with colors of the sky and call it identity.
Nobody likes the night
Everyone is afraid of the dark
Why am I afraid of the dark but find so much comfort in the makeup of hell?
We call ourselves artists,
There is no artist.
There is only nature and our mimicry,
We feed on the idea of existing originality.
Why don’t we open our coffins?
Let’s swallow our nails and puncture our throats
To allow the nervous words to spew into one another.
Till death do us part-
He’s not getting between us.
We are survivors in a world imprisoned by
The impressionable weight of shackles
And strength to carry them.
We are convicts in that we are happy together
So that cannot be.
But in this moment.
I love it here.
The view reminds me of you.
The way the sky paints itself and the willingness to relinquish power.
The way I don’t want it to be easy to touch you
The way no one can touch you.
Painting doesn’t make me an artist
But it makes you a masterpiece.
I can lift you over my head
And in this moment.
Life is worth living.
Tag Archives: inkling writing
The Positivity in Glass Jars – Brooke Safferman
Four jars made of glass, lined up on my window sill
The mint green,
the pale rose,
the totally clear,
the almost-purple.
The way the light shines through them makes me giggle
Sort of like the way your smile shines through my emotional walls of glass
Once so strong, now I’m so fragile
Your delicate touch could crush me with too much force(accidentally)
“Stay positive”, they say
So I draw on a smile with my lipstick tube but
Before I leave my room to enter the world
I pause to look at the positivity in glass jars.
Meta-cognition explained in Lithuanian (The Head) – Matt Grydzuk
The head
Chiefly, where pre-calculus goes to die.
And truthfully I don’t know much else about it, but I do know,
Or remember, that my mother told me always to be grateful
For what you have.
And I can’t say I was
Because so many self-inflicted head traumas starts to pile up when nothing
You do is perfect and you have to blame SOMEONE and
Knowledge of chlorophyll is always dying and you’ve never had a green thumb
Next thing I know my head is a graveyard and sometimes I kick over eternal lights to watch
The information flowing out like candle wax like
This is grey matter flowing through eye sockets like this
Is the way they wanted you to be when they called you stupid
Like you can live up to one thing if you just try hard enough
And when it hardens; becomes crystalline
If you hurled it at a man how far would he go
I still haven’t forgotten Newton’s second law or anything about Schroedinger
But what does that even matter
The Head
Chiefly, a device to move the body.
To tell it what to do.
But for every move this way and that there’s an eyelid twitch or a muscle spasm
Bartering, the product of battery indentured to the head my body is never my own but
I wouldn’t know
I’m sorry.
Maple Key – Harika Kottakota
My magnum opus was a maple key,
Imprinted pond ripples in amber
A hundred journals worth of sins
Rimmed it with azure
My maple key rode majestically
Upon the southern breeze
Tornado in the Church bell and
Flames around the riverbend
Devout insomniac, I stalked
My maple key barefoot into
Jasper mornings–too ethereal,
too intricate for untrained eyes
I watched its azure streak lotus
By lotus, but never land
Without a star’s conception
In sync, that’s right–never in jest
It Comes and Goes in Waves – Alexandra Mayer
I was quiet that night
mesmerized by the fire–
I guess.
And I saw
Embers float to the heavens
where they became stars.
The moon greeted them
with a cheshire-cat smile
and they all laughed at the mortals below.
There was music in the crackle of the fire
and in the way accents melted together
stealing meaning from words.
And your lover told me that we should be friends.
“Because we both like to drink a lot.”
Whatever that means.
I tried my best to be kind
because you showed me the painting she created-
two hands of daisies, bursting from the clouds.
It’s hard to explain,
But I like it.
And I like her knobby knees
and her red hair
and the way she bites her lower lip.
So we shared a bottle of fourteen dollar vodka–
And together we swallowed fire
and we smiled when the heat slid into our stomachs
and when the world started to blur into a haze of browns, oranges, and blues.
Then a bright light trickled through the trees.
And a shout:
“Cops… Run!”
So I did
I fled
deeper
and deeper
into the forest
before diving into a prickle bush
where thorns clawed my skin,
drawing blood here and there.
But I didn’t really notice, or feel any pain.
I didn’t notice you either
until you knelt down next to me and whispered in my ear,
“this doesn’t leave these trees.”
A kiss.
You kissed me.
A moment.
Nothing more.
And when the sun rose,
I wasn’t dizzy.
I could see the trees clearly.
I could feel the gashes in my skin.
And I laughed
because you were nowhere to be found
And I was okay with being alone.
The Shadows We Run From – Brooke Safferman
You are the Splenda in my cup of tea
A little something sweet, even if you aren’t the real deal
One little sip is all I need to keep the nightmares away
When my hand is in yours, invincible becomes more than just a word.
You told me my yellow sundress embodies the springtime itself,
My peppermint lip balm, the dead of winter
With you, I become one of the cherry blossoms blooming on the tree next door
The only thing you made me lose is loss, itself.
And the windowpanes would speak if they could,
Whisper their memories about who and what happened in this house before we did
The floorboards creak with stories, and hopes, and dreams
Fulfilled and latched on to,
We will write a story of our own:
The closing line, the acknowledgments, but most importantly, the epilogue
The shadows we run from are merely ourselves.
Water – Iman Messado
Here’s a thing I read in a science book once,
The world is like 70% water.
There’s lakes and oceans and ponds and bathtubs and –
Water doesn’t scare me at all,
What’s there to fear in oxygen atoms and hydrogen bonds?
I’ve always wanted to learn how to swim though,
I’ve dreamt of being at home in water,
like the stage is to a dancer.
Did you know that I’m a cancer?
Here’s a thought I had in the shower once:
Crying is a waste of time.
I mean, sure, there’s catharsis in the tears struggling their way out of the confines of your tear ducts and stubborn pride.
Catharsis that can’t be found when bottling your tears up and hoping something good can work.
But I’m not the type to wade in pools of Fear and Pity,
It’s better to patch up the dams and feign laughter at something witty.
Here’s a secret that that’s not actually a secret:
I don’t know how to swim.
I’m sure I could if only convenience granted me the opportunity.
I’m not scared, not apprehensive, there aren’t any storm clouds of doubt and derision spoiling my confidence.
I’ve asked quite a few people how they swim, people who know all about hydrogen bonds and who probably shed a few tears once in a while.
People who swim without ever having their head touch the water and others who do this strange kicking thing and still others who make exaggerated gestures and knock other people out of the way.
I’m standing on the edge of the concrete border of the community pool when i affirm a sneaking suspicion I’ve had for a while now.
There is no uniform way to swim nor is there a predestined form i’m to take so as to swim in the most efficient way possible.
All I can do is leap and splash and wait until the sun turns my skin even more brown.
So that’s what i do: i leap and splash and wonder if a day will come when i’ll drown.
Home Alone – Haley Ingram
Home is were the heart is.
Veins and arteries interlocked
Stronger than the hands you used to make me think twice.
Looking every direction
Never quite understanding why
And never questioning the use of the word
love.
Because questions were just another way of getting your deigning breath into my system;
Recognizing the sound as if it was a morning’s alarm.
As if every failed attempt of pronouncing our name deafened you to anything that sounded like a cry for help.
So I’d run and hide.
You didn’t quite like that.
You didn’t like the idea of your words being so loosely held,
So you shortened the chain
and I shortened my veins.
Every time.
I ended up with an empty muscle and a pathetic travesty of emotion.
So I’d run.
I didn’t hide, I drank and drank
The rain hoping to forget the hand that fed me
Because it pushed me from dancing.
I ran in the street that I never learned my lessons in because I was taught by the book
The book you never wrote
But followed so vaguely until you decided to add a page
from the bark our tree,
To write accommodations for the mistakes you refuse to have made.
So you slice a sheer and process your final say.
But your words are not strong enough to resist gravity-
You never recalled the impossible regeneration of deadweight.
But it’s okay now!
I didn’t die at my own hand and I
SUPPOSE
Letting go is a natural cause
So I can still make it to heaven-
I am a fallen branch.
And darling,
You cannot recycle broken limbs.
There is no hospital for a broken home.
This home is too perfect to be broken,
So I understand your frustration when my skin didn’t cut the way you intended me to.
Maybe it’s because of the countless rejections of becoming closer to you.
When I was afraid at night.
When I drove myself to be near you
But was shoved in the positioning
Of our portraits.
Maybe it’s because when I touch the grass you fear me growing too fast. Is that why you’re allergic to weeds?
Perhaps all of your spoken success I will never feel in your memory.
When my life(or lack thereof) started to weigh you down you grafted me back onto to your hip claiming me to be a loved one
And marking me number 4 in your 99 cent pen.
A chain gang of-
Love.
Family.
The sweat from your grip is enough to wipe off the labels you give me.
I can slip from your eyes- your ball and chain eyes-
And the world I offer this disregarded muscle
Will never be as dangerous to you,
As the home metastasizing to it.
the adventure I wish I could have – Elena Barrera-Waters
spring break, I’m flooded with everyone’s pictures.
all of their shots of the waves at the beach,
or of the castles or the food of the new country they’re visiting,
or the ski lifts above those gorgeous green pines.
it’s a little bit hard,
to be able to submit my own to this
grand collection of memories when I know that you
won’t get yours.
it’s not my fault, i know that.
but more than anything, I wish you were here.
I wish you were my adventure,
or at least a part of it.
A Ballad to The Beautiful – Ivy Juniper Manchester
To the condescending misters,
Frowning upon the girls,
Who are afraid of food,
And scratch at their bellies,
Begging to be twigs.
You look down upon us,
Patronizing our emotions,
Asking why, dear god, why
Why are we so damn unhappy
With the way we look-
You gasp at our comparisons,
To the photoshopped models
We can never be.
You beg us,
Preaching oh so saintly,
That everyone is beautiful.
You show us
Expectations of what we cannot be,
Defining our thoughts of beauty,
Sighing sadly at the girls,
Who claw at their thighs,
And run away from dessert.
And still,
You have the audacity
To tell me to feel pretty.
Inkling 