Mistakes are for beginners, we experts aim for disaster

From the very beginning, he looked like a bad decision some unfortunate soul was about to make. I was always careful to keep a pristine image, taking every precaution to be a good girl.

But sometimes, good wasn’t good enough.

The confusion lay in the forbidden thrill of deviating from the path.

Why did being wicked feel so euphoric?

He pulls his shirt off impatiently, reaching over his head and tugging it up and over with a swift pull. My eyes fasten on the play of muscles underneath his skin as they ripple with each move he makes.

Dragging in a shallow breath, I still as he prowls over to the bed where I sit.

Are you come as lover or executioner?

Unworthy

Who will give us permission to ask for the things we believe we are unworthy of?

In the Grip of a Narcissist

A narcissist will make you question if you are worthy of love. They will almost make you hate yourself because they can turn your natural need for their attention against you, making it a shameful thing, making you ashamed of yourself for being so weak and pitiful. You start hating being inside your own mind, inside your own skin. You start becoming intimate with loathing.

Losses

It’s so interesting how quickly we lose ourselves. It’s as if we don’t believe in the weight we hold with how swiftly we find ourselves shuffled underneath the weight of someone’s opinion, or rejection, or even if it’s an impossible thing, it still feels like rejection. When you make the choice to heal and to start gathering all of your scattered pieces, it feels like getting to know yourself all over again, and what a lovely thing that is. I stumble upon bits and pieces of myself with a surprised exclamation every time. “Oh, I DO love to write poetry, and I can write to my hearts content! I have a blog, and that IS an excellent thing, and I can enjoy it as much as I want. Oh yes, I remember now, I do love my inquisitive nature and I can find joy in pursuing all of my hobbies again. And no one can take that from me.” It’s a shame how quickly we snuff ourselves out when someone fails to recognize our inherent gifts and we die a sort of death. But the beauty is that we can always choose to come alive again, and each time feels a little more magical than the last.

Fever Dreams

I search for you in my blackest

midnight,

my drunken, misguided North Star.

Born of cunning and velvet

and the spaces between stars,

you were clothed by your maker in all the ways I yearned for you.

Were you a fever dream I restlessly brought forth

or were you sent to torment me

for all my wanton sins?

I’ve repented of each one a thousand times

if only to remove the scent of you from every layer of my skin.

Between pleas flung into the inky night,

I pray,

are you come as my salvation or my ruin?

Dues and all the ways I’ve paid them

If longing were a mountain
You are the one on which I die

Fly away, black raven

With every word I free, I tear
pieces of my soul
from your double fisted grip that
in turns
caressed me and
acquainted me with bitter loss.
You, who stood silhouetted
against everything I wantonly desired.
Dark, Machiavellian symphony
with lilting melodies of aching tenderness.
With blood red lips
I whisper desperate
prayers.

Eons

The depth of my longing for you 

destroys me.

How do you kill so beautifully?

What madness 

have you lit inside my veins, etching 

my walls and stars with ruin?

I am become the ages

filled with echoes of unfulfilled

desire. 

Prettier Than a Broken Heart

If I could write to you of sorrow, if I could explain this devastation,
I’d use words like utterly, and calamity, and grief.

But the words refuse my bidding, choosing to cloak themselves in darkness and half formed thoughts instead.

They shuffle off their course like drunken sailors, lose their way somewhere between half-hearted and dejected.

With quivering chins and sagging limbs, I’ve not the strength to make them dance
to fool a broken heart into being
prettier than it ever is.

Incongruous

A trellis of verdant roses
creeps slowly
up the knobby ridges of my spine
Clinging fast to empty spaces
where the heart’s grandeur, like brilliant stars, would shine
Every night I traverse this Rorschach devastation
To die of grief in the light of day
Leaving fodder for the wild roses
plucked at will by all who pass this way

*One of my favorite poets is Robert Frost, and to this day I still love to recite his Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening poem every time we get the first snow of the winter. I was reading his Desert Places poem and was inspired to write something similar to his style of poetry (even though I actually dislike rhyming poems if they’re written by anyone other than Robert Frost.) I drew on my own experiences for this poem, as I’m sure Robert drew on his for his poems.