You sit on a cold
bench waiting for a bus
you might have already
missed
But you smile anyway and
when a train comes instead
you watch
with sparkling eyes
all the people who get off
Nobody ever said life
was fair
but it would have been kind to mention how very
cruel
it is
and your eyes positively glitter
when they pretend to not
notice you
Still their gazes slant sideways
as the trolley comes
and you have no pennies
to ride
New York
was not quite expected
But when we heard it calling us
the only hesitation was ours
The walls of your garden aren’t quite so high
from this point of view
Part of me will lie
buried beneath your flowers
But we will thrive
on streets we haven’t yet walked down
fin.
Such a fickle heart I have.
She flies without thought.
Settle, settle, I whisper,
You are so young and red.
I will go, she says, I will go
And the rest of you will follow.
Step out onto this sea,
She says, and come.
Please, please! I cry.
My salt tears are sticky;
they have made this sea.
My heart does not realize she bleeds.
Vines grow from my feet, pulsing, hooked.
Let go, let go! she cries,
Impatient and eager, yearning.
She yanks hard; I gasp.
O you of little faith, I hear,
Why did you doubt?
The water turns red, warm and
My veins are white, frozen.
I will go, I breathe, I will go.
Empty handed, I reach,
and I am jerked backward into gore
and wreckage and wet.
Please, please, I weep,
Let go, let go.
But my heart, my heart,
She has claws on this place.
i am an anchor
tied
to air
and if your eyes
were any bluer
i’d be lost
at sea
luckily
your hands
were just the rope
i needed
and you knotted it
so well
His heart was sluggish
but that day she looked at him
with a single word written in her eyes
so clearly even he could read.
It struck him speechless as he realized
he would stop breathing
if that meant she would have more air.
His mouth was slow to say it
and he would rather light his skin on fire
than risk something he knew he wouldn’t lose
but her fingers on his wrist
got the job done anyway.
Her nails were painted blue
chipped and bright against his skin
and he was blindsided by inspiration
to write fifty thousand love poems
about the shape of her hands.
They danced careful steps
in a delicate circle
to the furious beat of their matching pulses
and when he met her eyes again
the air was stolen from his lungs
because it was only ever for her.
Your skin might be warmer than a sun that heats the entirety of the world, a galaxy, a thousand civilizations that have thrived under it but I don’t think they’ve ever been as alive as I’ve felt for the half-second my hand brushes yours. Light expands across a universe so terribly enormous that the prickle of sweat gathering at the nape of my neck is less than an infinitesimal speck but when your hands slide across the cool expanse of my skin there’s nothing more significant than this reaction. It will change the fate of the world. But you are the sun and I am the world, you said at 5 am when I didn’t want to wake up and you were brilliant with insomnia. Treetops and a glittering sea, dots of animals and laughter and shopping malls, math homework and stale bread and ten zillion 5 ams where your skin is there to awaken me. I don’t, you whisper in a voice hidden by the knots in my hair, want to freeze. Gentle rustlings that trace imprints into skin. Warm lips. Slow smile. I’m alive for eons.
This is about the Raven Cycle so if you haven’t read it, ya might want to beware the spoilers.
~
When he was dead, he was dead; he is their friend
And he is made great, decayed
He knows them apart, together – by heart
He was a king – delayed
He met them, he knew them; he knows them, he meets them
Time curls and it curves and it winds them
One day they would find him
Ahead, sideways; behind him
Time swirls and it swerves and entwines them
Dreams and branched limbs
Sacrifices, Welsh kings
Dead, a schoolboy is kissed
Awful thoughts undiscovered,
Boys who love one another
There is – was – no one to miss
Glances slide and slip, glaze over and sway
Time bends and it hooks and it binds them
Eyes there they stay, don’t throw it away
It moves, it grows; revives him
A favor is sought
(a favor was brought)
Time coils and spins on without him
When he is alive, he is alive; he was his friend
And he was royal, made small
He dreamt wild things of colors and wings
Then he dreams nothing at all.
I worry
that people will think
my poems are about me
when all they’ll ever be about
is the pattern
of her laugh
the victory
in his smile
secrets told
at four in the morning
sleepy grins
at three in the afternoon
how the grass brushes
the sides of our faces
as we look at each other
under a breezy sun
the trailing touch
along brick walls
built a hundred years ago
just for this moment
the last hug
wet and sloppy
even though we’ll see each other
tomorrow
why would my poems be about me
when they could only ever be about
us
You say you have your secrets and I have mine, and you don’t have to tell me, not now, not yet, and that’s okay but one day we’ll be standing across from each other and it will be written in the crevices of your skin and you may shake your head, you may argue with sound but it will be written in cursive and bold letters and center aligned and footnotes and it will be there, and I will love you, love you, love you and don’t pull away because my very arms are magnets to your soul and you don’t want to say it never want to say it but it’s written in the crevices of your skin in the lines of your eyes in the touch of your palms the tips of your fingers to my face in the swell of your lips the swirl of your voice in my head it makes me dizzy I love you I love you Iloveyou love you love you, the words a curse I will kill to deserve.
The worst thing about it, she said,
is he will not go on loving, but he will go on smiling.
And I will do the opposite.
Lost: Purple Quill 