Dear Ex Lover,

Dear Ex Lover,

I promise I’ll stop chasing your memory in my dreams.
I’ll stop bringing your name up over cups of coffee, muffins, and loneliness.
I will marry a man and I will lay my heart on his chest
like red roses on Mohogany caskets
and I’ll have his daughter
and she’ll have eyes reminding me that God still believes in second chances.
and if she ever decided to love a woman, i will love bravery down her spine.
I will be reminded of all the times that we loved,
like there were experation dates tattooed on our inner thighs.
if she ever comes home with eyelids like cracking leevis
and bruised kneecaps
and a heart filled with question marks
I will hold her like my mother never held me.
I will clasp her face in my palms like the new testiment on judgement day.
I’ll tell her that love is the passion that allows you to do the right thing.
and that no woman can play coaster to a half empty heart.
and if she ever feels as if she is alone,
as if she is not a hand-me-down pulled out of the depths of mommy’s closet
I’ll remember your name and I’ll mumble it under my breath.
and if she asks me what I said;
I’ll tell her I know what it’s like to drag a woman out of a cold war
and then being too worn to clean up the battlefield that it has made of you.
I’ll tell her that your heartbeat sounded like gun shells tripping over battered cement.
I’ll tell her that i know what it’s like just to want someone to remember you
and that some women are as foul as expired men in produce isles
and that apologies are like oxygen maskson a highjacked plane.
forgive yourself before you EVER forgive the person sitting next to you
I’ll tell her to never regret loving in permanent ink
and that scars only give you stretchmarks, something to gossip about
and that hearts and stop signs are fraternal twins
lost in open roads and hollow chests
and if my daughter’s mirror ever looks unfamiliar
and she’s too embarrassed and prideful to run into mommy’s arms
I’ll pray, that she has friends with hearts filled with thousands of fireflies
who are not too cold to pray with her, who will tell her
to stop looking for the light at the end of the tunnel
and find God in the darkness
if my daughter ever walks in my house like shattering glass, I’ll tell her about you.
I’ll tell her that we hurt like c-sections birthing dead babies,
and that we cried together,
and we prayed together,
and we smiled together like our smiles were the only ones that mattered in this world.
and that we hurt like women who loved women, who loved people that did no love us.

Dear Ex Lover,
I hope my daughter never knows what a goodbye kiss feels like..
I hope she never knows what “I’ll see you later.” really means
I hope she never memorizes the dial-tone of a last conversation,
because a broken heart feels like poisoned butterflies taking their last flutters in the pit of your stomach

Dear Ex Lover,
I hope my daughter never bears her soul at a poetry showcase
with her first love sitting in the audience.
knowing that the hands she’ll use to applaud her with,
will be the same hands that will never hold her again..

Gina Loring - Right love, Wrong man

“…The heart grows to accustomed to the floor, it begins to beat the vibration of your footsteps. This cannot be good. And the fuck part is, Even at your best, you are not enough.

Not worthy of this weary. So many holes in your story, I have begun to connect the dots patterned down your spine like men who run from themselves. Bury their burden in womanizing in one after another, each hoping they’re your final stop.


But my love, is not of this. Not booty calls and bed springs. Remorse or Regret. My love is not casual, not wensday through saturday, not part time, sometimes, in the meantime, between time. My love is not half way or almost, not maybe or could be. Not fraction or trimmed down, not meet all but to fit into your margin. Not reduce to text messages, Not unmet expectations, Not 42 on somebodys list.

Let me be clear. This heart is not a slippery slope. She is solid. And i am tired of consuming her, when you disappear. Your love is pleading and pops like the gum in my mouth, losing its flavor by the second. You are liquid, spilling beneath my feet, slippery fun but i always end up on the ground. Down with the count, defeated, having abandoned myself. Inviting heartache into my home, like a sick self filling prophecy, playing with fire for kicks.

You made it very clear, who i was dealing with. No commitment. But your kisses were confessions, promises whether you meant them or not. Did the silk of your tongue not exist? The ridge of your finger prints not leave shadows on my body? And what? What mouth can swallow that breath? What warm hand on a thigh can erase that truth? There is no sacrifice that is worth my sense of self flown on the floor with pennies and socks. No locks of eye making worth the emptiness of morning. There are a hundred reasons i love you, but three thousand reasons to leave you alone. And thats too many for my to justify even to myself. This is the last time i will offer myself fully to someone in return who gives me fragments.

You have undeservingly occupied this sacred space too long. I am taking back my my fingers, shaking you off my shoulders, once and for all. I am ripping the solids from my rib cages, Shouting at the universe. I am dancing beside my self, Liquid rythm leaking from my wrist. I am reinventing myself, twisting into a new shape. Remembering who i am, before loving you.”

(Source: hanngo)

23 Notes

40 love letters

Dear Dennis,
I still think of you.

Dear Andre,
I saw you kiss her.
I haven’t looked back.

Dear Patrick,
You’re just too young.

Dear Eric,
I said horrible things about
you.
Your teeth are fine,
it’s the rest of you I don’t
like.

Dear Greg,
Thank you for the poem, for
every single scar.

Dear William,
I love you, simple.
I like that we will never be we.

Dear Jay,
The bruises fell off
eventually.

Dear Michael,
I’ll never be enough to fill
the shoes 
that will one day stand at
your side.

Dear Ben,
I did read your letters.
All of them.

Dear Freeman,
I’ll never stop looking over
my shoulder,
boots laced, ready to run.

Dear Jon,
I’ll always love you.
You are all there ever was.

Dear Derek,
There was no one thing,
your everything is
impossible.

Dear Eddie,
We are refracting magnets.
We will battle this to the
end.

Dear Dennis,
I still think of you.

Dear Ryan,
I love you, simple.
Sex under the streetlight was
a delicious accident.

Dear Kevin,
Your kiss came too late.
My lips were already dancing
in the other room with Jon.

Dear Ethan,
No.

Dear Joseph,
I said you were too pretty.
They said to try it anyway.
They are fools.

Dear Avery,
You are the definition of unrequited.

Dear Skippy,
I’m sorry about the whiskey
and the tampon.
I’m sorry I never called you.

Dear Nate,
Until you mocked my smile, I
was yours.

Dear Marc,
I like your wife too much.
Is your brother still single?

Dear Mitch,
You were my biggest mistake.
I’m sure that only makes your
smile more sinister.

Dear Allen,
While you poured Guinness for
Patrick,
I pictured you bending me
over the bar.

Dear Graham,
I’d have swallowed that
bullet.

Dear Miguel,
You said a man never forgets
his first redhead.
What color are my eyes?

Dear Dennis,
I still think of you.

Dear Francis,
I’d have broken you in half.

Dear Chris,
I’m sorry I stalked you.
I’d try to forget me, too.

Dear Dex,
I can’t be with you again.
Just accept it.

Dear Dr. Matthews,
No.
I’ll have you fired.
Again.

Dear Aiden,
I wrote a poem about you.
It’s everyone’s favorite.
I find it trite.

Dear Logan,
I think I finally stopped
wanting you.

Dear Cynthia,
I was drunk.
I thought you were, too.

Dear Ricky,
Maybe it was the red dress
or because I was fifteen.
Your brother married my
mother 
on the same day I first
touched your cock.
Maybe you’re still a pervert.
Call me.

Dear Jeff,
I was your biggest mistake.

Dear Robert,
You are more than beer and
vomit.
You are more than I could
ever put into a poem.

Dear Dennis,
I still think of you.

Dear Dennis,
I keep your photos in a box.
Each
one, still in its frame.

Jeanann  Verlee

Dear every ex girlfriend.

 

Dear every ex girlfriend ever…

Dear every ex girlfriend ever…

It has come to my attention that you for some reason loved me now more than while we were together. This could very well be a class of case of not knowing what you have until it’s gone OR I have a content of a feel of ideas why this would be true.

One I somehow physically get more sexy when i’m sad…I have evidence to back up this theory. I was once in a grocery store half-defeated from my broken heart and a random lady grazed my right butt cheek at the cereal aisle.  She didn’t say sorry, in fact she did the opposite. She wink and smiled true story.  Two…You hated being with me so much, that the sight of seeing me with another girl made you magically fall back in love with me again like POOF…you’re crazy.  Three…all the time that we just spent on us, is now spent on me - which means I have more time to exercise, read, write, dream and save.  Which means I probably look better, smell better, talk better, have a little extra change in the bank damn i’d probably fall back in love with me too.  Four…did I ever say you were crazy?! Cause you are.  Five….Oh! I get it now…you gals are into challenges like it’s way more fun to love someone that doesn’t love you back.  Most people want to get that “I need a challenge bitch” but easily would do a cross-word puzzle and pick a fight with a big looking UFC looking bitch but not you.  You persistent little adventure seekers.  Y’all should come together and make a video of series…”The Journey of the Adventure Skeezers Volume” ….Six you never really loved me.  You were in love with the thought of being in love….I was a fucking extra in your movie.  Until you realized men like me deserve leading roles.  Seven, you really never loved me.  Eight, maybe I never fucking loved you.  Nine, I was right the first time you never loved me.  Eleven, I skipped Ten because you once told me Ten was your lucky number - there’s nothing lucky about you.  Twelve thank you.  I finally found someone that loves me, thank you for teaching me how NOT to love her.  Thirteen, the best thing you ever became was this poem and some slam scores.

P.S this might be the only time i’d ever call you…a Ten.

Creds: SuperB

(Source: youtube.com, via bboydflip)

13 Notes

JellyFish

It was somewhere between the last day of school and the first

Somewhere between morning and nightfall’s

Somewhere between New York City and the very tip of long island

There was an 9 year old girl standing somewhere between the shore line and the sand dunes

Scanning the horizon like a hawk

Like an Amazon warrior like a great cavalry captain like char la man on the morning before he took his final enemy

Jellyfish there were jellyfish on my beach on my ocean and that silhouette of a soldier and that was me

I was the nine year old protector I was the concurerr of the jellyfish

I was the vanquisher of the venomous

And I was armed

With my plastic bucket

And my legs which are strong enough so that I could hold against the pull of a sinking tide

And wait for one of those red and purple translucent throbbing bubbles of death to drift unsuspecting into the claws of my plastic trap and my legs were fast enough so I could dart back up on to the beach

Where I could toss my captives mercilessly into the sand pit I had dug

Never stopping for breath only for a juice box

In the cool shade of a green and white umbrella

I was a man on a mission

Which is to say girl with a bucket but in the bright glare of late august those two look an awful lot alike

That bucket was sword and shield that whole was prison and redemption there is no repentance

I had no guilt I was risking life and limb to protect everything I knew to be sacred

But you have to understand I really believe it was so

I lost count after 22

The movements became fluid almost memorized

As day began to sink and pink and orange began to creep their way into the crystal of afternoon skies

Seeping like ink into the ocean around my ankles

I grew weary

Mom and dad called from the beach time to turn in my bucket

Time to stop killing the enemy time to start thinking about what I wanted for dinner

That’s when it hit

The one that got away

Quick like lightening blinding like gunfire piercing like the point of a spear

I was hit and I was down I was down hard and fast it was a hit and run

That jellyfish was gone before I had time to register pain and that mark lasted

All summer long like a railroad track on the back of my hand

A battle scar to mark the war that I had fought

Somewhere between then and now irony slipped its way into my vocabulary

Laughter became an anecdote for guilt

Sacrifice grew to be a band name for shame and unnecessary death became a nightmare the rode me piggyback

Somewhere between then and now I learned that every move you make echoes outwards from your body

Like ripples on the ocean from a skipping stone

It is what taught me that karma is as tangible as the taste of seawater

Somebody somewhere has a scorecard so that eye for an eye tooth for a tooth

Really come around to bite you in the ass but what is it about immortality?

With the right sword and shield we think we can fend off anger fear and hatred

If our legs are fast enough we think we can outrun age, loss and death

But we can always truly live as master of all the jelly fish.

Sarah Kay

Postcards

I had already fallen in love with far too many postage stamps when you appeared on my doorstep wearing nothing but a postcard promise.

No, appear is the wrong word. Is there a word for sucker-punching someone in the heart?

Is there a word for when you’re sitting at the bottom of a roller coaster and you realize that the climb is coming, that you know what the climb means, that you can already feel the flip in your stomach from the fall, before you’ve even moved. Is there a word for that?

There should be.

You can only fit so many words in a postcard, only so many in a phone call, only so many into space before you forget that words are sometimes used for things other than filling emptiness. It is hard to build a body out of words. I have tried. We have both tried.

Instead of lying your head against my chest I tell you about the boy who lives downstairs from me, who stays up all night long practising his drumset. The neighbors have complained, they have busy days tomorrow but he keeps on thumping through the night, convinced, I think, that practice makes perfect. Instead of holding my hand you tell me about the sandwich you made for lunch today, how the pickles fit so perfectly against the lettuce.

Practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent. Repeat the same mistakes, over and over, and you don’t get any closer to Carnegie Hall, even I know that. Repeat the same mistakes, over and over, and you don’t get any closer. You never get any closer.

Is there a word for the moment you win tug of war, when the weight gives and all that extra rope comes tumbling towards you?

How even though you’ve won, you still end up with muddy knees and scratches on your hands?

Is there a word for that? I wish there was. I would’ve said it, when we were finally alone together on your couch, neither one of us with anything left to say.

Still now, I send letters into space, hoping that some mailman somewhere will track you down, and recognize you from the descriptions in my poems, that he will place the stack of them in your hands and tell you, 

“There is a girl who still writes you. She doesn’t know how not to.”

Sarah Kay


“ Hands ”

People used to tell me that i had beautiful hands
told me so often, in fact, that one day i started to believe them
until i asked my photographer father, “hey daddy could i be a hand model”
to which he said no way, i dont remember the reason he gave me
and i wouldve been upset, but there were far too many stuffed animals to hold
too many homework assignment to write, to manny boys to wave at to
many years to grow, we used to have a game, my dad and i about holding hands
cus we held hands everywhere, and every time either he or i would whisper a great
big number to the other, pretending that we were keeping track of how many times 
we had held hands that we were sure, this one had to be 8 million 2 thousand 7 hundred and fifty three
hands learn more than minds do, hands learn how to hold other hands, how to grip pencils
and mold poetry, how to tickle pianos and dribble a basketball, and grip the handles of a bicycle
how to hold old people, and touch babies , i love hands like i love people, theyre the maps and compasses
in which we navigate our way through life, some people read palms to tell your future, but i read hands
to tell your past, each scar marks the story worth telling, each callased palm, each cracked knuckle is a 
missed punch or years in a factory, now ive seen middle eastern hands clenched in middle eastern fists
pounding against each other like war drums, each country sees theyre fists as warriors and others as enemies

even if fists alone are only hands. but this is not about politics, no hands arent about politics, this is a poem about love, and fingers. fingers interlock like a beautiful zipper of prayer. one time i grabbed my dads hands so that our fingers interlocked perfectly but he changed positions, saying no that hand hold is for your mom. kids high five, but grown ups, we learn how to shake hands, you need a firm hand shake,but dont hold on too tight, but dont let go too soon, but dont hold down for too long, but hands are not about politics, when did it become so complicated. i always thought its simple. the other day my dad looked at my hands, as if seeing them for the first time, and with laughter behind his eye lids, with all the seriousness a man of his humor could muster, he said you know you got nice hands, you could’ve been a hand model, and before the laughter can escape me, i shake my head at him, and squeeze his hand, 8 million 2 thousand 7hundred and fifty four

Sarah Kay


“Toothbrush to the Bicycle Tire ( A Love Letter )”

They told me that I was meant for the cleaner life.
That you would drag me through the mud.
They said that you would tread all over me.
That they could see right through you.
That you were full of hot air.
That I would always be chasing,
Always watching you disappear after sleeker models.
That it would be a vicious cycle. 

But I know better.

I know about your rough edges
and I have seen your perfect curves.
I will fit into whatever spaces you let me.
If loving you means getting dirty, bring on the grime.
I will leave this porcelain home behind.
I’m used to twice a day relationships
but with you, I’ll take all the time.

And I know we live in different worlds,
and we’re always really busy,
but in my dreams you spin around me so fast
I always wake up dizzy.

So, maybe one day you’ll grow tired of the road
and roll on back to me.
And when I blink my eyes into the morning,
your smile will be the only one I see. 

Sarah Kay

“If i should have a daughter”

if i should have a daughter
instead of mom, she’s going to call me “point b”
because that way, she’ll know that no matter what happens,
at least she can always find her way to me. 
and i’m going to paint the solar system on the back of her hands
so that she has to learn the entire universe before she can say
“oh i know that like the back of my hand.”

she’s going to learn that this life will hit you, hard, in the face,
wait for you to get back up so it can kick you in the stomach,
but getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs
how much they like the taste of air.

there is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by band-aids or poetry.
so the first time she realizes that wonder woman isn’t coming,
i’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear that cape all by herself.
because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers,
your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal.
believe me, i’ve tried.

and “baby,” i’ll tell her, “don’t keep your nose up in the air like that, i know that trick.
you’re just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back
to a burning house so you can find the boy who lost everything in fire
to see if you can save him or else find the boy who lit the fire in the first place
to see if you can change him.” 
but i know she will anyway.

so instead i’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby
because there’s no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix.
…okay, there’s a few heartbreaks chocolate can’t fix,
but that’s what the rain boots are for
because rain will wash away everything if you let it

I want her to see the world through the underside of a glass bottom boat
to look through a magnifying glass at the galaxies that exist 
on the pinpoint of a human mind.
because that’s how my mom taught me.

that there will be day’s like this. 
“they’ll be day’s like this my momma said.”
when you open your hands to catch
and end up with only blisters and bruises.
when you step out of the phone booth and try to fly
and the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape.

when your boots will fill with rain and you’ll be up to your knees in disappointment
and those are the very days you have all the more reason to say “thank you.”
because there is nothing more beautiful than the way 
the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline
no matter how many times its sent away.


you will put the “wind” in win some lose some
you will put the “star” in starting over and over
no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute
be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life.  

and yes, on a scale of one to over-trusting 
i am pretty fucking naive but i want her to know
that this world is made out of sugar.
it can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.

“baby”, i’ll tell her, “remember your momma is a worrier,
but your papa is a warrior and you are the girl with small hands,
and big eyes who never stops asking for more.”

remember that good things come in threes
…and so do bad things.
and always apologize when you’ve done something wrong
but don’t ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining.

your voice is small but don’t ever stop singing
and when they finally hand you heartbreak
slip hatred and war under your doorstep
and hand you hand-outs on street corners of cynicism and defeat
you tell them that they really out to meet your mother. 

Sarah Kay

(Source: whitepaperquotes)

95 Notes