Olivia Dodge
Bio
23 | Chicago
ig: l1vyzzzz & lntlmate
Stories (104)
Filter by community
December Prompts
8:15pm When I think about December I think about light sensitivity. I think about the great conjunction and red hypericum. I think about a hundred oak trees and a meteor shower. I think about the bar cart we made from a lost butcher table and the keychain I got for my mom that now hangs in our house. I want to stop thinking. I want to be in December without an analogy. I want to host the people I love and write letters to the ones I won’t. I want to drink absence over ice and feel it burn in my stomach. I want to step on snow covered grounds and not think about how bad it hurts to look at. I want to hand you a solstice-rimmed glass that tastes like a lost civilization. I want to watch you drink it and realize we are nothing. I want you to speak to me. I want to hear the voice in your head. I can’t hear you. My mouth is a tempest. My body is made of God and Saturn. My heart is the solar equinox and only you can hold it because you are the Sun. It only happens four times a year but it’s enough for both of us. December is the last one. I don’t want to think about how little time we have left. I want to think about the stars.
By Olivia Dodgeabout a year ago in Poets
a thousand loose stitches
11/3/24 8:48pm I’m always having these dreams where I rear-end people and I think that stems from a trauma I haven’t met yet / I have trouble introducing myself / there are a thousand loose stitches in my grandpa’s sweater I stole about ten years ago / I never told him it was his / I don’t know if I ever will / he knows / I have trouble saying how I feel / it tastes bad in my mouth / it feels wrong on my skin / how it coats my teeth and how that light makes my pupils small / the time changes twice a year and so do I / it’s never been about the taste when your hands won’t let go of mine / I use a graph to find out how I feel / as if it’s something someone else has to teach me / I’m talking in my sleep to make up for the time I’m awake / someone told me men will shop until they die / changing their wives’ trim and replacing her tear-stained windows / I always wonder why they call it window shopping / when it’s more like stealing a pair of shoes and leaving your own in place / sacrificing everyone for your own happiness / sometimes it’s okay to be selfish
By Olivia Dodgeabout a year ago in Poets
Sept 2024 — The Big Fear
9/4/24 — 9/14/24 When the big fear comes between us, I want you to grab the sun with your bare hands, remember what it’s like to be love-sober, before the neighborhood cat was found sprawled on the sidewalk. I wish he would have asked if it scared me or if it hurt me, because all I knew was that it was bad. All I knew was this feeling did not want to be felt, that it had taken time, cradle to grave, to run from me, that I will never be rid of its pot-stuck rice no matter how hard I scrub it. I’m sure it will never be as clear to me as the directions I’ve written you, and by that I mean, can you please guide my wandering eyes through this blizzard? I don’t wish to beg. I spoke to the moon and her crater-painted face, and you would have loved what she told me. I can’t remember it now. Something about a palm-stricken face knocking tears into their senses, forgetting you brutally in the birth of autumn, seasons made for soup and crystal balls, and reminded me the hunger never stops, no matter how many cycles you’ve run that machine. I think you would have loved to hear her words. Just don’t let it come between us.
By Olivia Dodgeabout a year ago in Poets
Hibernate With Me
8/19/24 Will you be here tomorrow around 8? I’m always here. It’s like tomorrow is some sort of handshake between two strangers, uncomfortable and clammy and I’m not looking forward to my palm touching something other than your skin. I’m being as brave as I can. I write of chests and God and the ugly that sits between me and my bed. I talk to men because they thank me for it. I’m a child and I’m a stranger and I’m never brave when I need to be. You can meet me where they hibernate in the winter but if my pelt is too thick I can’t take it off. I can give you a knife but the blood won’t stop. It’s all for nothing and it’s all for everything and it’s all for you. You are here and we are shaking hands and I like the way you say Thank you.
By Olivia Dodgeabout a year ago in Poets
GRIEVING ME
Any feeling at all is something worth having. I hope if you remember anything it’s that I tried every day to feel something more. That I begged God to show me how. I stood in our sunroom surrounded by everything I loved and I cried to no one. It never lasted more than a second. I hope you remember the way I said I love you. The way I squeezed you but could never say what it meant. I hope you know what it meant. You can let the anger wash your wrists and I won’t be there to stare deadly at them. To smile with only my lips. I tried to show it in my eyes. I care for you. I watched your chest breathe like an infant. I want you to be cared for. You can give away my things. You can sell them or burn them if it makes you feel better. I want you to do something with the feelings I could never feel myself. Any feeling at all is something worth having. So when you feel relieved I hope you know I am too.
By Olivia Dodgeabout a year ago in Poets
6/12/24
6/12/24 I am writing on a screen made of lost words and the day is Wednesday (I’m usually off on Wednesdays) / The hair on my shins is tickling me out of every trance (the ones that happen inevitably every fourteen minutes or so) and I have never been so in love with the life I am living (I love you) / I could be anywhere outside of these walls but I could never be without the breakage they leave behind / Little flames of devotion keep our shelves lit through the night (we’re both scared of the dark) (I love you) / I’ll tell you the debris is something my mother gave us so we can stay here until sunrise / but your hands tell me you will not be the one to pick it up (we can leave all of this behind us) / Outside is warm enough without glass-trapped intimacy a fingertip’s length away– what does it mean to be envious of her transparency? / What does it mean to be furious that mine is smudged with black ink, tarnished with oil and grease? / There are a thousand writers in my grave not yet dug and each and every one of them is begging for your love (I love you).
By Olivia Dodge2 years ago in Poets
Anger and Going Home - rendition
May 20 2024 10:41pm I am inside the freezer. A home to babies and corpses and a napkin I used months ago. I’m uncomfortable. I’m upset because the bends of my knees feel like some sort of desperate amalgamation of part and tide. Separation doesn’t cure heat sensitivity and a street lamp won’t stress injustice, but they say he knows what he’s doing. He only looks between the rods when our teeth turn brown, so we assemble lasting links and pretend our bodies can survive off of one another. All of this to say, my hunger cannot be given to you, my mother cannot nurse you to sleep, and ziplock bags cannot keep these temperatures livable. You have to find a hand to hold and scrape the plaque off your teeth with the tongue that God gave you.
By Olivia Dodge2 years ago in Poets
Excerpt II
excerpt 4/27/24 Have I told you that you are the warmest womb to ever have revived me? The doctors won’t listen. I visit her daily until I can’t anymore. She understands, tells me I’m the only one who makes her feel guarded, and I have never thought of guarded in the sense of secure, only closed. My dear friend lies still in her cotton consummation, destined to blight the waters with blood, and I fear I am the only one who knows how to help– Would you really stoop to such a rotten sense of delusion? On what pedestal must you stand to enlighten a child–
By Olivia Dodge2 years ago in Poets
