Handprints upon paper to ensure my life
does
not end with me and I know this may
burn in
the candle’s flame
because I can’t
always remember
to put it out
does this make me
careless I hope not
I hope you can see
I am just trying to
sleep I am trying
to swallow the
mulch it tastes
like your skin
and the slices atop
my tongue feel
like the nails
you gunned into
my cheeks with
the pads of your
bloody fingertips
— ODH
About the Creator
Olivia Dodge
23 | Chicago
ig: l1vyzzzz & lntlmate
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6:50pm
So if you can’t do what you love, you survive. You pierce your ears above the bathroom sink and try to look anywhere but at the blood. Your daughter starts teething and you rip the earrings out again. They were a gift from your father but you always hated them. It serves you right, too. Doing what you love is without raise, without pull, so you take the plug from the drain and watch. You find yourself in cages made of gold that’s worth more than the girl in your house. She’s foreign like the walls and the rules you wrote on the mirror. You can’t believe you wrote those— you don’t believe any of it. You write a file of the things that break her teeth and export it into the trash. It’ll stay there forever and you’ll find it when you’re a decade older, but you still won’t find the humor in it. None of it makes any sense because living and surviving are synonyms and they’re not the same at all.
By Olivia Dodge7 months ago in Poets
Center Stage with Gina C.
*** I'm keen to republish the interviews I did for my series with Vocal creators. It's been a few years and I thought it might be nice to revisit these wonderful conversations. I'll be releasing them one at a time for a few weeks/months.
By Heather Hubler6 days ago in Interview
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