There I go again,
Attributing my worth to the shadows I find floating across your gaze.
Or maybe it’s in the ways I can feel you shifting,
Like sand beneath my feet.
I slip and it’s you who tells me that I chose to fall.
Again, here we are.
Hopelessly lost, confused, and impassioned,
In no such ways.
You’re a miracle,
Vulnerably brilliant,
Beautifully naive.
A figment of an abundant imagination,
Rooted in everything I’ve been told I’m allowed to desire.
But why won’t the mirror stop screaming at me?
I’m watching the way the light refracts,
Distinguishing my perspective from yours.
When did a reflection become so damning?
I don’t think anyone could ever be so sure.
If only lips knew how to keep secrets,
In the way eyes do.
Maybe I wouldn’t feel as many ghosts in the walls.
Or maybe they’d roll over my cold shoulder,
As they read me lullabies,
To pass the time.
About the Creator
D.C. Somjarlee
Disabled creative with a love for writing, and a dream for her voice to be heard.
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Foot Bindings
I asked my grandmother how she knew she'd fallen in love. I am not sure I ever did love him, she said. This was before I met my husband. I was naive, a naked spring, a raw nerve of a thing. That cannot ever be me, I knew. Sadness swept in gently like a Moscow thaw. It is no simple thing, looking into a woman's vast soul and seeing its foot bindings. Now, in Italy divorced with my skin singed off, when I say I don't love him mean: I have succeeded at feeling nothing most days and it mostly works. Do you want the comfort of Nothing? Do you want Nothing, too? Be warned: you'll never be free, even when you are nothing. Here is what doesn't work: Accepting the stages of grief. Talking about it. Sitting with the feeling. Missing him—no, the person you were when you believed in death do us part. Writing poetry. That, too. When I say I don't love him I mean: I feel capsized in an endless, starved tide. What sometimes works: selective memory. You must forget ripe tomatoes and his beard and feeling perfectly sheltered in a big blue world. Forget coffee in bed, laughter watching TV, blowing out the candles on the birthday cake and the quiet all-encompassing knowledge that you are chosen. Remember only how love turned to a banal everyday survival act, a trapeze act unsure whether he will catch you, how the warmth stagnated and became sour, remember the foot bindings and remember the resentment boiling in your veins as you stick it out for the kids. Six-hour Netflix binges help, too. A man's fingers tracing your spine. Frozen pizza at 2 a.m. Random trips to the museum just to stand near things that last a while. The realization that crying won’t change anything. Seeing that life is just a dream, and refusing to participate in your own suffering. Bite your fist. Walk on eggshells around joy. When I say I don't love him, I mean he didn’t break my heart, he just stopped touching it and it forgot how to beat right.
By Ella Bogdanovaa day ago in Poets
Brainwashing, Soul Food, and Torches of Freedom: Eat More to be More
Eat More Bacon Now Smoke More Cigarettes Now Eat More To be More (“We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” -Edward Bernays, the Jew who Hitlter tried to hire.. . . )
By SAMURAI SAM AND WILD DRAGONS6 days ago in Poets
Should We Not Try to Get Too Political?
Here's something you often hear people say, "I try not to get too political." I understand the sentiment and I sympathize with it... while at the same exact time, I completely disagree with the notion. Whether it's referring to social media or wherever, it's kind of unavoidable. You can attempt to sidestep it, not engage, leave the less important things for actual politicians to discuss... you can want it to not take over your life, your conversations, your relationships, and that makes perfect sense.
By Stephen Kramer Avitabile5 days ago in Writers
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