My thoughts are not always
understood by my mind.
He is a stranger to me—
the brick of dread
that would form inside
my rib cage
as the novels scatter
across my mattress.
Desiderium in the ink blot.
I do not know
what I grieve.
A child I have yet to meet—
a label— Anemoia.
Bricks upon bricks
inside of my breast
pull me down
down down down down
but there is a swing.
A swing beneath me—
the strangest sensation.
Palaver in the leather
of my seat
and it smells like nostalgia.
— ODH
About the Creator
Olivia Dodge
23 | Chicago
ig: l1vyzzzz & lntlmate
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Anger / I Want To Go Home
I sit in the ice box and feel my stomach scream into nothing. I want to go home. My mother tells me I do not seem angry. That my father’s anger has not been passed unto myself like it has my brother. I want to lie on the floor and close my eyes and let rivers flow within me. I shake in the emptiness. I think of the things which make me feel anger— it is peculiar how I cannot pinpoint them at first. I should let the heat build within the furnace and touch the metal with my fingers to feel dysphoria. This is not anger— this is longing. My lips are cracked and bleeding and my heart feels unsteady. I want to go home but I know it will not make me better. It will not fix me. I tell my mother I express anger differently. I tell her my anger never remains angry. Dysphoria holds many feelings within its cloud. I think of Travels with Charlie and how I do not want to be Any Here. Here is cold. Here is empty and I am empty too. Anger turns to discomfort. Discomfort to sorrow. It does not matter what I feel. My mother believes I am not angry. I am so full. I want to go home. My organs are screaming and screaming and screaming and scre— I am not moving. To have various diagnoses may have caused smeared tracks in my path to emotion. How’s your day going? [Bad] I’m just tired. I know the feeling. How could you? You are not me. You cannot see inside my head. I want to go somewhere. Anywhere. Not here. Everything is so full. I need empty space to think. A view with negative contrasts. One color. The furnace did not burn my fingers as I had hoped and my cloud of dysphoria never watered the grass. Anger has overgrown the roads but the grass looks like dysphoria. I need water. My tongue screams. Teeth chatter and legs shake. If I were alive I would feel my skeleton shatter within me. I think of Torrin A Greathouse and the need to Find Poetry within my words. My stolen notepad and borrowed pen quench my thirst for now. My mother was right— I do not seem angry. I cannot find my anger.
By Olivia Dodge4 years ago in Poets
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