Uranium and Napalm
She liked to tell me when it rained that the sky was falling
That the fireflies were uranium glowing
And the fighter jets were shooting bullets exploding into flowers
When we felt the heat brush over our faces from the fires of bombs
We imagined that they were kisses from god
And that we were not abandoned
Watching the buildings burn down we would look at the flames
And see how they slowly changed the color of concrete to black
We would slow dance as they did sharing each others oxygen
In a trash filled street is where she told me she loved me
She could reach inside my head and remind me of who I was
Like adult grabbing a balloon for a child before it touches the sun
We would try and take pictures of the lighting strikes making cracks in the world
But our photographs would always be transparent or completely invisible
The light was moving and the earth was ending at a faster rate than we could observe
She told me when the sky shatters and the pieces fall like ashes
And the puddles form like tiny atmospheres
It will be made whole again in the morning by evaporation
About the Creator
Eli Salazar
I began writing after I was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome. WIth Tourette can come the loss of friends, feelings of depression, and blackness. Writing is how i choose to fill that darkness with color.
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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 Bogdanovaabout 21 hours ago in Poets
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