my sheets will never be silent
whispers trailed between your fingers
i’ve always wanted to kiss people
through windows my astral heart
every birthday i ask for cookies
the cakes are made en masse
i used to draw mountains
but people make better horizons
if you build a sea of night
if you hide beneath the stars
someone will find you
Last night, I was anxious about returning to school. I am living off campus, and my room felt empty. I wrote two poems- one is about loneliness, and the other is about hope.
sometimes i taste the stale marrow of isolation
a creak in the night is enemy or empty
and it’s impossible to silence the noise in your head
the tin-tin pitch black space which craves distance
some person some day may read my words with their eyes
the ones that never penetrate walls, though seeing everything
we wish for open air and box our hearts instead
a car door slams, lights flicker, with the air we think we breathe
if this is the beginning then the end will be between
at times i lay my hands
on rough and smooth,
on rough and smooth
spots like hugging ants
with smooth sharp pincers
digging through. i lay
down in blue red sheets,
in blue red sheets
that spread across
my splintered fingers
diving deep inside, inside
the places where i’ll never know
the words you speak
at night that sing,
the words at night that sing. i
lay my hands across your heart
that beats in time with snow sharp
on pale white moon the stars
that hug you up and down,
and down, and down, and down. i
circle you with sticks that kiss
your punctured pieces down,
and down, as moonsets fall and slow.
i kiss you in the blue red sheets
as moonsets fall and slow.
My last year of high school, there was all this talk about a boy with special needs, a boy who was so allergic to peanuts that they banned chocolate bars from the school- even if they didn’t have peanuts, but they still had that tiny, tiny “may contain traces of” amount. People made fun of him before he was even there. They snuck chocolate in. The teachers barely enforced it. Knowing how allergic he was, I can’t imagine how miserable things were for him.
Like all companies, the ones which make drugs want to make the most money. How do you make the most money? You advertise. You appeal to the broadest audience possible. If you are in a TV commercial and you have allergies, it means red, water eyes and a stuffy nose. These people have perfect skin and plastic skmiles. They are not asphyxiating when their entire body swells up after accidentally eating a peanut. They are not scratching their skin to the point of drawing blood. They are not in tears. A TV allergy is a tiny inconvenience in white suburbia, easily solved with a pill.
Because this is all that people see, it’s all that they know. An allergy is like the common cold, but you can solve it with a pill. What’s so threatening about that? If your allergies are worse, or if your body acts differently, there must be something wrong with you. If you have watched any TV in the past 15 years, you’ve seen it- the stereotypical male nerd, the awkward, shy character. Their allergies become the punchline for a joke. The young, trendy, bombshell blonde is crying in her apartment. Her roommate walks in. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” “I’m not crying. SNIFF. Allergies.” Cue canned laughter.
One day at lunch, you throw a pea at someone. Totally benign, right? It bounces off and they toss something back. You can’t kill someone by throwing a pea at them. But if you feed a pea to someone who is severely allergic, they can die in minutes. This doesn’t make sense to most people- you can’t kill a person by throwing a pea-sized object at them, so how can eating one or being near a pea do the job?
A broken leg is an easy disability. Being blind is easy. Having diabetes is easy- you tell someone about it, and they will make an accomodation for you. You tell someone you have asthma, and they stop smoking near you.
Having an allergy is not easy. Because most of the things that happen are inside or hidden- in the stomach, in the ears and the eyes, in the mind, on the skin- it is never clear and obvious what that person is going through. If you tell someone to stop using this or to do this for you, and they refuse to believe that your problem is legitimate. They think you’re making it all up. They question your motives and they think you’re being paranoid. Maybe you’re just doing it for attention. Maybe you’re just selfish and manipulative.
I still remember when I was little, how it felt to have kids tease me by waving things with peanuts in my face. It’s absolutely terrifying, even with your mouth closed. Death is literally inches from your face and all you have to do is open your mouth, or have someone force it open for you. It’s so easy. It’s fucking scary. And because an allergy is something benign- something even easier than a cold, it isn’t taken seriously. If you can die to a peanut, you must be one weak person. You don’t even deserve to live on this earth if a legume can kick your ass.
But there isn’t anything wrong with me. I’m not making it up. It’s something I live with. It’s horrible, knowing that a one single malicious or ignorant person can control my life so completely. My day could be ruined in an instant- someone sprays perfume, and ten minutes later I feel like I am going to die. I have to change my entire day because of one person- I have to shower, I have to wash the clothes I wore, I lose sleep, and my body falls behind another day in healing itself. I can’t control it. My body is just different.
Now I wish that someone could ban all perfumes and fragrances for me. I wish that someone could understand this feeling. Even my own family, my parents, they barely understand it. My life will never be the same.
Maybe this is karma for never standing up for that boy.
run a line around my eye
you call birds another fall
kissing between my thighs
we bite and we crawl
I want to suck your marrow
fill my space with your drip
snap my broken arrow
scrape, scratch, and rip me
wash away, wash away
scrape my skin, wash away
and when the morning comes,
you’ll know- every morning I am gone
i like to rely on the kindness of
you’re a precious little mess
kiss me, you live his name
and I’m ashamed I ever wanted
you try to justify the unforgivable
blame it on free will
two pockets in your soul
you’ve got the sugar now
wash away, wash away
scrape my skin, wash away
and when the morning comes,
you’ll know- every morning I am gone
wash away, wash away
scrape my skin, wash away
and when the morning comes,
you’ll know- every morning I am gone
wash away, wash away
scrape my skin, wash away
