things to think with - poetry
things to think with - poetry
He told me when I drank from his favorite glass it felt
just like I was tweezing the lilies out of their new-sown
bed, pinching the bulbs from blankets of clay and
holding them, turning them
to oysters in my hands, slurping them, things I couldn't
digest. He said I might as well have come into his bed
and ripped the pillows until they were blizzards. He said,
if I were a skunk you would de-scent me, clear
ammunition from my chambers. He said, look into my
eyes and see the film you have left by dipping your
fingers into me and easing them back out again, look how
they are not the same. By now the glass had left a ring on
everything it touched, I could never close my mouth
around its wide lip and the water trickled down the sides
and down my neck, and I asked him if there were
something else to life than keeping our bodies dusted and
shined as temples, if we must keep applying balms and
lotions to them like monks apply gold leaf to the temples
in Burma, and he stopped me. He had no patience for
something so far away.
mom can you come get me things are getting bad again and i feel every insult like a sharp tooth and i feel my dreams rotting under my fingernails and i feel too much all the time or else i feel nothing at all and it doesn't seem to matter if i drink and dance and party or if i stay at home curled up to study
mom are you sure when i was born i was a person and not just a vortex. always hungry. always swallowing. no matter how much goes in i always end up empty.
inkskinned
2019, Athens
I've never understood how people can love their bodies, nor really understood how they can hate them either. I've always seen my body as nothing so much as deeply disturbing in its constant variance, a fluctuating, unmanageable thing that has basically nothing to do with me, is not really any of my business at all.
How am I supposed to accept or like or hate or be neutral about a thing that will not stay the same? How can I maintain consistent feelings towards a changing thing like that? Should I concede instead that I can't, that it's necessary instead to cleave my body - in all its hideous willful growth and recession and blooming and withering - from myself, from me?
I am told this is impossible. I am told this most often by men. They have studied philosophers I haven't, but the things they say in dressed-up terms are just like the florid self-help slogans by women they think are stupid. The things they say are: You are your body. There is no divide. When it changes, that's you changing. You are not just a witness to your body's vagaries, you are the architect.
People are scared of teenagers having sex but we might think sometimes about the misery of having a teenage body, a teenage girl's body especially, how tedious and painful and punitive, and remember that sex might be the first time she realises that bodies can be made to feel good. That the million sensitive places which cause you to feel pain can also be sensitive to pleasure. That when you want to cry it will not always be from sadness.
My body disgusted me when I was that age, but at the same time I was learning to love it - love it too much. I hated it but also worshipped it with an obscene devotion, because I knew what it was capable of inciting in myself and in others. In the mirror, I wanted to cry out with distress one moment, wanted to break the glass and cut great chunks of it away. The next I was on my knees staring in dizzy adoration, grazing my hands over the gentle shelving of my ribs, looking down at it from the same angle a boy would. I was on my back in bed with a camera, I was reflecting on how lucky anyone would be to see a sight like this.
There is no truce to be made with my body; if I make one, I know it will only be negated by a new enemy in time. What is the point?
When I go back home I am angrier than ever. I am all at once submerged in every body I ever was, all the failed attempts at being a certain kind of person. My old scales are there, my old photographs, the skin across my face taut with hunger, my eyes bright and wild with it, very beautiful, nobody could deny.
And at home there is my mother. Around her I am ever more nauseated by myself. There are the usual itemised wrongs in my head, the ones I might trot out to a therapist, throwaway comments she made when I was at formative ages. She was always somewhat mad about her own body, but especially when she was young and single and probably driven to distraction with a whiny child and little idea of what the rest of her life might look like, if it would be any good.
She said these things without any meanness or vitriol, said them in the same chipper conversational way she said most everything, but of course I remember them. So unfair - I'm sure I don't remember hundreds, thousands of other things she said, telling me I was fine as I was. It seems likely. But nevertheless, I don't remember them, they don't exist for me.
Instead, what exists are the moments like this one: I was eleven and the usual routine was for my mother to collect me after school, and on the drive home we would stop and get me a snack from the shop, a packet of crisps or a cereal bar. This particular afternoon I had decided I was going to become skinny and virtuous like the healthy trim little girls in my class who ate rice cakes and whose socks did not strain against their calves in the least.
'What do you want to eat?' my mother asked.
"Nothing" I said, I'm just going to have chewing gum after school from now on.
'Good girl, she said, and I remember feeling a sad, deep worry that she had been hating me all along for the eating I was doing before, that she had been waiting for me to give it up.
When I come home now, still, I am self-conscious and defensive before her. I hate that she can see what weight I have gained. I hate to listen to what she is or isn't eating any more, what she is doing at the gym. I hate that hearing those things feels like a dare to me, or an invitation to raise the stakes. I hate that I have never found an appropriate response, that all I can do is defensively eat nothing, in a rage, or eat everything, showing her that I am past that, I have transcended her petty concerns, I am mind, not body, I am better than her. I stop wearing the kinds of clothes I wear in my normal life, fun and pretty ones, and recede into sullen, voluminous sweatshirts.
Even if my mother had never uttered a word about her body or mine, I think I would still feel this way when I come home, the same claustrophobic fury under that shared roof, the two of us so close together. I came from her, she made this body-thing I hate and love so much. I resent her for producing it; I'm mortified I have made such poor use of it. How dare you? I want to scream at her, on the one hand; I love you so much! I'm sorry, on the other.
My life felt empty and unreal and I was embarrassed about its thinness, the way one might be embarrassed about wearing a stained or threadbare piece of clothing.
where am i?
i am knee deep, seeping into the elevator air.
trapped between the second and third floor.
it's uncomfortable to be seen in these moments.
when i cannot even gather enough of myself in my hands
to feed a small bird.
but you still crawl into bed after me.
every night.
s.k. "10/03/22"
A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river
but then he's still left
with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away
but then he's still left with his hands.
Sometimes, they spill out of my mouth like a sheet of ice because of you and your nagging fingers pulling at my bottom lip, hungry for me to tell you what I think before I know how to say it.
She peels an orange, separates it in perfect halves, and gives one of them to me. If I could wear it like a friendship bracelet, I would. Instead I swallow it section by section and tell myself it means even more this way. To chew and to swallow in silence here with her. To taste the same thing in the same moment.
...
if I get out, I have to be a person again
have to put on clothes
put lotion on my legs
eat a bowl of cereal at least
take care of this terrible body that refuses to take care of me back
I'm so tired of talking about my depression as someone else—
a ghost that haunts me and I am afraid of the seance
afraid of what it might want from me.
my depression doesn't ask for much,
but when it does it's something I cannot give and that's the joke.
it's just me asking for something
I cannot give
I ask to come back to my body and it's only me saying no
when people ask me how I am, they might as well be asking where I've gone.
I'm driving down a dirt road,
no headlights. when it curves I will not know
just drive on into the field
my own voice playing on the radio
telling me there is no place for me here
...
I'm very interested in victorian literature
& why my left breast is so much bigger than my right
whenever someone has a vase or something in their home
I'm always like where did you get that?
did you wake up one morning
& walk to the open air market?
did the cerulean catch your eye?
did you pay in cash?
errands are so glamorous when I am not doing them
but I'm so in love with the grocery store
with asking you to grab the balsamic vinegar
with watching you eat the stem of the strawberry
like a party trick and we're the only ones invited
we've gone full cartoon-mode
wearing the same outfit every day
for the rest of our lives
waking up & having coffee
complaining & getting over it
you're surprised when I tell you I pray
but I like the idea of wanting something
all the way into space
Cat Cohen
...
manic pixie dream girl talks too much.
says bad words out loud and cries at the commercials
that makes me a funny woman, right? the kind people like to laugh at?
it's easy to root for you when I act like this.
so disagreeable. such a manic dream.
being in my 20s is like I understand more of my mother and less than i ever have. My childhood friends are strangers to me and there's no one i know better. i want to drink wine. i never stopped wanting to climb trees. i know more than I've ever known before. I don't know anything at all. I'm seven years old and sixteen and twenty nine and seventy. I can't tell when i'm happy. I think the only thing that will make me happy is to be little again. i want to be really old. i go to the ocean and feel like nothing matters more than that. in my bedroom everything matters so much. I go to the grocery store every day. i know haktoseato a lot of things but the only thing i know how to eat is fried eggs. I can take care of myself but i want to be taken care of. i want to go home and I don't know where that is. i think it may be somewhere inside of me but i'm not sure
urparty
i think this is called sorrow
i wonder how many things pass away like this
quietly
in the night
nestled in the silent hours between
my delirious shufflings to the bathroom
how many times have i made this trip?
rolled over to a different side, trying,
desperately,
to get comfortable.
s.k. "3/4/21"
We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.
Rumi
I am 24 and have never cried.
Once, a boy told me he doesn't believe in labels,
so I embroidered the word "chauvinist"
on the back of his favorite coat.
…
My mother says this is not the meaning of "unfazed."
When the boy says I curse too much to be pretty,
and I tattoo "cunt" on my inner lip,
my mother calls this "being very fazed."
But left over from the other universe are hours and hours
of waiting for him to kiss me.
And here, they are just hours.
Here, they're a bike ride across Long Island in June.
Here, they're a novel read in one sitting.
Here, they're arguments about God or a full night's sleep.
Here, I hand an hour to the woman crying outside of the bar,
I leave one on my best friend's front porch,
send my mother two in the mail.
I do not slice his tires.
I do not burn the photos.
I do not write the letter.
I do not beg.
I do not hold my breath while he finishes.
The man tells me he does not love me
and he does not love me.
The man tells me who he is and I listen.
I have so much beautiful time.
thinking about the time i was telling my mom how bad i wanted a nose job and she said "why? it looks exactly like mine, my mothers, and hers before that. they aren't here anymore, but i see them every time i look at you. if you can't change your mind for yourself, at least don't take that away from me
maya
I need you to know: I hated that I needed more than this from him. There is nothing more humiliating to me than my own desires. Nothing that makes me hate myself more than being burdensome and less than self-sufficient. I did not want to feel like the kind of nagging woman who might exist in a sit-com.
[Writing about a terminal illness:]
"I am feeling burdened
and I taste milk……
I mumble, ‘Please,
please run away.’
But it lives where I live.”
Hannah Gamble, quoting a student
Before I give you
my body tell me
if you've ever killed
before: if you've ever watched
the world burn
from the windowsill
of your home. Because
the girl was trying
to say she couldn’t swim
when an unholy man
pushed her into
the river. The body’s dying
is never done but
sometimes dirtied hands
speed up the process.
Sweet thing, I think
we can sweeten
our bodies with wine,
with prayers
when we can’t remember
all the things we’ve
done with our hands:
Lord, call me
out of the darkness.
Lord, blessed are
those who weep
alongside the
drying river—
who unearth
the unnamed bones.
Sweet thing, before you learn
the rhythm
of my pulse: the moment
it starts and
stops: tell me, did you notice
the way my body is held
together? With silk
ties and sharp
knives: Sweet thing, I use
them often. When
the girl became glass
her prayers drowned
Lord, aren’t we
too much
for this: must we go
in and out
of each other so
effortlessly, so
painfully. But let’s
not talk about that: instead,
tell me, when you’re up there—
looking out, out far
out your window:
are you thinking
of all the ways
you could fall? I don’t mind
feeling the heartbeat
of a man who’s scared.
So tell me, before I give you
my body: have you ever burned
grief but found yourself
unable to brush
the ashes off
your skin—I know
the feeling. This familiar
holiness—this ritual
for the lost. Tell me, while
the air is still loose
between our fingers, loose
around our
necks: is the
blood on your hands
dry? Is it slowly
disappearing? Mine isn’t.
I consistently leave social situations feeling like I've talked too much and too loudly, and emphatically said things I don't mean. I leave wishing I'd given more compliments and eaten more slowly. how do other people speak so fluidly, tell their stories so gracefully? I am messy and hungry and always swearing, always starting my sentences without knowing where they'll end.
nogreatillusion
In front of my mother and my sisters, I pretend love is cheap and vulgar. I act like it’s a sin–I pretend that love is for women on a dark path. But at night I dream of a love so heavy it makes my spine throb.
Salma Deera
I have a hard time talking about how I feel, you say,
and I want to tell you, I promise,
it’s nothing like pulling teeth.
There’s a difference between
opening up for someone and opening up to someone,
I think, and I hate
not knowing what your voice sounds like
saying something that matters.
You want intimacy but you fear intimacy,
and that’s why we are together,
lonely and elusive.
We taste like irony,
as if it was some kind of truth to swallow.
"I killed an oyster on purpose once. smashed it with a rock. It's my one life regret."
"oysters can't feel pain!"
"what about my pain? what about my sorrow?"
Excerpt from tiktok comments. astralcorbozo
...
Don’t you pretend your hands are claws, secretly wish you could stomach the desire to push out
instead of scratching your forearms raw?
And don’t you get sore?
In the slope between your neck and shoulders,
your jaw.
But suffering is too extravagant a term for these Tuesday morning pains -
This is no spiritual awakening.
This is just dinner on the couch.
Why does it have to be beautiful?
No one holds you after your fantasies of the Passion.
There's no blood in your bedsheets from the stigmata you didn't get.
No one is watching.
So why does it have to be beautiful?
You, in pain, are no closer to god than
You, in the drive thru or
You, checking your email or
You, holding your own hand.
oh, i am finally old enough to know why my parents took so long to grab their coats. why they would ask us to get ready to go only to sit down for another round of coffee. what would i tell myself, at 10 years old? it's okay. sit down with them too. take in the extra hour with your friend and her family. when you get home, write down every moment in your diary. one day you will be older and you will be waving goodbye to your best friend, and you will turn the key to start your beat up little car engine, and you will look back over your shoulder. her hair will be blowing in the wind and she will be beautiful and you will be, for a moment, struck by all of it. what you will feel is so wide and nameless that it will engulf you. and you will think of being 14 and kicking her under the table in math every time you wanted to whisper something behind the teacher's back. you will think about how long the days felt, and how you could hold her hand whenever you wished, but you didn't. and you will think about all of the people you could have lingered with. and you will wish, more than you have ever felt a wish, that the universe just gave you that - more time to linger. more time to say - i love you. I know i need to leave, but i don't want to leave you. and when i go, i am leaving a piece of my heart that lingers too.
one more round of coffee. the days are so short, and you are so lovely.
inkskinned
I don’t
want you
to be
nervous. Maybe
thinking of
a walrus
would help.
Have you
seen the
video of
the penguin
accidentally stepping
on a
sleeping walrus?
It thought
it was
a rock.
The walrus
wakes up
like what
the fuck
and the
penguin scurries
off like
oh shit.
Sometimes it’s
funny watching
a surprise
happen, and
not just
funny but
kind of
amazing — like,
you never
really know
what’s what
when it
comes to
this planet.
Then again,
when it’s
you getting
surprised, that’s
different. Especially
for tender
ones like
us. What
are we
supposed to
do? It’s
bad for
our hearts,
you know.
I hope
you won’t
need pills
like I
do. I
think I
get so
scared because
I’m greedy —
I want
to hold
onto everything,
the world
wants to
take it
away. What
the fuck.
The number
of hours
we have
together is
actually not
so large.
Please linger
near the
door uncomfortably
instead of
just leaving.
Please forget
your scarf
in my
life and
come back
later for
it.
how do you process grief?
by running from it until it finds me in the middle of a sunny street on a beautiful day.
ryebreadgf
I had a dream that I was commissioned to write a poem from a bug to god, and I do not remember any of the poem, except for the last line which was:
I pray nobody kills me for the crime of being small.
Kayla Ancrum