starsi pray that someday soon, in a lonesome winter, your bones will cease to ache.
regrets will no longer break your morals like glass figurines,
you will not ask God to pardon your sins.
you will forgive yourself.

i hope, for your sake, that your butterfly-flutter eyes
will only be dampened with tears worthy of shedding.
your glory will shine out of those 2 crystal windows
and you will finally know what freedom feels like.

one day, in the midst of a dreary december, i wish for your wings to open wide
and carry you to heights far past any you have ever experienced.
your lungs will become blooming forests
with snippets of poetry carved into

i would say my father is a wari would say my father is a war horse but that is a failed symbol
because he has been dragged through the dirt as many times as this metaphor

i want to write in abstract like in a book of
contemporary poetry i bought over the summer;
it was all syllables and lines of 'talk talk talk' repeated over and over
i want to write something that describes how i feel without saying a word that describes it -
like:
dust and ache and tired and bone and overflowing and lonely and fuck and .

i want to write poems that have meaning without being cliche i want poems
that defy grammar and space and time because when someone reads them, they become me

wastelandthe difference between alone & lonely
was one of them needed me.

i recluded back into the embrace
of someone who didn't deserve to
trace the wings in my lungs into
butterflies, all because of my
selfish desire for solace.

see, i am not practiced
in the art of loneliness.
or maybe i've wrecked enough
solitary canvases to stretch
me all the way back to the
fallen leaves of last october
when his arms constricted my mid-
section; a noose for my stomach.

i wanted to forget
how it felt
to be left.

so i let him stroke my shoulders
in an attempt to rebirth necessity.

september's winds brought
whiplash & slick hands.
he snaked in between

2nd priority maili remembered you lion-hearted,
but just insecure enough to let
me wrap my good intentions around
your neck to warm you with the
heat of all their purity.

people aren't games,
but we played each other as if
our backbones were life savings
begging to be gambled away.

you melted inside me until i could
no longer tell the difference between
each of my individual bones.

you started screaming the promises
that were whispering through my blood stream
straight into the gaps between my eyelashes,
telling me that i should've looked for you
at that goddamn bus stop under the rain that night.

you cracked into shrapnel,
told me you were stuck in th

001 i am a whirlwind of
bruised knees
(purple)

an aching heart
(dark blue)

twisted guts
(red)

&
a regret that could
crumble mountains.
(green-green-green)

confessionalthey say sad girls change their hair color
and forgive their monsters.

i change my morals
and become one.

slingshot words.there are a million worlds living in your head
begging to be wrapped around your tongue and released like a slingshot
into the heart of some stranger you may never meet.

blood typethere is something haunting about the way blood flows.
just think - all that crimson coursing through you,
scribing calligraphy inside your gut.

through your arms, through your heart.

it paints promises across the canvas of your innards, saying:

i promise to take time, to give you as much as you need.
i promise to stay warm even when chills tickle your spinal cord.
when blades threaten to sharpen themselves like buffers across your skin,
i will flow slowly, giving them a chance to see the light in your bones.

i promise to stay powerful.
i promise to stay abundant.
i promise to stay holy.

i will weave through your veins,
craft myself

no wonder it took him 1455 pageswhen i was seven years old, a group of kids in my grade threw rocks at me for liking neopets more than webkinz. from then on, i was convinced i knew what hatred meant. but i don’t know how to describe it to the little girl who sits in the corner of my womb and in ten years might call me mommy and ask for help on dividing the world into black and white.

would i point to the churches with their bigotry? to the cotton fields of the south in the 1800s? to the classrooms of modern day america? would i tell her about how the jews stood in straight lines, waiting to die, with fear in their eyes and faith in their hearts? or would i try and de

tear the skeleton from his comfortzonei want to build a skyscraper, seventeen stories high
and fill each floor with a story from the people who never said goodbye.

i.
a middle child, born in 1994,
she always wanted to be loved the most
until she learned how to give a blowjob
in an alley behind Miss China’s Takeaway
at knife point.

ii.
she lost her childhood
to an ocean who always thought it was small
and never stopped pushing its borders.

iii.
he’s not sure how he’s supposed to live without her.
staring at the closed coffin, he loses the ability to want to.

iv.
it’s not fair, she thinks,
that the house creaks when she’s trying to sleep,
but when

furniture dustthe curves of my lips have memorized
the knife of your tongue - chop me to
rubble until
i am furniture dust
in a house that you never called home.

i swore to all my deepest insides
that i would never again weave words about you,
but i was fucking lonely.
i made myself your prostitute
of attention,
swore to cling to you while you pressed
your ribs into me, pointy.

the hum of memories in my guts
played me the symphony you wrote
into my lungs without even thinking.
the parallel marks on the inside of
my forearm whispered your habits
and reminded me that you are more
than just a set of teeth & smooth skin.

you manifested yourself until

to the gunman of a school shooting in newtown, CTthe black man on the television screen spits reform,
but parents of dead children plea gun control in the
wake of the destruction of 20 children, 26 lives total.

adam, don't you realize it's christmas time & these
parents will be burying bones instead of caroling songs?
the black man on the television screen admits:
our heart is broken.
but there is no beauty in the unity that follows robbing
of innocence. adam,

you sprayed the school with bullets bursting into shrapnel
off the shattering skulls of children.
20 little bodies hauled off in white sanitation bags,
stained red with crusty blood and shouting mothers screaming
to t

a guide to her sadness.her wrists are wishbones she breaks for luck,
not knowing there is no luck in the break.
her veins are unanswered prayers
her lungs an apology sent as letters to heaven,
hoping God will forgive her for being a continual disappointment.
her head is a phonebooth for all the thoughts nobody's picking up on.
see,
the the sadness is sinking her again.
so when she leaves at midnight to longboard to the ocean,
go with her.
when she tries to climb bridges,
don't let her.
when she's drinking cold tea and playing daughter,
it means she's trying to pull her head together.
when she's in the bathroom praying to the toilet,
decide to knock.
when she avoids you,
hide her blades.
because lately,
she doesn't have the will to fight anymore.
so on the bad days, fight for her.

stardusti keep myself covered most days.
my waist is a melancholy echo of
the way he touched me 2 summers ago.

the way my right shoulder leans slightly lower
than my left is evidence of far too many misdemeanors.

the cracks decorating my ribcage are memories
of a brisk december morning when my pride
clawed its way out before i was ready.

i am not old; just soulful
with the kind of passion
that flickers like the candles
i light in lieu of all my selfish prayers
that i gave up expecting answers to.

i sob tearlessly & break into smaller pieces
of myself nightly. i am afraid that the salt water
will seep through the scratches in my skin
and remind

eight things that hurt more than a broken boneone,
i have never had broken bones,
but i imagine it would snap,
splinter, pierce my skin.

i imagine it would be
the pieces i cannot put back together
scratching their way out of
this body bag.

i imagine my demons would
not rest until my arms are torn
by the claws of my inside.

i'd imagine broken bones
would not hurt as much
as broken confidence,
conviction, trust.

two,
her faith.
(my lack of it.)

three,
fluctuating positions in life.
the backbone of a dreamer
who finds nightmares her companion,
the fingertips of a mother,
pressed against feverish foreheads.
the lips of a teenage girl,
forgetting what truth sounds like.

four,
bones h

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self-medicationnow, the ghost of what we once were haunts me
when i skip the creeky 2nd-to-last step & when i
smile at homeless strangers. no one is really a
stranger, though, because our goals are common
and our cavities look the same on the outside.

i watched you fall in love with her beneath the south
stairwell and it hurt me, just like it would hurt any
insecurity-ridden girl, but it's alright because i'll take
the parts of me you didn't want and make art. the
parts of me that my brother touched, the pieces that
daddy forgot to pick up when he beat me.

my fallen-eyelash wishes will no longer be wasted
on you, dear boy, but you'll alwa

l'esprit d'escalieri have clung onto the wrong person.
you are beautiful, beautiful but you
are bad for me. my eyes turn glossy
gold when you look into them & i hate
it, i fucking hate that you have that
sort of control.

i wasn't always like this you know. i used
to be strong and independent and i used to
be able to breathe on my own. now, i become
weak at the knees at the mere thought of you.

you made me surrender my will power, you
stole my muscle mass. my heart is the only
muscle i know how to use, maybe that's why
you've taken me over. you've forced yourself
through me and built a home.

you say you don't go anywhere you're not
want

alcoholic baptismyour insides are stained with pain.
pure, pure pain.

pain purer than your heart
& soul
& mind
and all those other godly things
and i want to wash you off.

i'd start with your bones, your brittle-
brittle bones. gently remove them from
your arms, i'd soak them in white wine
to clean them off. the things done with
liquor in one's system are nothing to be
proud of, but alcohol has a way of washing
away all the traces of sorrow.

i would pick out your muscle tissue &
dip it in gin, dispelling the memory of
your parents' divorce.

i'd make you feel whole again.

the skin around your wrists, i would
shower it in whiskey and every

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truths

by ~learningtobefree, Feb 10, 2013, 1:26:59 PM
Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

i.

there are 2 things that not even the most
forceful of rains can cleanse me of:

-memories
-mistakes

ii.

sometimes, i feel like a caged lion.
only with a lot more impatience
and a lot less resilience.

iii.

i have yet to discover what it means to be content.
i am either too stagnant or too fluid.
no middle ground.

iv.

i have mastered the art of leaving.
it's the idea of moving on that still haunts me.

v.

i fear that the light in my eyes is so dim that it will burn out
before even i have a chance to see the world with it.

vi.

i am not as clever as i pretend to be.

vii.

someone needs to teach me that
i don't need reassurance; i need self-assurance.
that someone should be me.

viii.

my greatest fears are loneliness and cancer.
the second because all my beauty is in my hair.
the first doesn't need an explanation.

ix.

i am still discovering what it means to be a woman.
everything is confusing me.

x.

i am secretly afraid of massages.
feels like i'm being stabbed.
we all know how that is.

xi.

sometimes, i pretend to be more interested in people's lives
than i actually am because i pity them.
i am the epitome of hypocrisy.

xii.

i remember exactly what i wear when i do something for
the first time. i don't know why. should get that checked out.

xiii.

i push and pull all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons.
i hate myself for it.

xiv.

i am more important than i give myself credit for being.
this is the product of far too many disappointments.

xv.

i am one of those disappointments.

374

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truthsby ~learningtobefree

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Submitted on: February 10
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~neonsquiggle Feb 22, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

This is lovely.

~learningtobefree Feb 22, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

thank you.

~neonsquiggle Feb 24, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

You are welcome!

~frozen-in-time94 Feb 18, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I really like this idea, do you mind if I model a poem after this?

~learningtobefree Feb 18, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

sure haha whatever inspires you c:
i'd love to read it when you're done.

~frozen-in-time94 Feb 18, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Cool, thank you!

~violetense Feb 16, 2013 Student Writer

sometimes, i feel like a caged lion.
only with a lot more impatience
and a lot less resilience.

This could easily stand alone.

~learningtobefree Feb 16, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

thank you!

~oc-eanwide Feb 12, 2013

_{one, two, five, six, seven, eight, eleven, twelve, and thirteen all describe my life.}

~rianax Feb 10, 2013

I want to crawl inside your head for inspiration-- you got me writing.

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truthsby ~learningtobefree

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