Member-only story
Ars Poetica
this poem begins on my bed. it’s winter. my depression has sunk into me. my stomach is grumbling. my throat is dry. my mind is splattered on the walls. it’s everywhere. maybe this is not really a poem because it isn’t going to be beautiful. as you read it, I want you to feel the taste of blood in your mouth. imagine a full moon outside your window. the kind of moon that makes you feel a despair for intimacy inside you. feel the weight of all of the names you have lost in your life. the poem begins here. in this sea of lost stars.
yesterday I was wide open,
I was a waterfall,
pieces of me were gushing out
disappearing into everywhere,
I was seven again,
and I felt like shards of glass,
betrayed by my own fall,
then I was thirteen,
and angry, i grew two feet
and felt familiar hands
at my throat
but before I choked,
I was twenty-two,
the oldest I have been,
I swallowed the broken
glass and unclenched
my hands,
I think I am beginning
to understand
forgiveness.
