I Am a Stone

I am a stone.
Crashings of the waves
beat me barren and raw,
wear me into abyss,
as if I wasn’t here at all.
Until I am a pebble.

And by moon of shame,
the tides flow above me
and through my veins,
and the very essence of the girl I am,
thieves that word I once called my name.
Just a pebble, now.

Until I am no more at all.

And whispers of a stream,
through crevices and cracks,
rivulets of siren tears,
drowning dirt and grass.
But receding back,
with threat in heart,
and home left sole.
Costly memories,
too lonely to forget.

I am a pebble.

And when boulders and shoved above me,
and the ground is
no ground at all.
When I am caked in mud
on every side,
unable to move,
but unable to fall.
As time wears on,
and no less cold,
than an arctic tundra.
Here I am again.

I am a stone.

And here, beneath the surface.
Strong and below the water.
Untouched, underwater.
Drowning beneath obligation,
set forth by preparation,
I am stone.
And unmoving.

Shatter me ten thousand times.
Destroy me, I suppose.
It makes no matter anymore,
I shall wake once again,
stronger than before.

Wear me away with your tide
and ocean,
Freeze and breathe into me.
Beat me into pebbles,
and then there shall be more,
feed your ego and insecurities,
just as sad as before.
Will you never change?
Will you never grow?

Thousands and millions of years
you may torture.
Treacherous foe, I bow to no one,
find me companions, leave me alone.
Makes no matter.
I’ve thousands of years, millions,
to be whole.

And you?
A hole.

And anchored in my place.
I live on.

A debt of gratitude for you,
because I am stronger without you.

There Was no Beginning

Secretly
(and selfishly),
I still,
When captured by inopportunity,
Think back to those days
Underneath a blanket of clouds,
Above a blushing sky,
Pink and orange and golden.
I still remember us.

I still remember moments i locked away
Never to be considered.
But on those moments replicated,
A deja vu
The days I wish I never knew
That tore me to pieces
Because of you
And your lack of understanding.

You still don’t understand.

And upon a moment
Left bare and bone
Seeds that will never be unsewn
Flesh torn out in tiny pieces
There is no mend.
There was no beginning
And no end
And left no corpse of what I may lament.
And left no evidence
But a handprint.
And left no soul behind.
There is no middle part to remember.

And I realize, that secretly, I’ve begun to hate you.
I’ve no grounds behind my claim
No legitimate justification
Of why I still leave you to my blame.
I know only that I sometimes remember
But only when I hear your name
For in every other moment of my life
You were nothing more than a phase.

And now you’re easy
To erase.

Lost Innocence

I had hoped to sanctify your heart,
As a tomb wrought with fallen hopes,
My love.
Fallen hopes, my love.

Down aisles of stone faces
And leak-sprung tears
And spindle-spun gowns
On women of forgotten sorrows,
My love.
Forgotten sorrows, my love.

And pebbles tossed into blackness.
Echoing around you
With whispers of your ghosts,
Cold in your ears
Ice down your spine
Chills up your arms
And gusts of mist wafting
From the breath you release.
And they lie. Those whisperers,
Spiders under flesh,
Flies on the wall
Thieving rumors, evolving to truth
And convincing you.
They lie,
My love.
They lie, my love.

Skittering into your fragile heart,
Fangs poisoning your blood,
Coursing through every vein,
Another bad memory.
Another vulnerability.
Another insecurity.
Every fear you’ve ever had
Brought to light in the void.
It’s poison in your veins,
My love.
It’s poison in your veins, my love.

Only poison. Nothing more.
I long to press my lips to yours,
Draw it out, every last drop.
Take the poison into myself,
Suffer the lies myself,
Suffer the rumors, the fear, the vulnerability.
The guilt.
The guilt you never should have known,
My love.
The guilt you never should have known, my love.

To press my lips to yours and draw it out,
To promise she was wrong.
To fill myself with the tainted blood,
That you might be washed clean.
That you might return to the way you were
Before the evil spider bite
Rendering you ghosted in the tomb
Of your heart among the mistakes
Of your past, and present, and future.
Among the women in spindle-spun gowns,
Before God and judgment,
But before yourself and your punishment.
A face of yourself without mercy.
Have mercy
My love.
Have mercy my love.

That the poison might be permanent,
That the stone has already been thrown,
That the blood already spilled,
That I cannot take everything back,
That you cannot return to the past…

That you might never be naive again, my love.
That you might never be naive again,
My love…

My heart weeps for lost innocence.

You know, I really hate having to go around cleaning up everyone else’s messes. If it’s not one friend hurt, it’s another. I have no problem listening, no problem trying to help out. I am happy to do what I can to help my friends and loved ones. But when it’s one friend against another and they place me in the middle, and I’m stuck. Being me, I tend to stay on the side of whomever got hurt as opposed to whomever got angry. But when I’m forced to sit down and help someone because someone else in my circle of friends hurt him/her, I just get sick. Maybe that’s what I get for having friends so vastly clashing of each other.

Unwitting Illusion

The trees watched us grow,
and the silence sped near,
the moon passed our hide out
year after year.
The sun went down on sorrows
and anger thrown high,
and rain spent the mornings
watching arguments die.

Tables together, our seats beside each,
alone in the world, or so we’d beseech.
Our friends drew us nearer to what I called home,
but as the dawn broke, you left me alone.

Flown high on the swingsets,
jumped into the air,
challenges, obstacles,
trials of error.
Climbed to the top
and took the castle for me,
until my flag was torn
into a dozen pieces.

You took dominance,
demanded I obey,
friends forever, you said,
and then walked away.

The wood and the bark
of the trees in our home,
spent night after night
mournfully alone.
I didn’t return.
Didn’t think it would help,
you left me still standing,
but with little else.

The winds whispered rumors
spread wide through the wood.
Lost faces in tatters
of where we once stood.

A ghost girl with a sigh, a tear in her eye,
watching you walk away
and fissure the night.

And day rose again, and the rumors were true,
it seemed the ghost girl had truly lost you.
But she’s still stand strong, no more tears, no more lies.
If you don’t remember, then neither will I.

The Boy in the Box

He is innocent.

And the people wear black
with masks of mourn on their faces.
They pander and amble
and speak of prettier places.
And prettier times,
the days he was alive
as if they have any idea
about the boy with rain-splattered eyes.

Locked in a prison,
black, and laced with red rose,
the darkest void I imagine
but how can I know?
The people in black
are hugging me and crying.
Their tears are unwanted,
in pity, they’re lying.

This place is a facade,
a charade masked in black.
The boy in the box
would give it all back.
They got everything wrong,
from the dress to the seats.
They don’t even realize
who he was to me.

His brother approaches,
and holds me in his arms.
Whispers condolence,
and then he is gone.

I am seated with this crowd
of fake mourners and the like;
actors and actresses
trying on a new life.
The priest at the podium
says a few words,
turns his gaze on me,
and gives me the stage.

I stand, I approach,
though hesitant still.
I don’t have the words,
and I never will.

How will I say
who this boy was to me?
How can I describe
in sentences they can see?
He is no one to them,
just another name.
Another face in the crowd
who left short of his days.

A headstone in the park,
where I insisted it be.
How do I tell them
who this boy was to me?

I turn my gaze to the wall
in the back of the room.
He is standing there, curious,
one of the few.
No one else cares,
I realize then.
No one else wants to hear
about my dearest friend.

I will tell them anyway.

I look again to him,
I beg him to stay.
I beg him to give me
the words I should say.
I beg him to hold me
the way he used to.
I beg him to forgive me
for all the things that I do.

But he is curious,
and I shall receive no help.

I turn to the crowd,
and murmur a thought.
“I love roses,” I say
with a helplessness I forgot.
A sound of confusion
passes by each actor’s lips.
They turn to each other
and ask to each, “What is this?”

I clear my throat softly,
raising my voice.
“I love roses,” I repeat.
regaining my poise.
“He loved roses as well,
loved them because of me.
I cannot make speeches,
I don’t know how to be.”

But all the same, all I tell them,
the don’t deserve to know.
I must tell them, however,
the boy must go on.

I tell them of his sadness,
of his deepening scare.
Of his wonderful smile,
his calculating stare.
“I loved him,” I say softly.
“And I always will.”
I gaze back at him.
“Despite everything, I love him even still.”

“But I am the reason he’s gone.”

The boy’s gaze changes,
with words I can’t decipher.
I step down from the post
and watch them call me a liar.
The actors hold me so tight,
they say it isn’t my fault.
“These things just happen,”
they say. “That’s all.”

They all tell me it’s not my fault,
but sometimes it is.

I killed the boy with the rain-splattered eyes.

This was based on the trial chapter of a book I never really finished. I ended up gaining more interest in a different story that I was working on, so this chapter is the only one I had. Since I had nowhere else to put it, I decided to just retell the story in a poem and post it here.

The Secondhand Heart

A cold, scarecly beating heart
in open hands.

Dropped in gravel,
crushed by time.

Protected for moments;
destroyed for years.

A facade from many moons ago,
for which he cries no tears.

An unholy spirit
phantom; haunting every step
down corridors and passages.
Shadows catch upon stone-laden walls
closing in, separating.

Breathing.

In bowels of a dungeon,
trapped in slavery of the stars.
A reminder of the sparkles
that once came so naturally
to her eyes.

But now, only burden.

And well forgotten.

It shall be many years
and many stitches
and a few bandaids
and some trust
to put this heart
back together again.

And even then,
can it ever love again?

After a heartbreak, love is the last thing on anyone’s mind. I think anyone over the age of about fifteen has had at least one heartbreak in their life. Whether it was a short middle school romance, a high school crush, or true love, heartbreak hurts everyone. There is no way around it. And people try to help you by saying that time heals all wounds. Bullshit. Excuse my language please, but that’s just bullshit. The honest truth? I got my heart broken over a goofy middle school crush, and the pain didn’t go away for SIX years. SIX. If time healed all wounds, I would have sucked it up before the month was over. But no, I mooned over the same guy for six years. And the pain only got worse as the years wore on.

What heals heartbreak? Love. To get over someone truly, you must truly fall in love. At least, that’s what I think.

Again, this was a little more experimentation with non-rhyming verse.

A Blind and Silent Search

He holds me in his arms, whispering platitudes of love
with the heartfelt, open denial of the world we’re dreaming of.
He holds my hands up to his face, and places on each a kiss,
tells me I’ll never be alone, in times so hard as this.

“Let’s play a game,” he suggests to me, with a smile on his lips.
“Hide and seek,” he says to me, with a certain noted bliss.
I fear, somehow. I doubt in him, though I feel I have betrayed;
the loose ends I keep tying up, are perpetually frayed.

“Close your eyes,” he requests, turning me around.
I feel his arms slip away from me, he leaves without a sound.
I close my eyes and count to ten, and twenty, and fifty-five,
and to a hundred, and larger still, and then open my eyes.

And yet, that darkness haunts me, as if my eyes were stitched up,
blackened void, and abyss before me, because my eyes stay shut.
I try to pull my lids apart, to see the scene I know is there,
to no avail, I soon discover, because somehow, I still have failed.

I open my mouth, I try to scream, but a whimper only comes out,
I say his name in whispered thoughts, I try desperately to shout.
I cry tears that can leave me, taunting as they fall
because they escape the darkness that plagues my world in awe.

I shout again, this time I’m heard, by my own ears only, it seems.
No one else comes to my rescue. No one else hears my screams.
I call his name, “It’s not a joke, I am stricken blind!”
“Save me!” I beg. “Come save me!” But I fear I’m left behind.

I stumble through the bushes, feel thorns scrape up my thighs
I catch my hands on roses, blackened as if they’d died.
And the stem, and the bush, and the trees, and the sky,
all void, all gone, disappeared to my eyes.

I call his name again, in vain. Begging to be found.
He doesn’t come to save me, I fall to the ground.
Gravel digs into my knees, I feel the warmth of blood,
I wonder if this is my end, if I shall lose in love.

I shake, I shiver, I hold myself, nothing compared to his arms.
I realize that this game we play was gambling in cards.
I threw a coin into the air, when I let him walk away.
There never was a guarantee he’d remain, a guarantee that he would stay…

This is based off of a nightmare I had a while back. Quite often I find myself blind in my dreams. I always seem to know what’s going on around me, but I cannot witness it, and I can’t do anything to change it. Honestly, I think I have these nightmares because one of my greatest fears is losing control over a situation, topped only by the fear that the people I love will leave me. I would say about once a week at least I have a dream where I cannot see anything. Slightly less often, I have nightmares of full-body paralysis, which I guess it more frightening to me because I am forced to watch what is happening, but do nothing.

This nightmare however was probably the worst I’ve ever had. It put together my two greatest fears and forced me to face them both at once. I know, you’re supposed to face your fears in order to overcome them, but this did NOT help me overcome EITHER. I woke up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, and because I sleep in as dark of an environment as possible, I thought I really was blind. After turning on a light and realizing that I was okay, I had to text the guy it was about around three in the morning just to make sure that he was okay. It was exhausting and petrifying.

On the bright side, it made good fodder for poetry. See, when you’re an optimist, there’s ALWAYS a bright side. 🙂

Astray

There were rains that fell upon a heavy ocean,
and the tides that came and washed away the shore.
In the blinding moment of my desperation,
I allowed the one I asked to ask for more.

The clouds above me burst and shed tears of their sorrow,
begging God above to pretend he didn’t see.
And when sorrow became hopelessness, and disheartened what became my bliss,
I was left to roam alone with only me.

As if it mattered that the world revolved around her
as if I’d bow to every need she asked me to.
The days grew longer and I felt myself slipping down
beneath regret and swollen pits of broken rue.

In the morning when the sun rose to beseech me,
I felt no warmth beneath the grey silver linings there.
I knew no heart would see why I have chosen these paths,
I knew she’d never let it go, never forgive me.

But she asked me to choose her over my heart’s love,
“friends are first” she said in words not many still.
“If a friend,” I said, “You’d be happy that I love him,
you could be a friend, but I know that you never will.”

And dawn became the day, and day fell to dusk
when shadows stalked me along road I’d never tread.
Before the night, I never knew the truth of lonesome
and even then I felt a happiness instead.

When the rain washed away with tides never ending,
I felt a call I’d never felt in all my days.
The words that spoke to me said she would never see it,
the words told me that she had been left astray.

Maybe she loved in the ways I can’t imagine,
but I know that she never saw the way I do.
A moment changed everything when he told me his story,
because he never told the other the whole truth.

So I must let her go, even though it may hurt me.
It would be best for all others still involved.
I wonder sometimes if this could have ended better,
but I know that my heart stays well resolved.

In the tides that fall, the moon that crashes onward,
I let my soul live on for many other days.
Maybe I’m the one who let this fall to pieces,
perhaps it’s me, and I’m the one to blame.

Yet more musings from late-night escapades. It’s the story of my former best friend and the slow, inevitable decay of our friendship. The story pretty much speaks for itself. The narrator doesn’t come across with as much remorse as I may feel towards the situation, but I wrote it in a more angry state of mind than anything else.

The Only One You Thought to Save

A glance over the edge,
Shards of shattered below her
And bodies above her,
And all around her.
Her feet lose balance,
Her arms stretch
A bird without wings to the eye
A desire to catch up with the sky
But she falls.

Saved by the noose you tied
Around her pale white throat.
She lives.
She struggles and fights the bindings
And thrashes until she slows
And falls
And is gone
But never forgets.

I trek through a forest
Of hanging girls on your ropes
Blood staining white shirts
Above their hearts
And my hand covers my own
With fingers that just grace
The blood from mine.

Heartbroken too
But the only one you thought
To save.

A bit depressing, I realize, but it’s not as bad as it seems. It doesn’t have anything to do with a murderer pushing girls out of trees so that they can hang. It’s a metaphor describing the relationship between a boy who is caught in a web of girls who would do anything for his love, and the only girl he has any eyes for. The narrator has vowed for years that she would never falter, that she would never fall in love with him. However, some promises are impossible to keep, and she falls for him despite herself. Luckily for her, he loves her as well.

And before you ask, yes, I do relate to the narrator. Write what you know, the say.

This is mostly just an experiment with a poem without rhyme, to see how well I like it. What do you think?

And to the boy whom this poem is about: please stop blaming yourself. You’ve hurt yourself enough as it is. I love you with everything I am, and you don’t deserve to hate yourself.