Thursday, February 22, 2024

Homes of the selfish

I have wrapped my own arms around my chest several times and called it healing. I have dove headfirst into my very being only to pull out what looks like sadness and acts like pain. There is a home here inside me, it swallows me whole and provides comfort where there is none to be found. I drown in this complexity, the feeliing of being both whole and broken. I found a home inside me where you found nothing but an empty version of what I once could have been. I am all that I was and all I could ever be and I dont know if that will ever be enough. I drown within myself knowing that the only person I truly need to impress is me. The only arms that will protect me now dangle at my sides, connected to my body. I am much my own before anyone elses and I dont know if that makes me selfish or wise.I am my own safe haven the only place I have ever felt both comfort and heartache is within these internal walls. I can reside here, inside myself drowning in my complex emotions. While you wonder if I will ever change I will be inside myself fighting to stay the same protecting myself from the moments that could be. All i ever wanted to be was myself,naked in my truth standing tall while you wanted to watch me wither and crumble. I often wonder which move makes one of us the selfish one. I will rot inside this body before i ever let you make me less of a home to my own soul. -M.D.L

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

I love you.

I choke on my words, they are stuck where my uvula meets the back of my throat, being suffocated slowly. I gag wanting to release every word I could use to describe how I feel about you. They won’t come out and I’m stuck trying to make them appear on this paper like a magician at a street fair. I start with I love you but it doesn’t seem enough. I could throw up sonnets, fourteen lines confessing how I love you will never be enough but instead I choke on every syllable, every rhyme. I have so much to say to you but art can’t be rushed and I feel my throat collapsing in on itself like an accordion when I’m around you. I love you is too simple. You deserve the longest poem I have ever written, a spoken word night dedicated to the way you have trapped my heart inside your own rib cage. I love you won’t escape my lips because it doesn’t fit with how the way you look at me makes me feel. I love you drowns in my saliva and is swallowed whole because it will never amount to the way my soul dances with yours. I love you is suffocated until I can muster up the words to describe how my life is better with you in it. I love you is too simple. I will choke until words more meaningful bleed through this paper because I love you just simply isn’t enough. Our love is art and art can’t be rushed with words like I love you.

Friday, October 27, 2023

A good pair of gloves

He stood there slipping gloves over his hands. I watched as each finger found it’s rightful place inside. He flexed his fingers back and forth testing to see if the gloves were a perfect fit, if they felt like home. I watched him try on gloves and wondered if he knew. If he knew how much I loved how particular he was. How everything had to feel like home to him or it wasn’t worth his time. I wondered if I felt like home to him, if he tried me on like a pair of snug gloves and sighed with relief when he discovered that I’m more than my skin. That he could sink into me and feel a sense of comfort. I pull him away from the gloves and hug him tight as if to say there’s warmth in me too. As if to remind him that I’m also a good choice that he once spent time making. He tries on every pair of gloves in the store as I watch, fingers sliding in, flexing back and forth. I wonder which ones he will pick and if he will be happy with them when they have to be truly tested. When they are up against the elements. I wonder if he’s happy with me when our relationship is tested, when we are up against the elements. Our relationship is like a nice pair of gloves that we both slipped on, fingers flexing, testing for comfort.

I am just skin

I feel like a Halloween pumpkin, all carved out and hollow. All that is left of me is this skin. I have never had thick skin. It’s all thin and frigid around the edges, curling in on itself. There’s not much left of me here inside. I gave away my soul long ago, passing fragments of it out like candy on a crisp fall evening. This soul belongs to the trees, to the dirt, sinking so far away from me I can no longer grasp it in my clutches and urge myself to not let go. I’m all skin, wrinkly, woven by molecules choosing everyday to weave themselves together. I gave my soul away a long time ago to the thud of heartbeats and the feeling of the first snow fall. I gave my soul to the overwhelming joy of my father coming home and welcoming us at the door. I’m just this skin fragile, as delicate as the spider webs that blanket the front porch of my childhood home. This soul is long gone, given to the feeling that warm tea gives my insides, given to the way it feels like home when I hug my mother. All that is left is this skin, wrapped around nothingness and tangled within itself. My soul was given to the feeling in the pit of my stomach as I dipped my feet into the vast ocean for the first time, given to the way it feels when a kiss lingers a little longer than expected. I am just skin. My soul was given to the way my brother tilts his head back when he laughs at my jokes, given to the tickling feeling of feet tangled within blades of grass for the first time. I am just skin. My soul was fragmented into pieces and encompasses beautiful moments of my life. I am just skin, how lucky am I.

Notes for my guardian angels

To feel grief so deeply shows how much love we are capable of. Grief is disguised as the greatest form of love there is. To ache for someone, to miss someone so much your soul feels like shattered glass. That’s how I know love conquers all because it can bring so much pain in the form of loss. Grief proves that love exists in astounding quantities, that we can love each other until our soul feels like it’s going to erupt. Love doesn’t come without grief or loss because it’s both of those things. Love is all. Grief means I love you, I will keep loving you until the end of time in unmeasurable amounts. You may not be here physically but within my heart there’s fires you have lit that ache and burn like a thousand suns. Grief reminds me of this everyday, of the love I have for you. The love that resides forever in my soul. Thank you for allowing me to know grief because with it comes love, with grief comes reminders that love is all consuming and so worth every ounce of hellish pain I feel now that your gone. Grief is the all mighty price I’ll pay for loving so deeply. Grief is love. Thank you to all my guardian angels for the unmeasurable amount of love. 💔 🕊️ 😇

Depression is never ending

Sometimes I see light shining through the window even though the blinds are closed and I think how dare you sun. How does the sun have the audacity to let light in here when all I want to do is bask in the darkness. Depression is like a vampire. The sun feels too much like hope and it makes me want to vomit up the only meal I remembered to eat today. Depression is soul sucking, so much so that I forget I have one at all. It is probably lost in this room under the piles of clothes I have yet to wash, hiding in a corner afraid of what awaits. The sun is radiating and I pull the covers up over my face in anger and defiance. How can the world keep turning? How can the sun rise and fall when I can barely wiggle my toes without the overwhelming feeling of exhaustion. Depression is feeling so much you feel nothing. The sun rises and basks through my window and then sets and rises again without my permission and I feel betrayed. If there could only be a darkness outside that matches this feeling I have inside maybe then it wouldn’t feel so consuming. Depression is sadness on fire. The sun gets up everyday and I wonder why can’t I? Why does it feel like I’m cemented to this bed, my legs turning into concrete every-time I even think about getting up. My body is morphing into this mattress we are becoming one and parts of me just accept my fate. Depression is…

Friday, December 2, 2022

Becoming a writer

My feelings scratch the surface trying to come out of my face, lips and eyes. Out of every crevice I have. They want to touch the piece of paper I am holding, they want to seep into it and fumble into words.I have gotten good at shoving them back in... stuffing them into a tiny box deep down in my soul that is stretching at its seams. People love writers but hate to read our work. Because things are too open, to true, to dark, or simply just to long for them. Become a writer they said, but don't write about the sad shit, don't write about feelings, write about a "she" and make it two sentences long. Always shoving, shoving feelings into boxes. Conform to the "good" writers and write a life that isn't yours. A life that is short and to the point, easily read quickly, and contains some motivational crap on how women should date from the eyes of a man. My box of wound up feelings is getting full and nothing good comes easy. If I wrote like everyone else, what kind of writer would I be? I empty my box, spill these words onto plank pages regardless of who’s reading. I feel free. The day I let what is popular conform my writing is the day my soul will die. Fame isn’t worth murdering my freedom. -M.D.L

Homes of the selfish

I have wrapped my own arms around my chest several times and called it healing. I have dove headfirst into my very being only to pull out wh...