“I'm not saying they're not killing each other,” I explain. “I can see from the figures in front of me that they're killing each other. What I'm saying is that unless you can broaden your demographic, we're never going to meet our targets for this quarter. This is supposed to be a world war, Belgium and the Netherlands isn't going to cut it.”
War squawks at me down the phone. It's hard to hear him over all the screaming in the background, but frankly I'm not interested in his excuses, I need to see results.
“What do I expect you to do? Do your job! Think outside the box! Look, Famine is in Europe right now, why
i.
i am writing myself into rooms,
four walls, four loves, four
atria pulsing in my chest. i am
writing myself into other people’s
arms as if it makes a damn
difference, i don’t know when
my own hands stopped being enough.
ii.
i am a girl made of oceans, i am a girl made of
glass, i am a body made of wax with a tongue
of fire. i have watched saturn drop through
its ring, plummeting into glacial seas and
frost-bitten remnants of constellations,
i have seen silence take shape and sit
heavy on my chest like a mourner
splayed on an empty coffin.
iii.
i have written my obituary in a
moment spent diving into concrete
tee
When you feel you have lost everything by SilverInkblot, literature
Literature
When you feel you have lost everything
there are still books you haven’t read
and clothes you’ve never worn hanging
lonely in your closet. When you feel
you have lost everything, there are flowers
sleeping under the frost. When you feel
you have lost everything, there is a place
around the corner you’ve never seen
from the other side of the door and a stranger
waiting to welcome you in. When you feel
you have lost everything, there is a corner
of your house filled with dust. When you feel
you have lost everything, there are stamps
you haven’t used and windows that have
never seen pure sunlight. When you feel
you have lost everything, there are pennies
wast
and if this feeling
only lasts for tonight,
i'll swallow the night;
rearrange the stars
to map the
letters of my name
because i am worth
every second it takes
to let the world know
i'm alive
A Grave Digger's Kisses by comatose-comet, literature
Literature
A Grave Digger's Kisses
I fell in love with a gravedigger. His hands were rough and calloused; no matter how many times he cleaned them, grains of soil remained rattling in his palm. It should have been a warning – dirt nestled in his love-line, but something about the way he held me, how he always seemed surprised that I was warm, that I was alive, was endearing. He once said that in winter, when his fingers were like ice, he couldn’t feel the difference between the coffin and the bed. But he refused gloves, scoffed at them; said feeling the earth part under his feet was the only way he knew up from down.
And his eyes were like shovels, constantl
i think you are lovely.
but i am not in love with you,
and by the fifth time you catch my eye and look
away just as quickly, i realize
that i cannot will myself into being so.
if love were as simple as a field of flowers,
i swear i would pick you a bouquet
of daises, and make sure that every petal you
picked off ended with ‘she loves me’.
if love were as reliable as the sun,
i would never stand so far away from you that our
shadows did not touch.
if love were as predictable as the weather,
i swear i would spend every storm
kissing you in the rain.
if love were as fair as Lady Justice
i would tie a scarf around my eyes
and sp
dear god,
i planted no tulips in autumn
and no tulips came in spring.
how silly of me, then
to mourn the empty garden,
to long for fields of amsterdam,
to kneel at night in cold dirt,
hands folded.
i’ve learned there is
a certain ache in lacking
a thing never had, that small itch
whose relief is two seasons past –
so god, if you can hear me,
know that i am homesick
for amsterdam,
whose name, like yours, i know
but whose flowers i cannot see.
but i hold my hands out, ad infinitum by chromeantennae, literature
Literature
but i hold my hands out, ad infinitum
polysemous kneels and jaded,
i curl ambiguity against
the collapsing walls of
ambigram.
letters folded into wings
and gone again.
(maybe they're fluttering,
gliding, soaring, drifting (away))
i cannot fly and
nor can you.
and my voice is clawed
into the branch where i was born
and i am not st. vincent;
i cannot birth in reverse.
no matter how much
i try to carve the words
out from my jawed
insides
out.
but this love and sadness
is baroque, climactic
and dramatic.
i look for you
in the attic of my mouth
and the basement of my hands--
i hear you in the corner
of this dystopian (uni)verse
and know better than to reach
for you now,
the room