poems from 19

i clench my jaw when i pray.

I’ve been slowly transferring all of my poems and drafts grom Google Sheets to Notion to keep track of them. I have a lot of incomplete drafts and completed poems from ten to thirteen years ago when I was in my Tumblr poetry prime, and while most of them are not very good, some of them still get me when I re-read them. Here are just a few poems I’d say go back to about ten years ago when I was nineteen (which feels crazy to say).

image source: pinterest

habits

we don’t use diaries anymore –
those are meant for secrets,
and we have none.
we let them spill out of our bodies
and stain these blank, white sheets;
swearing it’s the only way we are going to heal.
 
we turn our pain into poetry.
anything that hurts this much has
to mean something. and even though
we are desperate for anyone to listen
our language is in the letters we never send.
 
we romanticize darkness like it’s the only lover we will ever know
love is our god and we are each our own devils
too fragile for this world
ritualistically destroying ourselves before anyone can do it for us
yet we still can’t understand why we’re still so broken

image source: pinterest

reality check

It’s hard to find
the truth in the dark.
My thoughts stumble
into others
trying to sort
the real from the fake.
I cannot tell
if the shadows
that are on my wall
are real monsters
or ones of my own creation.
Either way  
I will allow them
to swallow me whole.

While the edges
of the truth blur
you lie next to me.
You are peaceful.
You are silent.
You are motionless.
I want to scream.
I do not have
the courage to ask you
what is real
and what is fake.
I do not have
the courage to
turn on the lights.

image source: pinterest

the wholly anxious church

i clench my jaw when i pray
and i don’t notice until it aches.
only then do i realize 
nothing truly holy slips through these teeth.

popping prozac at communion,
swallow down with the blood of – 
Christ! i bit down too hard.

we know many sacraments here.
each breath is a ritual.
breathe in.
hold it.
breathe o u t.
now count your sins
until you run out of stars;
search for salvation
on the tongue of everyone you meet.
you are not going to find it here.

i just hope to whatever god
eternal life is just a myth.
it sounds worse than any hell
your preachers warned me about.

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