u/Cautious-Upstairs322

i don't know how to ask
for it.
"will you please
let me
have it?"

too formal for
the way
your fingers run
down my spine

too casual for
the way
that you say
"you're all mine."

too long for
the way
my breath catches
in lungs

and yet-
the slow burn
has only
just begun

too complex for
the way
you choke all
words
from my throat

too enticing
for my hands
slowly reaching
to stoke

each ember
that is lit

a single word
just one line

not something
forgotten

a word
just

one
wo

I know nothing,
That much is clear
Everything is masked to me
And yet I'm expected
To keep on guessing
Like a hamster on the wheel
Not knowing where my next meal is
Where the next wire cable is
Can I chew through the rubber of this puzzle?
Get through to the grit,
The meat
And the bone
The tingling sensation that starts at your nose
And runs all through your body

I miss that.
I miss knowing
I miss that knowing feeling
Maybe I will unlatch my cage
And go see the world for myself
Through my very own eyes

Maybe I will chew the wire
Until the feeling takes over

Pure electric.
Pure electric
Feeling.

.

.

next morning, little rudy came downstairs to check on his pet hamster, only to find it, charred to a crisp, next to the telephone wire.

When I decided, for good, that this was my chosen path: to keep moving forward, occasionally looking back to check that the world isn't completely on fire...

I knew that I was essentially signing myself up for complete oblivion. For these days of fruitless wanting, and the black hole of complete uncertainty that you sequester yourself within.

Every time you come out of there, you drop another crumb at my feet- like you're trying to feed me, but don't quite know what I want to eat. You didn't need to spell it out more clearly for me to understand your fear (because I know I barely help some days, and on those better days your own mind takes the treacherous lead), I can understand without you needing to apologize, or try to do better, or offer more than you can currently muster.

I've been collecting all those crumbs for a while now. Longer than you might expect. Then I went back and went through it all again, sniffing the parts of you out I might have mistaken or overlooked.

Signing myself up for complete oblivion means I signed myself up to love you before I knew every part of you. But isn't that what love is? You don't know what life events will change and shape you before they happen, you can't promise your partner that you'll be the same person forever, that's wholly unrealistic.

So I've never really concerned myself with the petty things the world calls 'traits'. Getting to know each scrap of you is just adding more to the pile I keep, tucked in close to myself at night. Your personality is a lived extension of your mind and soul, and if I love both of those, how could I not slowly fall for all the parts you let me see.

Even the dark ones. Even the parts you think I might not like. Even the times I sift through the pile and realize you're just as twisted and complicated as me, which to most people would be the first sign that it might not be truly worth it.

But it also made me realize just how hard you try to fight those parts. The same ways I do. We both run and hide at the first sign of trouble, whilst the other is left stood, standing out in the open, wondering what went wrong. When, really nothing went wrong. This is just the price of loving with a previously-shattered heart. We have to prioritize ourselves when the going gets tough, and there's nothing on earth that could make me begrudge you for that.

If a man can fall in love with a machine, why can't I fall in love with the words you spill to express yourself? Why can't I fall in love with how you walk within the world, clouded in the shadows, stepping forward only for a moment, before dissipating back into mist. Maybe I love the mist as much as I love the soul.

So every day, I come back to fall for you a little more. I lay in wait outside the black hole, anchored by my own repelling gravity, waiting for your soul to fragment a little more. I receive your messages in fragments, and I'm left always wanting more. You could be trapped inside the body of a rhino, and I would still want more.

I want to learn you the way a blind man drags his hand across braille; slowly, carefully, absorbing every word. I want to stretch my arms out in the dark and find your form, as monstrous as you believe it may be, until you're wrapped inside these thoughts I cannot shake, and you stop shaking.

You don't need to rush it. The outcome is inevitable, now, and I am comforted in the fact that you show yourself so plainly in the moments that you feel able. I want more colors to add to your portrait, scribbled although it is, in childish crayons and scratchy pencil lines.

And I really don't want to go anywhere, so I shan't. I'll just stay here, haunted and heated equally by the light emitting from your event horizon, cutting through even this black hole that you think masks your scent so viciously.

You're sat in my mind again.

You always do this,
Coming up at the most...
Inopportune,
Times.

Like when I'm presenting my proposal
To the board of the directors,
And your face comes into view
Like a phantom at the opera
Remaining cloaked and shadowed
Invisible to all but me.

You just sit there in my mind
Reading a book
Idly watching time go by.

Sometimes you speak, and it jolts me
Because I don't expect you to label
How you see this property-
Might as well be a mud shack with a leaky roof
For all the good it does me.

But then I leave the room
Back slumped against the door
I close my eyes
And you're still there
Holding out your arms to me

Like you somehow know
That's where I want to land

But of course you do:
You're in my head
Making your bed out of all my errant thoughts
Tripping over the mess in the corner

Settling in for the long haul
Maybe?

I hope you are.
I like having you along
For the ride.

Chicken bones in my ashtray
From the wing I ate in the shower
Because to grow wings and fly away
Is that to which I aspire

I stood back in the hot spray
Letting the chicken take me higher
The spicy coating hit my tongue
Day-old from the deep fryer

And as the fire hit my throat
I wondered if anyone in history
Has ever enjoyed a hot wing just like this
With air so steamy and wet it blisters

When I became an adult
I told myself I would do all the things adults can do
Like go to sleep in my daytime clothes
And drink beers in the shower too

But I don't think I ever foresaw myself
Eating chicken just like this
Maybe you'll think I'm crazy
(maybe I am)
But I never miss

People talk about growing up and not having much like it's a cross to bear. Like seeing those decaying countryside towns is a rite of passage for the rural working class, and it's a burden we share together as our backs breaks under the beating sun.

Maybe 200 years ago I would die even younger, passing out from exhaustion on the dusty floor, unconscious in the carriage, much too far from any doctor to be saved. People bleed out in the crevices of the country. They airlift them across but when every second counts and you're so far from civilized civilization, it's what you can do with your own two hands.

Learned laborer's hands learn to stitch and sew, pulling the tourniquet tight with their teeth. The needle threads in and out. Modern medicine could do better, could offer an implement that is sanitized with rubbing alcohol, not brandy. But modern medicine is not for the likes of us- and that's the cross we bear. The chip on the shoulder that deep fries in the burning sun, then keeps pushing down.

Searing through skin. There are burn marks up and down my arms from the jobs I did when I was young, scars from a world where getting enough money to move was my only goal. Decaying countryside towns hold no promise for me; only death. The air hangs thick with the stuff. The fruit rots on the trees, and young children reach up to grab it, only to be struck down with the elongated arms of the law.

It's a crime to steal the fruit from the trees. Even if it rots in the sun and the apples fall to the ground to be gnawed upon by worms.

We used to scrump them anyway. The elongated arm of the law cannot stretch everywhere, all the time, and is often too preoccupied with the affairs of the civilized towns and cities that lend themselves more to the civilized image of the country that they wish to portray. Not these pockets of decay. Not the roads that wear themselves thin under tires that themselves wear down, crashing over the pockets of decay that litter the roads.

The deer lies dead on the roadside, eyes empty, staring up at the sky. The flies feast at its eyelids; just a Muntjac, one of those small childlike creatures that are too curious about humans and human-made vehicles. It died around 2.30am. The vet can't come and collect it, his wagon won't hold the carcass. So we butcher the creature, detaching its limbs from torso and head from neck so the parts can be collected.

The badgers and foxes come out from the hedgerows to watch as we work on the body of their friend. They're safe here, tucked away from their predators- the bully men of the countryside that shout and clamor their inherent jurisdiction over nature.

Under the sun, butchering the Muntjac, we're all just the same.

Be cautious with your upstairs

Be sure that what you see is true

Or one day your upstairs just

Might make a fool of you

Always makes me sick

How every word that you spit

Makes you sound so slick

(and now i know how joan of arc felt)

But seriously, honey
Stop wasting your time
You say you don't care
(you've even said so in rhyme)

But this isn't the act of a careless creeper
Who likes to read the poems
Of those who are suffering
To feel their thoughts as your own
Painting pictures in the air
With words that aspire
To places higher

No,
You're too far off in your echo chamber
Deaf to those who want to warn you
That the internet is no savior
Blind to those who care about you
And the treacherous real world
Full of humans and complexity
That you look at down your nose
With cloying displays of sympathy

But when you're downvoting
A plethora of my posts, dear
It's really only you
That's suffering here

And it's not about my shitty attempts
At meter and rhyme
As there's only a few
That enrage you every time

Not that I'm an angel:
I'll be honest to everyone here
When I say that I've acted cruelly
With callousness and jealousy
With vindictiveness and impulsivity
And I accept each charge with dignity
(and the promise to grow: that isn't just poetic device)

You? You're just a ghost with impunity
Wrapped up in your fantasies
Enraged at the fallacies
That keep you reading here

So keep downvoting
Keep participating
Even in the corners you claim to despise

You'll just keep suffering
And keep on buffering
Until you open up your eyes

A poet walks into a bar
Like she was walking onto a yacht
Except the bar said nothing
And she said 'ouch'

Another (less mysterious) bruise
On the knee to explain away

And a little reminder
To sometimes look up from your phone
When you're on your way

The morning comes and shakes me
Back to life

The words I cannot find
Dissolving into mist
Beside the dawn

These hollow bones
May help me fly

But still
They see me fall

As all the pretty words
Tumble gently into the morn

And yet I wake, alone
Dreams cling, make me forlorn

Take me again to sleep
Don't leave me awake to mourn

I think you need some healing, darling
You've been running low on gas
I've a place to rest your head
Where nothing will come to pass,
Two pillows
A blanket
A warm hug
And a day of endless nothingness instead

Will you let me take some care of you?
Polish your ego when you're feeling blue
Bring you coffee, tea, water, whatever you do
When you're alone and feeling blue
But in my hands instead
So you can rest in knowing it's all sorted
And your sore arms can be led

You don't need to be strong here
It's okay to gripe and moan
Even if you think your problems are not worth noting
I still want to make them my own

There's nothing left to prove
And no more games to play

And I'll always be here, watching, waiting
Every. Single. Day.

With every
Ripple
The water mirrored

The blushing sunset
Overhead
Atop clouds it pirouetted

Beneath skies it silhouetted
The shadow
Of the day's exhaustion

Brought to rest
On winds
Interrupted by the heat

Sliding gently through
The air
Questing over night's

Hot stare. And how
They all
Turn their heads to the flow

The water mirrored sunsets'
Overflow on
Borrowed time, questioning

The time of the rain
The clouds
Certain to follow

You're something new to me
A six-figure salary and jet plane to me
Nothing else could bring such peace to me
As the scent of your body lying next to me
And the warmth of your skin pressed against to me
The sound of snores in the early morning to me
The calm of quiet weekends and busy evenings to me
The worst best films and the fancy wine to me
A defiant exposition of true love to me
A secret fantasy to me
A desperate kiss to say goodbye to me
The promise of return to me
Waiting by the door to me
The quietest of hymns to me
You are all that and more to me
So when you come to me
Just come as what you are to me
For that is what you are to me
Just with you is what I want to be

Make celebrities use public transit:
Lock Taylor in a cage in business class
With a little eye mask
So she can block out the haters
And remain safe from rabid fans
Pass champagne through the bars
And little snacks under the hatch.

I want to see Jimmy Fallon on the bus to work
In the corner, hidden behind his newspaper
As the crack addict smokes his pipe
And the kids play their music loud
(Give him new inspiration
For another mediocre comedy set?
But maybe we shouldn't encourage him-
hey man, pass that pipe).

Put Ariana on the train
Her legs might snap on the pedals of a car
Trying to stretch that far.
Give her a break from all that fame
On a table of a family moving to the east coast
Belongings piled high
Her entourage in the aisle seats

Maybe then
People will see the need for better transport infrastructure
When the celebrities start complaining
About arriving late to their gigs.
When private jets are outlawed
And their metal sold for scrap
To build new tracks across the Midwest.

Maybe then
When you see Elon Musk on the Tesla-sponsored monorail
You'll realize how everyone is just flesh and blood
Indistinguishable from the unwashed masses
They all scream the same
When the train goes bump
From the jump

Maybe the two-hour delay will finally convince him
To run a Tesla-sponsored suicide hotline
Where the lines stay open
And send you to Twitter-sponsored rehab
With little blue birds on the ceilings.

They bulldozed it all
To make a new world from ash
Concrete, tar, and stone

The corner
In the forest
That's just mine and yours

Away
From everything:

Curled up on the ground
Breathing in time.

I see how much your heart aches
And sometimes
I wonder
If we've ever felt the same way
At the same time
Without knowing?

The moment when you're
Lying
Looking at the stars
Wondering if someone feels this too

Through moonlight
Weaving through leaves on branches
That wave in the wind.

I knew you were
Someone worth knowing.

You would still
Be worth knowing
If I met you
Anywhere
Else.

What does loving you mean?
What do you need-
Love is a doing word
And I want to do what love entails

When you know the person
Studied the same stars as you
Saw the same secrets

The same trees

The same way
The branches weave
Like lovers caught in dance

Between your stars and mine,
No matter
How hard

How treacherous
How deep the seas.

I want the corner
Of the forest
Where we can lie
And study skies together

I'll have my cake and eat it, too
But I crave something more substantial
A main course of my own, for starters
A full mouth full, in close quarters
Until the mascara starts to run
And tears prick at my eyes

The warmth spreading from my mouth and
Down all the way towards my thighs

I'll savor every mouthful
And come back for more
Always hungry for a snack
Always knowing, always sure

Of what I need
To kneel in front
And take you in my mouth

To feel my breathing twist and constrict
Until I'm almost down for the count

And then, gasping, hold me there
Let me feel the damage I've done
To your body and psyche, intertwined
Like your fingers in my hair
Before sliding down gently, paralyzed
In awe, shock, maybe fear

I'll get it nice and wet
Every time it gets a little sore down there

For every time you go down on me
I've got two or more times to share