A Poem a Day

Keeps the heartache at bay

Category: Poetry

  • Grieving a Mother and a Friend

    Grieving a Mother and a Friend

    You were once beautiful to me, and now I find myself constantly searching the pain in your face for that beauty.

    I don’t know how to cope with what you’ve lost.

    Not for me, not for you.

    I don’t know how to accept these changes,

    In me, in you.

    I so desperately want to rewind time to relive life close to you.

    I’d gladly suffer through all of the bad of it meant I could also relive all of the good.

    And there was good, right? 

    We were happy most days, even if the dark days loomed above us, behind us, around us.

    But we laughed, we danced, we lived.

    And now, the beauty has dried up, and all that’s left is this husk of you.

    The will to live fled the banshee cries that come out of you.

    I don’t know how to get it to come back.

    I keep trying to gather the smallest pieces of us, but it feels like life is spilling sand through the cracks in our hourglass.

    Some days I wish you were gone, that the present was a wisp of a memory on our timeline and the past a balm to the scars on our hearts.

    I want to rush into tomorrow with open arms to welcome my life back but I can’t seem to hit the ground running.

    Because I want you to be there too.

    I want you to be here now, but everyday we lose more and more of you. 

    I don’t want to hate you, not in the slightest or at all, I just want you back.

    I want it all back the way it was, because you’d smile at me while you chew your food, a knowing smile. 

    One that rosies up your cheeks and makes your eyes twinkle.

    I hate that I hate you, because it’s not you, hasn’t been you in a long while but, sometimes, you look at me and that knowing smile creeps up, tinting your cheeks, letting me see that slight twinkle that shines just for my sisters and me

    And I can almost believe that I still love you and you still love me.

    But then it’s gone, swallowed up by your screams

    Wails of agony that pierce right through me.

    You’re still beautiful to me, even if life right now is really ugly.

    I might hate you right now but it’s not you I hate, it’s this disease.

    This hate exists only because there is so much love for you in me, without a home, without a place to sleep.

    I wish I could give you my strength, my years.

    I wish I could cure you with my tears. 

    I wish I could allay your fears.

    But alas, there is nothing more I can do but shed sweet poetry for you.

  • Setting Consonants on Fire

    Setting Consonants on Fire

    I tried running
    But every time I fell down it caught up to me.
    So, I started walking.
    Now, most days, it holds my hand.
    And sometimes I don’t mind
    Because when you’re busy you don’t feel anxious…
    Until you’re not busy anymore.
    So, I took to setting consonants on fire.
    A J today, and maybe an L tomorrow
    Inhaling what feels like wind whistling through trees,
    Exhaling file cabinets full of things that can be taken care of tomorrow
    Because right now
    I’m rolling up a J today, and maybe an L tomorrow
    That way it doesn’t bother me
    Even if just for a while.
    I inhale fumes through lit wounds and exhale the desire to breathe.
    Because I’m so consumed with have-tos and tomorrows.
    Consumed with can I bes and will I bes and..
    I have to
    I have to
    I have to light a J today and relax with an L tomorrow,
    Because sometimes, I need to be able to breathe without thinking about it.

  • Collectibles

    What am I if not a collection of scars?

    Of scrapes, wounds, and tissue. 

    An encasement that has been battered and thrown against the wind.

    All so that it would ease the pain felt by the soul within. 

    Were we not taught to roll as we fall to lessen the breaks and bruises? 

    Pin pricks that deposit ink in place of blood has become my solace.

    Placing the story of my life on my skin

    Sparing the soft flesh of the true self that guides this exterior facade. 

    Marking it up so that it looks more like what I imagine is close to god.

    Mapping the cartography that only exists in suffering.

    Recreating the outline of the land so that it soothes it instead.

    Finding joy in the life we lead because it is still ours to lead 

    Admiring the roads and cavernous mountains crossed to have arrived in this new terrain 

    Find the joy in what once was pain 

  • Finding Solace in Silence

    Finding Solace in Silence

    The small things,

    Turning the pages of a book,

    The inspiration of a sunset as seen from a high rise,

    Surprise visits and a forehead kiss,

    My heart warms at the melted muscle memory of this.

    The fleeting things,

    Snow days and sleeping in,

    Milky, sugar frosted cereal, and cartoons,

    The soft whisperings of the radio, and the deep rumblings of the news.

    I am nothing more than the solace I find in silence.

    The everlasting things,

    Butterflies born on the lips of a smile,

    Cackling laughter carried on the wind,

    The twinkle in your eye as you gaze upon someone you love.

    These are the few things, the favored fragments of life where my soul resides.

  • Searching for Home

    Searching for Home

    I’ve been searching for home for as long as I can remember.

    In people and in places, even in the most intangible of things.

    But, what I’ve come to realize is that home has always been with me.

    I wipe it from my eyes every morning, and lay with it in my arms every night.

    Home has followed me throughout the entirety of my life.

    It wraps around me like the warmest of memories.

    Home lives in the taste of sweet, bitter coffee.

    It is the scent of cigarette smoke and imported mints.

    Home is the sound of laughter and passionate conversation.

    It dances in the sight of every newborn cousin,

    And feels like hot stew on a rainy day.

    Home is a wish that I’ve whispered on silent, hopeful lips.

    A seed planted faithlessly, yet watered in good faith all the same.

    I used to think home was a place,

    I once thought I’d find home in the planes of a lover’s face.

    Truthfully, it seems that home is where the heart is indeed,

    And how lucky have I been to discover that that heart

    Lies within me

  • Self Love

    The desire to be loved lives within us all. To be wanted, accepted, understood.

    And how many of us ever find that love? Ever think we are in it until we realize that the one, was just another one.

    Have you ever thought maybe we’re looking in the wrong places? The wrong nooks, crannies, and spaces?

    Is the love we have been hunting for evading us, or are we simply unable to recognize it?

    Waking up from this search for a specific kind of love and realizing, it’s been surrounding you this entire time.

    Finding a soul mate in a best friend, till death do you part in a cousin, a life partner in your cat.

    Love is abundant, an infinite energy produced by our desire to love, and be loved.

    It is everywhere, even in hatred and despair. 

    But seeing it? Feeling it? Transmuting it? Can you imagine having dominion over love?

    Choosing yourself to cherish and adore, and instead of searching for love, you spend your days creating more.

    Sending it into the universe and accepting the love you receive from others in return.

    Humans are inherently selfish; we whine and complain and beg the stars to send true love our way.

    But love is always present, always willing, always existing, whether we choose to see it or not.

    Fall out of love with love, out of infatuation with want, and feel it instead.

    It is hard to see something when you’re wrapped up in the middle of it, so look with eyes that are not your own.

    Look with eyes of joy and acceptance, of empathy and understanding.

    See with a full heart, a soul full of imagination.

    Follow the invisible threads love has sprouted in you,

    and you will see that you are what you have been searching so hard for.

    The people who love you always knew, and now, in love, you do too.

  • Love at First Write

    I fell in love, but not in the way one would think.

    I fell in passion with cadence,

    Fell in between the lines of a stanza.

    I gave sestinas and soliloquies my everything,

    And I gave the feeling of it all, half of my heart.

    I fell in love.

    And it wasn’t all at once.

    It was a slow sweet conquering.

    Lifted words off the page, branded them against my memory.

    One by one I inhaled the letters of the alphabet.

    Learned how my tongue twisted around each one in every idiom my mind could remember.

    I caressed them with ink tipped fingers on any blank page I could get my hands on.

    Can you imagine such a catalyst?

    I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.

    Let’s make love on this page

    In between every line.

    Let’s pause on commas,

    And end on exclamations!

    Or in them if you rather.

    Talk to me about verbs and nouns.

    About how adjectives did you in,

    How sensory details flirted with your desire.

    Until all you could do was inhale me off the page.

    Until you could taste me on your nerve endings.

    Until you could see me in your imagination.

    Until you could hear the soft mornings of italics, the sweet thunder of bold.

    Until your fingertips created the dotted lines of my body.

    Moving up to my beginning, and caressing the end.

    Using past and present participle to finish me off.

    Deliver me in cadence!

    Deliver me in song!

    End me with a period, in finality, our resolve.