I'm Not Yours.

This is a collection of original work, all written by myself at some point or another. For now, most of what I post will consist of poetry and very short fiction, although I may post excerpts of longer works from time to time.

You can find my main tumblr here:
still-is.tumblr.com

Here, in The Room of What Was (2/30)

You are holding a small glass horse

in your hands, turning the figurine

over and over,

breaking off each jagged limb

and letting the pieces

fall at your feet,

joining the sea of coquina shells

and dead wasps.

On the bed there is a pillow

that smells like seawater

and if I press my ear close enough

to it, I can still feel the brush of

your eyelashes closing.

Love has been hiding in this room,

in the stuffing of the toy elephants

in the dark corners under the bed

in the echo of the windchime in the closet

in the lines of your shaking palms,

but neither of us are allowed to look for her—

not anymore.

On the wall there is still the faint

trace of your handwriting,

the messy scrawl

where you once told me

that I say the most beautiful things without

ever opening my mouth.

We have both tried to burn the words away

but the smoke singed them into our lungs

and with every inhale

I can still feel them smolder.

(1/30)

my mother keeps her old wedding rings

tucked away in one of her socks,

like the decaying knuckles of a shameful skeleton—one

that was drowned in a sea of liquor and spit and the blood of split lips.

her current one still grasps her finger like an elegant manacle,

anchoring her to a ship that has long been sinking.

“you don’t have to find your soulmate”

            she tells me

“just find a man who still loves you after you’ve poured out his whiskey”

she laughs as she says this, but in her fragile inhales i can hear the

sound of beer bottles breaking,

and in the spaces between words

there is still the dull echo of a fist making contact.

“sand is pretty lucky, you know”

            she says to me

“it can crumble and fall apart all it wants, and the ocean comes back anyways.

don’t ever be the ocean”

she leans forward in her chair, looking hard at me and

reaches out to stroke my hair, to run a finger down

the curve of my jaw—

finding my father’s features.

“or, i guess, it’s okay to be the ocean,

if you really love him

and as long as he doesn’t drink

and as long as he’s gentle”

 

Einstein’s First Time

He knows the physics of it of course:
friction, inertia, two forces acting upon each other,
but god he has never found a way to measure
feeling. There is a living equation draped over him,
running her fingers through his
premature greys and he wants
to tell her that the circumference of her
breast is equal to pi multiplied by diameter
and that the slopes of her face follow Fibonacci’s
sequence perfectly. He has spent so long studying
how space curves only to find he was wrong—
space is a woman
space is a long-haired vixen with her hands on his skin
space has so many impossible curves and
she will always remain an enigma.
All of the laws and truths he has
shared will be replaced,
He will be replaced.
Someday his memory will be lost
between constellations,
and he knows this because in one
moment this woman has overshadowed
every word he has ever dictated—she
divulges the meaning of life in a broken,
incoherent gasp against his neck,
and he will spend the rest of his life
trying to make any other idea
be as beautiful.

NaPoWriMo

So I know that I only wrote 25 poems in 30 days, but I do not regret this. Poetry used to be something I couldn’t stand to write, and when I did manage to choke out a few lines it was every few months or so. I wrote more poetry this month than I ever have and definitely grew in confidence as a writer, so even if I didn’t accomplish my original goal, I achieved more than I ever expected. I’d like to thank all my old followers who stuck with me on this journey and all the new ones who joined along the way. You’ll be seeing more from me.
Love always,
Summer

Across the Border (21/30)

How nice it must be
to dig your fingernails into the dirt
to learn what sweat feels like when it beads below your back,
to smear your face with whitewash paint.
Whenever a camera comes near you make
sure to throw yourself in front of the lense;
you get double points if you can manage to pull one of
the native children into the shot—
triple points if they gaze sadly at the camera.
Feel the pride swell in your chest as you say
“Hola” and “Gracias” over and over,
rolling your R’s with extra emphasis because
you took Spanish 1 and you’re practically at home
across the border.
Sit in the one-bedroom shack with the family
of five you’re helping and pretend not to notice
the smell. Be bothered by it anyway,
Be a martyr.
Flash your winning smile as you
are loaded back onto your air-conditioned bus.
Brag about your service over dinner,
sit in the shower longer than necessary so
you can admire the water running down the drain,
shut the door to your own room,
and press your clean white body into the sheets.

(20/30)

Someone was supposed to be holding you in the rain.
When droplets doused your hair and made your skin
slick and your clothes heavy, there were supposed to be
hands to brush away the beads of sullied water from your
eyelids and lips to kiss away the cold. Instead you will
have to settle for the gaze of a streetlamp, resign
yourself to hug the gravel, sleep on train tracks,
pray for drought.

Firsts and Lasts (19/30)

My mother has not stood this way since then,
with one arm bent like a fishing hook attached to her hip
and the other slung around my father’s neck.
They are standing on top of a mobile home,
caught frozen in a sloppy waltz,
my father’s tan face smooth like wet cement,
and my mother leaving indents in it
with her lips.
Her navel peeks out beneath the hem
of her shirt, and
somewhere below
it my brother
twists in her womb,
begins
to kick.

Lullaby for My Generation (17/30)

Hush little darling,
there will always be another car
to replace the one
whose bumper you crumpled
like loose leaf paper against
the mail box today.
Sweet skin like porcelain,
airbrushed in the professional
family photos,
mounted above the fire place
next to Jesus grimacing on
his handcarved splinter.
50 miles south of you
a family of five
and their dog
and their dog’s fleas
all cram onto a mattress
with broken springs,
and somewhere out there
people are being massacred
(or at least you think
you saw that printed on a
Time magazine once)—
Rock-a-bye baby,
these things are too far away,
too different from you
to matter.
Lay your head on your pillow
while Jersey Shore flashes mutely
from the TV monitor,
And sleep on.