“Have You Ever Sat There, Looking Into Space And Feeling A Tight Grip Wrapped Around Your Heart, It’s

She

I used to hate that word

Something alien would gripe at my throat.

I would choke on it, eyes burning

Now

that I think of it, I am not as bitter.

She

Is a world away from myself and

I get dizzy sometimes,

Looking at my feet.

I am at peace with her, and I feel

A familiar bond

She was me for a while, after all.

She

And I are friends

I am walking on a road

I made for myself

And she holds my hand, a comforting presence.

She

Will always be there

And now, I understand myself better.

I will never be her

Yet I feel no pain for having been mistaken,

For she is my better friend

- She, M

Sometimes I think this world is cruel and unjust but then I remember how I dropped my wallet when I was on the bicycle 8 years ago and a homeless man ran 6 blocks to return it to me. Sometimes I think this world is lonely and grey but then I let the rain touch my body and hear birds make their way home at evening and for a moment, just a moment- I understand why Prometheus stole fire and laid it at man's feet, why dying stars leave a trail of wishes, why I still love 6-year-old Erica I met on a summer trip a decade ago, even though I never saw her again.

Sometimes I think this world is a bad place, but then I look around me and in all its chaos and mosaic of bodies and souls and dreams, I see beauty and goodness hidden behind kind eyes and rough hands.

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire

I found this on Pinterest and am crying for some reason-

I can't live as I once did, telling people that I was doing fine and desperately wanting them to wade through the language and see that I was in pain.

Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

Whoever first said that poetry is dead failed to provide the autopsy. If poetry is dead, what a rowdy and glorious ghost. Poetry haunts. Poetry permeates the walls we put up. Poetry startles us awake and into our own aliveness. Poetry rustles the hairs on the backs of our necks and chases us into more compassionate rooms. Though it is difficult to change a stubborn mind, poetry can change our hearts in an instant.

Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley, from How Poetry Can Change Your Heart

03/10/2021

It wasn’t a long time ago,though it supposedly was.

Here I laid,in this same bed,hugging my covers as tightly as I could,

genuinely wishing to become one with them and vanish in that exact moment.

It felt like a void,the harshest and heaviest one could experience within their bodily existence.

My mind,an abyss.

My body,an havoc.

Somewhere,somehow,I envisioned a version of me which could grasp that forlorn warmth.

She welcomed it in the most easy-going manner,very-well knowing how fleeting that emotion would be.

It was not light,nor was it fuzzy,or bubbling or anything at all.

It just was.

It was right.

May it be precognition or the strength of my will,I do know that THAT was the precursor to who I am now.

I’m alive,living who I yearned to be.

And a lot more than than that as well.

She finally voiced  her deepest desires in vivid detail, she just disguised it all as a distant dream.

- G.L. Angelone

I have cried more than a few times today and we both ask myself, what is wrong?

Well, I am looking at myself waiting for the answer, I seem unable to conceive that it is I who is supposed to speak, I who is supposed to know.

I don’t know.

I look at myself expecting an answer but the mirror doesn’t flinch.

.

I have to be smart and I have to be different or nothing will have meaning, but already nothing means anything so why this desire to be apart from everyone while crying out: why am I apart from everyone?

.

I don’t know if I like the things I like or I just think I do, if who I am is who I really am or who I think I am supposed to be.

I am my best friend but that is only because I have no other friends.

.

I feel light years away from everyone else but I feel galaxies away from myself.

I want to be everything so much that I end up being less than nothing.

.

You can’t replace all the blood in a person.

Do you know what that means?

.

I burst into tears at signs of tenderness and I live a new life every day, I feel more the character than the actor, I feel more the actor than myself.

.

I cry at fictional scenarios and I joy in thoughts of strangers, yet I cannot call my friends back or reply to a single text.

.

It seems instead of finding love I find new colors of sorrow, new ways to cry and new languages in which to say it hurts.

.

Do my words mean something even if I don’t?

I don’t. I don’t.

.

I am tired of categorizing my emotions as symptoms.

.

Everything I’ve ever written is the same thing, repeated.

You can guess it by now.

I need a father. I need a mother. I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty.

Sylvia Plath

#DiaryOfAGirlMisunderstood

The Letter I was Afraid to Send

It wasn’t that the feeling for you wasn’t there. It wasn’t that the love I have for you was momentary and based on temporary stimulations - I just wasn’t ready.

Thank you for being who you are, for the man you are. I wasn’t ready for the direction you were heading in. I wasn’t ready to hold your hand and be your eyes when you lose your way. I wasn’t ready to be part of a storyline that I felt I felt I had no part in.

Parts of me were scared of you, scared of the depths that exist within you. My own biggest fear was that my own inhibitions would throw rocks on your path and slow you down from getting to your destination. I was scared my flaws hindered you from being the man you want to be. I was scared that my own shortcomings would become your shortcomings because pain has a way becoming contagious when you’re in a relationship with someone who feels as deep as you do.

At that time, I felt that I was being considerate. Now I realize how selfish I was I can admit I should’ve been better and that you definitely deserve better