almost. exactly. .

I promised myself I’d stop carving coffins out of my writing and ruining my poems by making them about you. It’s 10:49 on a Thursday night and I’m drunk on loneliness breaking my promises again.

And I’m looking at the pages imagining I could turn them to ash and with them whatever this thing is that you left in this heart made of glass. I’m willing myself to drop the pen. I’m willing myself to pick up your name and smash it against my bedroom window. I almost convince myself to write your each letter on a piece of paper and set fire to it (confession: it wouldn’t be the first time your first, middle and last names were tossed into flames and I’d like to call you Phoenix because it wouldn’t be the first time you rose from them).

 

 

I forget you sometimes. I can go on without thinking about you for days, weeks even, but never longer than two months. It’s like you’re always there, treading the shallow waters of the shore of my consciousness, never straying too far from land.

 

 

They say the person you love most is who you think about before bed, and it’s not that I do often, in fact it’s gotten quite rare, it’s just that I’ve imagined more than I’m comfortable with how it would feel to lay under the moonlight through the whole night beside you. I wonder how it would feel to fall asleep skin to skin with my head on your chest if you let either of us actually stay after you were done taking what you wanted from my body. I wonder how it would be if home was a marked spot on the left side of your bed. Instead of counting sheep, I sometimes list all the different reasons why it didn’t work out that way and all the different scenarios that would have led us to a different fate.

I wonder, if I was on the brink of death would I think about you then, would I love you then? Do I love you, now? Have I ever loved you? Or is this thing just my affinity for heartache, my need to feel anything? What exists between us, is it just in the distance, in the false paradise of what could have been? Maybe the unfeasibility of you and I together, maybe that distance, gave us room to love each other. Maybe it’s because you were the one who lit the match, and each time I danced in the rain and stopped thinking in your name you were back with a new one between your fingers ready to strike again. Maybe it’s because I’ve always dreamt in flames. I’m not sure.

 

 

All I know is I can remember the different creases in your face each time you smiled and the deeper they got when you laughed, and that as I sit here there’s someone else looking at that face, someone else more familiar than I with it. All I know is that I remember exactly what your kiss tasted like – wine, pot, and mint all rolled into one, but I’ve never kissed you goodnight, and you only ever loved me behind closed blinds, high and with drink in your veins. All I know is that I can remember the sound of your voice, and exactly how low it got when you told me you loved me, that you believed in fate, but you never did anything to fight for that fate, and I’ve watched you fall in love through years with women I’ve compared myself with again and again.

 

 

I’m not waiting anymore. I’m done hanging on to your words, done listening to the songs you send me through the periods we go without speaking, done ever believing you actually ever felt something for me.

 

 

All I ever was to you was a fantasy. I stood at the altar you built for my body and let you worship my skin, but I deserve someone who’s more interested in unveiling my soul and traveling through its labyrinths to light candles in its temple, than someone who only is interested in how my body feels in the dark.

 

 

One night I’ll sit here, no longer able to remember your face, no longer thinking about what we could have been, no longer missing what you were for me, no longer crafting poetry out of your memory.

- Natalia Vera

remnants.

I am the girl sitting on the red coach with tears falling down her face at the memories of her old town. i don't know why Tallahassee makes me feel this way. it's an uncertain feeling. in so many ways, i feel so grown from this town. so distant. so different. but there is something in the air, here. i can't explain it. it feels so much like home. so memorable. so very much the same. but different. in ways it feels like a lifetime since i walked these streets. these halls and these dorms. these bars and these rooms. i wish i could figure out a solitary word to describe how this place makes me feel. all i know is it brings me to tears. both happy and sad. both anxious and calm. at the same time. it feels like the energy within my bones is at most ease when i am admiring the brick buildings and peach grey sky on Tennessee street. the hilly streets and the corners that i turned so often. the places that became embodied within me that i don't think will ever go away. i visit the most out of my friends. i have a place here. it's ironic because for so long this town was so awful to me, or i was to it. both.
nighttime is my favorite in Tallahassee because of how truly dark it gets. eerily dark. yet i always know my way around. i could be blindfolded and be just fine. that's how much i know this place. it makes me so nostalgic and sad. the times i had here were hard. and wonderful. and experimental. and scary. and stupid. and fun. sitting on the deck of my old sorority house, breathing a cigarette like i did for so many years before, in that very same spot. feeling like the same little girl, so many years later. so much time has passed yet it always stands still here. i feel such peace and chaos at the same time when i am here. it never allows me to forget all that i had done while i was there. five and a half long years. years of trouble and excitement and learning all smashed into one like a wave crashing. sucking me down and spitting me out while i am trying to swim and i get above water only to be sucked under again. but i always make it out alive. so fast. time moved so fast here. it is such a surreal place. i am so forever in lust with it.