1. there is no center of the universe.
there is you. there is you and every time i look at you,
i figure out all over again that miracles
exist, because you are not anything someone could ever
repeat—you are a mess of perfectly executed mistakes
and you have never failed to take my breath away.
2. sometimes, the girl dances. sometimes she doesn’t,
but it rains and rains more and sometimes your clothes
stick to your skin but don’t you dare care. promise.
3. you are not an apology, no matter how many
times you say you’re sorry. your mother did
not create you for you to regret the
amount of space you take up.
4. someth
the temple of her body was torn open tonight,
desecrated and lit on fire. i swear, gods have burned
and felt less pain than i do as i write these words down,
because she’s crying in my bathroom right now and i have
to go and convince her that the handful of feathers
i have left in my palms could ever equal the wings he snipped
off of her tonight. she will never fly again. she will never
believe so wholly in herself again. her body is no longer
a temple, her body is a landmine, an open wound, a thousand
foot drop off of a bridge, a stranger to her. she will never
again be able to trust her body, to know her body.
this is not the first p
8 Things I Learned Before I Turned Sixteen by MisfitableGrae, literature
Literature
8 Things I Learned Before I Turned Sixteen
1. you are stronger than you think
and when you tell other people this,
do not be offended when they start talking about muscle mass.
they will not understand until they wake up
one day and are disappointed to find themselves
still breathing.
2. reading books about thin people
doesn’t make you thin
just like writing poems about happiness
doesn’t make you happy.
3. make new year’s resolutions. even if you know
they won’t last longer than the shower
you make them in, do it anyways because
you’ll love the idea of the person you were
washing off of you with the dirt.
4. you’re going to fall head over heels
read this when you're so angry you shake by MisfitableGrae, literature
Literature
read this when you're so angry you shake
little drops of oil make rainbows on wet concrete
and i don’t know how beautiful you find that,
but sometimes you gotta learn that
the littlest things are the prettiest,
like the shape of your fingernails and the crinkles
you get at the corner of your eyes when you laugh and
when you grow old and i know i said “grow old”
like it’s a temporary thing, but that’s because it is.
you can think it’s forever but it’s really
a split second because you don’t matter, not when
the universe is still growing and speeding through a nothingness
we can’t even fathom, not when color doesn’t exis
caught the higher arc-
hitecture;
[you folded into space waves
as they rushed and receded
lazily]
never kiss never on the lips
because the past is presently
reappearing, climbing the horizon
in a flat glow. in a fat growl
I say the darnedest things, like four-lettered
words. like once when love left dark spot
s in my vision
and I built around the columns I imagined;
felt the sky fall down around my shoulders
you were a wave. a space wave
light-crushing lazily
and you'l
Stop Romanticizing Poets 2K14 by MisfitableGrae, literature
Literature
Stop Romanticizing Poets 2K14
This is how I write my poems:
You’re blonde and you have blue eyes.
You’re the perfect subject for my next great hit,
a long rambling epic or a two page sonnet
which would start by comparing your hair
to rays of the sun and your eyes to the ocean
at daybreak. Even if you’re more of a dishwater blonde
than sun-colored, and your eyes are less ocean and
more sky, I swear I write this poem and think
vaguely of you.
But here is a secret: I’m not writing a poem about you.
I’m writing a poem about the idea of you.
And I don’t know if it will be a love poem or
a break-up poem or a “please don’t go home
there is a body bleeding out in your back seat.
probably. there is probably a body bleeding out
in your back seat right now, he’s probably pulling
the last of his breath out of his lungs with pliers,
forcing it up his windpipe to exhale it on
your beat-up leather seats like a prayer.
and you’re flooring it, you really are,
keeping your thoughts on the hospital
that can only be so many miles away,
but the world is as tiny and thin as a string right now,
narrowed down to your foot on the gas
and the body in your car, dying.
time, you have realized, is never an abstract concept.
you’re thinking, ‘i’m sorry.
sorr
a study in absolution by MisfitableGrae, literature
Literature
a study in absolution
you kiss my fingers like you don’t know what
these hands have done, who these hands have done:
i am always afraid you will get tired of me, grow disgusted at
these scars, at these traces of other people dusting my skin
like a bruise that’s permanently tender, but right
when i think you will leave, you find another
part of my body to forgive.
you can't have it all by insomniaplague, literature
Literature
you can't have it all
But you can have eating wild grapes and their skin like beetle wings
cocooned in bruises. You can have swings that go so high you kick
a hole in the clouds. You can have chickens following you through the front door
and the cat’s gift to say, Look, I am taking care of you.
You can have happiness, but tempered as
your first taste of wine when you hid your puckering face
because you were eight years old and dangerous.
You can have a touch you blush for, ferret hands dancing,
small and terrifying and knowledgable.
You can have an aspiration of “us” held on one stool leg, darting breaths but
never admitting to dreams, to a s