My Romanticized Life

I have unrolled a map
onto my kitchen table
and put one finger
where you are and
another where I am.

“The space between
is only inches. That close,
I could feel you breathing.
I could reach out and
run my fingers through
every strand of your hair,
touch your lips and
barely need to move.

In the corner of the map
there is a guide for judging scale:
every inch a hundred miles
full of roads and rivers and trees,
the guide a sharp reminder
that you are where you are
and I am where I am,
inches apart.”

— Gabriel Gadfly, “Why I Hate Reading Maps”

(Source: fleurishes)

“My new lover thinks that pushing me against the sink
is romance. That isn’t romance.
Romance is you, holding me closer and closer
until I can no longer differentiate between your 
fingers and mine.

I had to relearn the taste of other men’s tongues.
Now kissing is like eating something slimy, injecting
a foreign substance into these veins. 
These men, their scent bright and startling, have 
ocean of skin like fish scales.
The plains of their back feel unfamiliar under touch,
ridged and jagged like the outer layer of a crocodile.

I teach myself how to say your name so that
my voice doesn’t give it away. 
I relearn how to wrap ligaments and joints 
like braids around boy’s legs.
This is all just a cheap thrill, a momentary distraction,
a way for me to forget your laugh, the heart 
in your mouth, your mouth, your name, 
and how we used to melt,
your red against my blue, my orange against your white —
the kind of stained glass windows that people
write poems about.”

— atomiclanterns, “Other Tongues”

(Source: atomiclanterns)

“

You’re not doing well and finally I don’t have to

pretend to be so interested in your on going tragedy,

but

I’ll rob the bank that gave you the impression that
money is more fruitful than words, and
I’ll cut holes in the ozone if it means you have one less day of rain.
I’ll walk you to the hospital, 
I’ll wait in a white room that reeks of hand sanitizer and latex for the results from the MRI scan that tries to 
locate the malady that keeps your mind guessing, and
I want to write you a poem every day until my hand breaks
and assure you that you’ll find your place, 
it’s just 
the world has a funny way of
hiding spots fertile enough for
bodies like yours to grow roots.

and

I miss you like a dart hits the iris of a bullseye,
or a train ticket screams 4:30 at 4:47, I
wanted to tell you that it’s my birthday on Thursday
and I would have wanted you to 
give me the gift of your guts on the floor, one last time,
to see if you still had it in you.

I hope our ghosts aren’t eating you alive.
If I’m to speak for myself, I’ll tell you that
the universe is twice as big as we think it is
and you’re the only one that made that idea
less devastating.”

— Small, Lucas Regazzi

fleurishes:

“god whenever I read a poem, like a really fucking good poem and it doesn’t matter if it’s a poem about someone’s ex or a poem about strawberry yogurt, i’m just like wow okay yes this is it how did you know and then i’ll just hold it in my head for a little while until i start to buzz with it, until i can feel it knocking around in my brain and there is nothing better than finding something like that, than striking gold with a poem because there’s just something so deep and raw about poetry and the way it pulls you in and spits you back out and you’re lying on the floor asking yourself how you even got there and you check your wrist for a pulse and i don’t know i guess i just love how it makes me remember that our wants and needs and feelings and thoughts are universal and nothing that we feel is ever too small to write about and holy jesus if you don’t like poetry i will make you drink it through a straw”