short poems
sometimes subjects are too big for more words—these short lines are all I have
trigger warnings: depression, eating disorder, body dysmorphia
Some moments, some impressions, some thoughts don’t need more than a few lines. Those moments, minutes, hours, days shrouded in a murky dark that only gets darker—those days of night-time when everything we keep hidden is reflected back to us, sometimes anxiously distorted, sometimes too undistorted to look at head-on. It seems like in those moments, when words come, they’re sparse, haunting impressions. Rhyming couplets that reveal a dark duality within:
Where We Live It costs $30 to look at flowers, but looking at concrete is free I ask and ask what it takes to survive, yet nobody answers me Noxious smog leaks out my throat and into my husband’s bones I can’t think that way or I won’t be here tomorrow, and you’ll be all alone All I have to offer now are a couple couplets of rhyme I’m waiting here for nothing at all but Death to come in due time
Other times, stilted words come from years and years and years of fear and conditioning, confusion and anger, intangible pain. The fear comes from my mother, and from her mother before. It comes from my mother’s mother-in-law, and from the mothers-in-law before that. It comes from family, from friends, from our frayed flock of females sickened by a society that’s sickened by the reflection of itself. It comes from every time someone else looked away from my mother while I looked up to her.
My Mother’s Recipe Add water to pot (no oil, no salt) Tick tick tick on blue-gas flames Wait for a rolling boil while you slap your thighs and cry into a box of angel’s hair They say food is love, but some of us were taught to love by starving women
I had considered, like other poems I’ve shared, to share them thematically with prose on the same subject. But sometimes subjects are too big for more words—these short lines are all I have.
And so, I’ll leave you with this:
us in me a wild hope still grows from earth they sought to scorch i plucked it for you and sent it on a soul-igniting torch
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Your words always resonate with me in a way I can never explain. Like this piece, my feelings are too big for more words, but thank you for sharing this with us 💙
The concept of some things being too big for so many words is resonating with me in an unexpected way. These bite-size pieces pack so much emotional punch. It really shows the depth of your skill and writing; that you can take something so huge, bring it down to a string of lines, and still create impact.