The Poetry Marathon

A small departure
for a bigger adventure
The horizon fades

Tiny pockets filled
her choice of stones or liquor
Sink, float, swallow, gasp

I could sift through her mystery
and suck it in to make ash.
She is a poorly patterned couch.
She is the pill bottles, the potential of them.
Rooster alarm clocks.
One sharp tooth.
The fourth leaf on a clover.
Wolf chewing on rawhide.
She gargle in the throat.

She makes herself quite ill.

The ruby flushed her cheeks
painted her lips
and aged her hair.

She was a gold petal,
begging to be a rose.

She was spilled ink
over easy poetry
and she was all the lead
in the gravity that sunk her

You have a pretty set of eyes,
it’s a shame about the rest of you.
Your blessed hips
couldn’t carry a Saint.
You won’t rot any different.

I had beginner’s luck,
awestruck,
conjecture.

All for fun house mirrors
and a little bit of fog.

1. the announcement

I broadcasted the departure – as you
and you on boats,
ferried away from
our resting place,
your funeral
our bed.

2. the revokation

I limited the exposure I had to the sun – as you,
and you on beaches,
scurried away from
the glances,
my funeral,
your hands.

3. the eviction

Simple. One day.
A remedy, a removal.
Clothes and cleavers stacked into
the back of an unforgettable buggy,
skunked up
in my absence.

4. the rekindle

All stubborn flames try to re-light
in the wrong exposure,
but I smelled another smoke on your breath,
and I choked us out

5. the sizing

I will never fit into a wedding dress – as you,
and you at weddings
danced away
from my eight attempts at an August proposal.

6. the engagement

Now void.

7. both parts of a narcissist

there is the cause and the effect
for every violent word –
my screaming pinned you to the ground,
your ignorance kept me puking.
you were the c a u s e
and I was the abuse.

8. richocet

I got back
every pin head I put under your foot.
coated them with chocolate
and swallowed them for dessert.
I kept you kept;
you hated your keeper,
not every caged animal
bites the feeder.

9. record

screenshots.
poems.

10. you said…

“don’t write me as a monster in every poem, I really do love you.”

“You think terrible things about me, and I don’t think I can forgive you for that.”

“I don’t have to listen to you. You aren’t my mother.”

11. i said…

“I won’t. You aren’t a monster, I love you too much.”

“I don’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

12. i thought…

“Stop haunting me. I am living in fear.”

“You did terrible things to me, and I don’t think I can forgive you for that.”

“I wanted to be heard, but who could talk over your anger? I only screamed because your hate was too loud.”

13. the survival

I’ll only say I did. (more…)

I opened my jaw, hinged on expectations
I caught you like a snowflake
you melted and I laughed!
You knew I had a warm mouth.
I knew you were winter.
Why did you try to kiss me at all?

I don’t have to heal.
My wounds can stay bleeding out,
You don’t decide when

The grand illusion of a narcissist

It was always my fault,
every metaphorical glass shattered
and the holes in the walls.

They weren’t real, our friends could not see them.

No one inspected my body for the remnants of your short fuse and addiction to making me irrelevant.

I was a whole continent of a person when I met you.
A little too many lakes, spilling over myself out of every one I housed.

You knocked me off my high horse.
That would’ve been enough.

But the story continued.
The horses in my farm went to slaughter
and eventually I didn’t own any land.

The original deceit was thinking I’d ever be small enough for the place where your love fits.

Maybe it grows big enough for other people,
but I was land, not water.
I couldn’t make you grow.
So I tried to make you smaller.

The less of you that there was,
made every thing less hostile.

You thought you were growing
when I let you go,
But really,
you’ll always be small.

And I’m a continent again,
but this time, everyone is welcome.

The first person who broke my heart
is no different than the second,
is no different than the last.

They are part of every poem,
and the little bone-holes from the gnawing.

They are the missing skin.

And the place where it healed.

Thick white lines that said goodbye to people.

They are prongs of the forks I climbed like ladders to get out of the places
that they dropped my body.

I only loved one idea wholly,
it just had many faces.

When the rubber peeled around the edges and my lovers faded into flaws,

I said goodbye with blood.

But my last goodbye – was all of it.

I took all of my blood with me.

And I stepped on them all on my way out.

Prompt was to write about the first person that broke your heart…