Rosalind Guy's Blog, page 14

I Remember

I remember the taste

of the first words

you said to me. I remember

how your fingers singed

my skin when you first

touched me. I remember

the feeling of knowing

I loved you. I remember

knowing you loved me too.

I remember enclosing myself

in the warm embrace of our

love, knowing it would never grow cold.

I remember drowning in your gaze

knowing how easy it would be to stay

and drown in our love

to never come up for air

because we’d be there – together.

I remember.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

The Memory of You

I fell in love with you

three times.

First,

I fell in love

with the thought of you.

I formed images of you

in my mind.

And that’s why it

was so easy

to recognize you and

fall in love with you

the second time.

The second time I loved you

began the day I met you.

It wasn’t instantaneous

like a Polaroid.

It was a feeling that

developed over time.

Like dipping my toe in

while safely tottering

on the edge; it took time to

feel my way to loving you

until I was ready to sink in

full body, heart and all.

The third time

I loved you

was when I watched you

slowly disappearing,

taking the long way around

meandering,

seeming to go nowhere

but away.

It was impossible

you’d choose to stay.

Yet you didn’t even bother

to say good-bye.

I fell in love with

your retreating frame.

A few steps at a time,

that’s how I watched you

slowly begin to fade.

My love for you

remained the same.

I learned

to love your memory

as much as I loved you—

fully.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Existing

I’ve never belonged anywhere.

I’ve only existed in places.

Always surrounded by closed off spaces

That refused to yield to my presence.

Walls bearing recognizable faces.

Beguiling – I sought ways to enter.

And like loose change in a torn pocket

I got lost, ended up in places where

I was easily forgotten.

I seek hiding places now,

Crouching in corners,

Where I blend easily into shadow.

There is no place for me

Where I can simply be

And, in being, to belong.

My own skin sometimes

Feels artificial.

Swimming in fluid memories.

When trying to inject those memories fails

Sweat drenches my skin. Withdrawal is akin

To burning myself in the flames of yesterday.

The acid of memory is addictive.

I do not want to burn even if

My name might kiss the lips and singe the skin

For I will always be looking for ways in

As I try to force my way into yet another heart

That refuses to love me.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

The Stranger

I listened to what they told me.

I compromised away pieces of me

until the person staring back from the mirror

was as much as stranger to me

as the one who promised to love me.

When he finally realized that all my changing

wasn’t enough to make him love me, to turn me

into the one he’d love even if I never changed,

it was too late. We were two strangers

who settled for a love that didn’t fit

either one of us. And in the end

I was forced to admit

that we were both strangers

and that’s all we’d ever be.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

 

A Gathering of Men

The men always gather

together on the weekend

after the chores have been done;

they come together

when the sun begins to

paint the sky’s cheeks

with a rosy shade of pink blush

and the stars hover nearby,

peeking out from behind the clouds,

just waiting until they can

come out for the evening.

They get together

to re-hash their dreams

to wander in and out of

doors of memory

remembering

the touch of a young girl’s hand

the gentle feel of her lips

that one time

the sway of her hips

walking a girl home

for the first time

holding on to yesterday

just one more time

for as long as they can.

Their raucous laughter

ushers in memories

of that one time

they almost made that grand slam

the day they finally stood up

and became a man.

Playing a game of cards

yesterday and today

The memories intertwine

with today

and the laughter continues

to flow. Unsure if it’s the

beer or the nostalgia of memories

that has them feeling

so free

they laugh their way through

the late evening reunion.

There is no bitterness

laced through the openings

or gaps in their memories;

they navigate through

those openings easily.

A gathering of old men

holding onto memories

of yesterday

underneath a dark sky

and a blanket of stars

fills the neighborhood

with the music of laughter

from down deep

in the pit of the stomach

the kind that accompanies

memories, the ones

that can never be

forgotten.

Photo courtesy of getty images

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Empty Shoes

Empty shoes

dangle from

dead tree limbs.

Dreams rot

in the hard-packed

dirt.

Hope has lost its wings.

There is no life worth living.

Apathy eats at us

like worms

covering rigid corpses.

Sands in an hourglass

do not defy

gravity.

Soon

our hands

will only be good

for digging graves.

Who can save someone

who doesn’t want to be saved?

Carry on

your eyes say.

And so we do.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

3

I stood in the shower

for three hours

after the first time.

Bits of my skin floated down

toward the drain.

It was so hot that the steam

rose and covered me

but it never got quite hot enough

to wash away

your prints from my skin.

I tried.

How childish of me to believe

I could ever wash away

all traces

of what you did to me.

You know you want it too.

I’ve never felt so dirty before

like all your bad intentions

were released inside me.

You didn’t even try to pull out

at the end.

And now my skin is branded

with graffiti

of your hands and kisses

the glaring evidence you left all over me,

trying to lay claim to territory

that was never yours to begin with.

Just relax.

After the second time

I couldn’t sleep for three days.

I stayed in bed

for three whole days

so my family thought I was sick.

How could I tell them about the illness

that was threatening to kill me?

No one would ever believe

I was slowly dying

because of sex. On the third day

they tried to coax me out of bed.

Told me they missed me.

I told them I was missing me too.

And they looked at me

like maybe I was the one

who was crazy. Could it be?

If you ever tell anyone, they’ll never believe you.

The third time it happened

I started bleeding profusely

and the blood ran from me

like it would never stop.

I almost drowned in my own blood.

It was my mother who found me.

She slapped me across my face.

Are you crazy girl, she asked me.

You could’ve died, she screamed.

Don’t you ever think about anyone

besides yourself?

All I’d been doing was thinking

since the day you first

stole from me

something you had no right to own.

Since you moved into my body

and made me feel like I was the one

who was trespassing. Locked in

my own skin, I’ve been trying

to escape since you decided to move in.

Everybody knows the type of person you are.

It’s scary inside my body now.

I never noticed the voices before

and I never knew how hard it could be

to clean away built-up grime and dirt.

How did I get so fucking dirty?

I’ve been washing and bleaching

and cutting, trying to excavate

the filth you filled me with.

It’s not easy to fight a terrorist.

That’s why I’ve never signed up

to be a soldier in a war.

I never wanted a fight.

All I ever did was say hello.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

The Gift

Happy National Poetry Month! In honor of the beginning of this month, here’s an excerpt from one of the poems I’m currently working on:

She had the gift

of falling in love

with men who were collectors.

Collecting pieces of her heart-

a heart that was already broken-

like little bits of string.

She never knew how to snatch

those pieces of her heart back

when she saw the pieces weren’t

what those men were looking for

or what they felt they needed.

So she decided to become a collector

too. Only she’d never developed an eye

for spotting the genuine &

so she collected I love yous

like I.O.U.s

Many years’ worth of promised

declarations rested

in a place she learned to forget

existed.

Why did I ever believe, she lamented

that love would eventually appear and

the collectors would become men to be trusted?

My own mother seemed incapable of

grinding love into bite-sized pieces for me.

And my dad, while he knew all about love

it’s what took him away from me.

He said love tried to suffocate him and

he had to leave so he’d be able to breathe.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

If I Love…

He looked in my eyes, told me he

could easily get lost there. That it wasn’t

anything I’d did that made him fall in love

with me, but there he was confessing love

for me. Then he leaned in and tried to kiss me.

If I tell you you’re the air I breathe

will you withhold your love so you can watch me

die a slow and painful death?

Loving the wrong people has left me

afraid to love fully

so I can only offer to love you

conditionally. I need to know

that loving you won’t become slow death

for me.

If I tell you I love you

will you try not to use my love

against me? My love comes in strong doses,

lasts a lifetime of eternities

so if I fall in love with you

can I get you to please slide me

a piece of paper with our expiration date

written in pen

so I’ll be able to prepare for the heartbreak

that will come when this love ends?

If I begin to really fall for you

I mean so hard

you can read in the lines of my poetry

how I has been replaced with we and

how I’ve buried the fullness of my love

in the words of every poem I write,

how you might start to see it’s possible

that I might just dive so far in the love I have

for you and drown and you know you

just aren’t that into me,

please tell me. Don’t drag me to the deep end

and watch me struggle to breathe

knowing there was never a chance

for you and me.

If I tell you I love you

unconditionally

will you stretch the limits of my love

like a rubber band

to see how far it’ll stretch before it loses shape

or how far you can push me before I break?

I watched his eyes glaze over with a

here we go again

and I knew that love was nothing more

than four letters. A word he’d discovered

would get him things he wanted

like please and thank you

and that’s why I had to leave.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

Turning on the Faucet

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” –Louis L’Amour

This quote by my favorite western author has truly rung true with me during this week. When I left school on Friday, the day when my spring break officially began, I just knew this would be a productive week for me –writing wise. And, well, it wasn’t totally unproductive. I did still give at least an hour (sometimes more) to my writing every day. But when I look at the big picture all I did was finish the first draft of a short story and begin edits on another short story, one that I have now decided needs to be taken apart and completely re-written. I don’t like the one person narrator, so I’m going to re-write it offering the reader the point of view of both the male and female character. And I read. A little.

I’m currently reading what is not yours is not yours by helen oyeyemi and it makes for some truly slow reading. This is not to say the stories in the book are not enjoyable, but they are the type of stories that you take your time reading, not the type you gobble up quickly. I like both types of stories. So, I’m not complaining about the quality of the stories. Just saying that when I look at what I’ve accomplished this week, I feel like I’ve accomplished very little.

Last night, a friend of mine asked me: “Do you ever feel that no matter what you do or at the end of the day (look back and realize) it never seems like you’re doing enough?” And my reply was, “Yes.” The friend went on to add more, but it really wasn’t necessary. I knew the feeling exactly because I’ve been feeling it this week. He added: “By that I mean like the dreams and goals you are trying to accomplish, does it ever feel like you’re not doing enough to accomplish them?” Again, I replied, “Yes.”

So, today, I began jotting down a few words as I was thinking about this past week and, I came up with a short poem. I almost said, “of course” but the words don’t seem to be coming nor the inspiration as easily, so I took out the of course. Here’s the poem:

Sometimes the words will not

come. They are territorial like

distracted lovers and

once they see you holding hands

and being loved

by other words

the ones you’re seeking, they will come.

They will piss on the tree

in your front yard. They will

snatch you back like a toy they once

was disinterested in and yell out

“Mine!”

Words lack a soul.

They just don’t know how to love

you like you want to be loved. So

when they seem to be ignoring you

it’ll always be up to you to seek them out,

to entice affection and attention. But

that’s okay. They’re only words.

They don’t know any better.

So, back to the quote from Louis L’Amour. Since my inspiration is not at optimal level today, I came up with a way to turn on the faucet. I’m going to write, first, from a prompt I discovered yesterday. Here’s the prompt: “You start training to run a marathon. Things are going well and you’ve developed a route that you like to run. One day you notice someone peeking out the window of one of the houses as you pass, though you think nothing of it. But then the next day the peeper is back again. And the next day. Finally you decide to confront the peeper and knock on the door. But when the door opens, you are shocked to find out it’s someone from your past — who you thought was dead.

More prompts can be found here.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind