Tabitha Vohn's Blog - Posts Tagged "love"

You are the girl
I would have looked up to
in high school
Vintage tees and broomstick
skirts smell of the man who sold
them, the one that was with you
last night
old enough to be your father
and maybe recommended
by him
like good weed
a fix that keeps on giving
Your friend dragged you from
the swimming pool last night
where you--like Echo--unwound
gauze layers like peeling away
their pain when their eyes lick
your skin their charred fingers
raised poisons kept you afloat
a face-down Ophelia with hair
in seaweed tendrils
She would feel the heavy
carelessness of your
confidence that someone would
love you enough
to pull you out of it
It's that dancing that keeps your
ears clear of the symphonies
of phonies you're not trying to
hear
keep swinging
poll center
heart center
spread
dip
roll
find your center
warm chests you press to
it's not so different to close
your eyes under the lights
and feel the love
while they stick another dollar
bill in your g-string
anymore than it was to
free fall into that endless
ocean blue the chlorinated
hue of forgetting
that once
there was a little girl
with dreams of fairy princes
whose white horses
took a detour in middle school
when they realized it was girls
who'd get on their knees
for a hell of a lot less than
diamonds
and you
already knew
the feel of those carpeted
brush-burns
the education they sought
came from you
a fearlessness that was
a comfort to the rest of us
trying so hard to playact at
what we thought we had to be
our feelings fragile as loose
feathers the pluck and bleed
and all our hollowed-out insides
that growing up too fast demanded
you were a phoenix
and we prayed to be like you
even as we called you
slut
whore
home-wrecker
behind your back
our green tongues powdered with
secret love
we never saw the empty rooms
you went home to
or the used needles in the kitchen sink
or your panties mixed in with stranger's
clothing
or the diary you kept that said whether
or not today you want to live
all we saw were the rainbows the scarves
the beaded curtain framing your face
the wild abandon of your laugh
we ignored the urgency
with which you threw yourself
into that swimming pool.

I know...two poems in a week! Sometimes life demands it.

I dedicate this poem to anyone who's ever wished that people with closed minds came with closed mouths, and that we didn't always have to assume the worst of our fellow man (and woman).

My mouth is an Ariel
weary of arias
the only
notes I've known for weeks
are sour fruit
my tongue
would rather pen praises
my soul no longer has
liberty to sing those
affections that never feel
less potent truths I can't
escape from and
don't want to
I've boxed them up
pushed them into
cobweb corners their
pointed corners push
against fresh places
in fresh heart wounds
I'll keep them for you
it's sad that those
words meant to be
a nightlight
and pure
frighten blind children
who feast on lies they
tell like bedtime stories
when their happy endings
turned to tarnished tales
impossible to put faith in
they see what they want to see
the hymns they sing lyricize
love with sticky breaths
stolen tongues moonless
nights soiled sheets the
only thing they can conceive
is that the only way
I could take bullets for you
is if I used you
the only way
I could invite you to be
part of my home is through
the back door that for me to
acknowledge your beauty
so intrinsic it blinds to
look at you sometimes
is plausible
only
if I matched it with currant-colored
intentions
and criminal designs
I am death-weary
of them all
say let the lies turn back
on them like forked-tongue
plagues
let them choke on their
selfsame suspicions
that have little to do
with you
or me
and everything to do
with what's wrong
with their own hearts
their own sour fruit
their bitter-noted
arias.

Your silence is a
Daily death each time a piece
of me dies with it.

The past few months
have been some of the most
painful of my life
Horror made flesh
thinking I'd lost you
my heart and head in
constant combat
warring over footsteps
traced back overgrown paths
that led us here
I dissected every fallen branch
fleeting white bird
trying with my fingers to feel
the indents of footprints
where I'd misstepped
was it too many texts?
not enough space between
my exhales to give you room
to breathe? did my desperate
attempts to keep you
smother your lungs with shadow?
was my imprint in your heart
merely an inlet
a temporary crevice
to let the light in?
Truth is
none of it matters
I dream a life so impossible
wanting to fold you in it
wanting to reinvent home
a place to call yours and
this connection of ours to
stretch in symphonic chord
eternal
always calling you back to me
I never stopped
to consider
that I made my steps rocks
at your feet
my tears tidal fetters too
vast of an obligation to
wade through
These past months
I've cried enough and
died enough for
both of us
lost in the labyrinth of
this nightmare I feared would
put on human skins
of
losing you, losing you
losing you, losing you...
but love, you are not mine
to lose
and you never were
and love
damn...I miss
calling you that
telling you good morning and
wishing you goodnight
Sometimes the need to
tell you I love you
swells in my throat like
panic constricts my lungs
and so I say it to a piece
of jade to forsaken air my
prayers become pleas
God, let him know how much
he's loved today
my sweet wonderful gift
I tell you that too often
but that
is truth
mirror brother
whose bond I feel
deep as blood
that space you carved
is always yours
and I hope you have room
to breathe now
I hope from now on
to love you truer
to my word
no strings attached
setting aside my covetous
self
allow the chaos
to have its course
I've never doubted
for a single
minute of it
that you're worth it.

I never want you
to think the
silence on my end
means that I've stopped
caring
have forgotten
or don't miss you
I've been thinking
a lot about King Solomon
and the two women who
came to him
arguing over the same child
both claiming to be its mother
The king orders the baby to be
sawed in two
the first women says Yes, that
will satisfy me
The second cries and pleads
with the king
give the child to
the first women
but let it live
Growing up I was taught the
moral of the story was how wisely
the king solved the problem
but that conclusion misses the
whole point
it misses everything
The second woman loved her son
enough to let him go
rather than see him torn in two
that was the mark of the true mother
That is the mark of true love
For child, friend, brother, parent, or lover
I've spent my whole life
sawing babies in two
Fighting over fractions of hearts I felt were
due ME
hearts I helped to break between choices
they should never have had to make
child vs. spouse
daughter vs. son
I was not whole enough to let go
of my end of the wishbone
of selfish dreams that would never
come true
I have learned enough now
been loved enough now
to know
that I cannot do that to you
So I will never ask you to choose
even if others do
But just so we're clear
never doubt for a second
how much I love you.

What I loved about you
a second secret skin
how you knew
eventually
you’d lose him
but loved him anyway
He asked, “Are you still my girl?”
You said, “Always.”
Hearts held impossibility
like fingers tangled in each others
hair like palms anchored in
holy water his presence
a constant burning
you forgave the marks
his teeth left
his metallic knowledge
within your veins
forgetting the way
you glowed in him
forgetting
how many times you
saved him
grown insubstantial as
shadows in the black
trench coat that turned
towards the moon and
turned towards you
just before your light
became a casket door
to close
a home to walk out on
You tried warmer arms
like sample drugs
sharper teeth
made passionate
distractions of enemies
fooled yourself into
sympathy pains for
ones you convinced
yourself you craved
them
misshapen puzzle pieces
scraping against the tender
edges of his heart-space
The Truth
shape-shifted
into something you didn’t
want to recognize
That it was never the demons
or vampires
witches’ spells
wrathful goddesses
or harbingers of death
that had the power
to break you.

Only love
Could do that.

And I would love to gain more readers!

If you are interested in receiving a free ebook of any of my titles, please message me at Goodreads or at tabithaauthorpen@gmail.com and I will happily send you one!

"I was younger then and easily fooled
and the ocean was deep and dark and blue
and I took off my shoes to let the water freeze my bones.
I waded until I could no longer walk and it was too cold to swim but
still I kept on walking at the bottom of the sea for I could not tell the
difference between the ocean and the lack of someone I loved and I
had not yet learned how the task of moving on is a muscular task,
a skill you need to learn,
as necessary as survival." (Eriksson, 12)

--from I Go to the Ocean to Say Goodbye

P.S.
If the choice is to move on
or not survive,
I'd rather be food
for the fishes
than to
love you
or miss you
less
than I do
in this moment <3

I've learned
Love and Pain
are cyclical
they are kissing cousins
ashamed of the way they
can't keep their hands off
each other
seemingly cannot exist
one without the other
Love
you built like a storm
gathered just noticeable
on the horizon
Moved
too quickly for me to
take any cover
--You--
were the
swell that cracked the levies
the grandmother who let the
wolf in
I feared to feed him
knowing that when he's
fat and comfortable
he'll awaken to heavy
stones sewed into his belly
Shocking
Irrevocable
where once he had only felt
Full
where Pain crowds space
like a dance partner stepping
out of tune
tattered slippers
bloodied toes
I have
felt that Weight
--too full of your Absence
to move--
scraping my soft insides
against sharp edges
Sutured in
where your once
coveted
I love you's
had been
Now I learn to exist between
Chaos and Calm
those Stitches cradling
Quarries of regret come
tumbling out
when I
loosen the ties
I try
to Bind you with
feel less heavy
if I
Splinter the box
I've Fought
to keep you in
I replace
Fetal positions
with Faith despite the
marshes of
demon whispers
I've fallen
in
Learning
Pain is the
Love child
of Expectation
things Hoped for
or
things Lost
Cannot Be Replaced
only Found again
and before I
clung to
any of that
my Love for you
was the Same
as it was
will be
has always been.

I wonder
why it is
that I don't afford others
the same capacity for love
that I possess

why I constantly
doubt who truly
holds me as
irreplaceable as
I do them

How arrogant of me!

Am I the only one who
lives like this?
constantly calculating
heart rhythms
like profit percentages

I
who with my
hypocrite tongue
profess that true love
comes with no strings
attached yet I

can't stop trying
to earn it
can't stop wondering
which flaw will
unravel devotional threads
leave me
open wound
abandonable

I
suffocate in
red tissue suspicions
that my expendability
renders heart temple
homes for me
as wind changeable
as forest fire
or dandelion seeds
I am the reed
who bends to mask
the fact that she is
broken

blinded to what she's
spirit-known for lifetimes
her brothers and sisters
bending with her
all along a breeze-
battered sea

the Irony
is bittersweet
in reality this
not so temporary
insanity
has
nothing to do
with any of them
and everything
to do with
what's wrong
in me.

so why is it
that even when I
gaze through unclouded
lenses
fresh scrubbed
redemption cleansed
identity
I can be loved loudly
by God himself
and still be destroyed
quietly
by my doubt
by inner frailty
by your earthly
silence.