abhapoetry

[abhapoetry]

Too Much

Nighttime blues, my chest heaves on the floor of my bathroom You go on with your day as if it’s alright and I wonder Why must this be all my life

My hand out like a question the puzzled look of an answer My knees to my chest on a chair back to my drawing Cheek resting in my makeshift haven

The loneliness haunts me in my dreams and in your eyes They tell me I believed something too much

[abhapoetry]

Murmurings

They remind me of you The murmuring of birds in the sky Or of the bamboo leaves outside my Parisian window

I want to plunge into your chest and lay there Or maybe shake you from the outside I want to cry, to brood, to forget you I want to tell you I love you

[abhapoetry]

How Long

Your love isn’t enough because mine isn’t either Always looked for something beyond myself to connect me to the ether I want to forget I have a body and clothes and a taste in music Forget about the news cycle and my thumb eternally scrolling I want to stop feeling lost like this world doesn’t belong to me

Your love isn’t enough because mine isn’t either At ten I thought I’d want to talk to myself but I couldn’t be there All my selves stuck in a temporality where they bang on the window I want to reach through the boredom and lonely nights Forget all the long moments waiting for someone Forget the pang of grief the counting down of nights and days Forget how long this life seems today

[abhapoetry]

What Could Have

Recognise the feeling of backing out of what could have Oscillating between going to meet you or staying on this path What’s mutual seems to be how easily doubt overpowers yearning When the curtain closes and you haven’t asked how I’m doing And I’m like a flower with the petals folding in Now you’ll forget about my beauty

I spend nearly every minute trying to undo this tight knot How it can make sense that you’re here but you’ve gone That I can’t function and you’re in your head How tragedy brought us closer but that’s all we had Or how my desire is your fear, and your relief Is my anxiety

I internalise everything — how you only Call me by my given name and hardly hold my face The letter that arrived after you did and the gift you won’t accept The nights you spent away because you don’t like my mattress The films we fight about and how you don’t come and say hi When we’re with our friends

Tell me now, what’s worth wanting If it’s already absent, what’s worth asking for If it’s leaving you wondering

Tell me, am I not enough to be decided on

[abhapoetry]

Ma Poitrine en Feu

Tu tombes dans la salle de bain. J’entends les cris, pas seulement de douleur, Mais de rage, et je vois pour la première fois Ma mère qui vieillit, fébrile et fâchée contre son sort,

Un corps qui lui fait faillite — Comme moi aussi, sans doute. Elle le chuchote au téléphone dans la nuit À qui et pourquoi, cela m’échappe. Je n’essaye plus de comprendre.

Elle tape le sol comme un enfant, ne pleure pas mais gémit. Me lance des insultes pendant que les vitriers chuchotent dans le couloir En réparant la vitre qu’elle a brisé la semaine dernière. Ils me regardent timidement quand je vais les payer. Ils ont tout entendu et j’essaye de ne pas me sentir humiliée. Elle pose son regard fautif et fuyant sur moi lorsque j’essaye De l’aider à se relever ou d’appeler les docteurs. Je me recroqueville à l’intérieur de moi même Et ressens plus rien apart ma poitrine en feu.

[abhapoetry]

This Holiday Season

I put the lights in my grandparents vintage Christmas tree. Spruce the branches that smell like stale dust and lost familiarity. Bring down the cardboard box of forgotten ornaments To adorn it on my grandmothers mantle.

When people ask about this holiday season I proudly tell them that I’ll see both my parents In the same month. That’s got to be a record.

I prepare for my father and stack cherished items on his bed: The Brussels guidebook, my favourite chunky sweater. He sees me drink beer and coffee for the first time This holiday season — takes me out for mussels on a Monday And notices Guess How Much I Love You on the nightstand.

I wait for my mother to make the trip from the US with impatient glee And make lists of dishes to make together in my kitchen. She opens her suitcase and out tumble all her purchases: This holiday season — Trader Joe snacks, socks and medication. She wants to clean all my cupboards again.

My dad forgets to take me out for my birthday, this holiday season. I kid about needing a second hand bike, and he doesn’t laugh, But he tells me he loves me for the first time in ten years That’s got to be something, right?

I try to make it through the 24th and 25th, this holiday season. To cook the rabbit in red wine, wait for this outburst to pass. Weave around the broken glass and call the repairman. Make it worthy of being remembered by taking out the champagne, Using old rituals like crutches for something that’s not the same.

I can’t get up on Christmas Day, this holiday season. While my mother mutters to herself from behind the door About how I should find her glasses and the remote control. She tells me she’s convinced I love my cat more than I love her.

There is no snow coating the Brussels rooftops, this holiday season. Perhaps it’s silly to wait for magic to be sprinkled atop this city; For the years to come back as if we never stopped talking Or to want part of it just not what’s broken —  As if things could be split open and I could  Perform some surgery to make things better  Than how they used to be,  This holiday season. 

[abhapoetry]

I’ll Never Know

I feel unable to talk Stuck in a state of not wanting to disturb The quietness of your mind The still lake it casts over us Calm and suffocating And I wonder where you are when The discomfort inhabits you like a foreign animal That flinches when I touch your hand And freezes when I kiss you I wonder where you are when You start speaking like a stranger That little doubt in your eyes when I make a suggestion Staring out past my conversation into a field I’ll never know

[abhapoetry]

Boy with a Thorn

I look to you to see the truth Eyes dense flat and you still make it look smooth By the streetlights I wind in and out from you Stare at the way you appear so strange and beautiful

Don’t leave me here, take me into that darkness The scars you’ve taken for art, darling

Pull your arm to kiss you after sunset In the hot streets, tracing your lower back sweat You want to drink soju after we speak of those years Don’t know if you’re near or far now my dear

I want to tell you not to ever do what you’ve done But if you could have done anything else you would have, hon

I look to you to see the truth Make sense of the tone of words though you don’t want me to Seems silly to try but I’m just a girl with a habit Know you hate pity more than you hate what’s hurt you, darling

You told me we need the thorn to make meaning Like the shower of rain after the hot sun that morning

Have I ever wanted to crawl into someone’s skin? I think I’d want to be in your mind to know how it has been But I believe we were made to sever and and reunite things That the beauty grew from the thorn like you said, darling

[abhapoetry]

Old Coat

Intermittence, your hands searching I lean into your fingers curling around my edges My presence is funny because it’s scary True horror is someone who wants us When we want something else

Or the way you shrug off what I’ve been stuck on Like waiting for the post to arrive and admitting to it To further my embarrassment

Intermittence, when you respond like a question, The kind that doesn’t ask just pushes back And I can’t tell if your disdain is your own Or if you’re wearing someone’s old coat, trying To undo something that happened before you were born

Intermittence, when all my paranoia is given a name, Bathing in a reason, renewed in its purpose, To love someone I could never feel safe with, To at once reach out and protect — A double movement I’d suffer from If it wasn’t so learned

And I guess I don’t know what I’d do, Without the fear asking the question and your silence answering Without feeling like all I’m good for is mending something I didn’t break And hurting alone at 3am, and I guess I don’t know what I’d do, Without the yearning to be known by people who disappear before me, Who don’t know where they start and the loneliness begins Unsure what to make of love like it’s something already lost And I don’t know what I’d do, Without starting with your doubt to arrive at my desolate certainty Without filling in the confusion with more curiosity about Things no one not even God can tell me

[abhapoetry]

Stay

You make a beautiful eclipse The kind that asks why it’s gone dark As it moves across the moon at night

I don’t recognise your face, or mine, I can feel it settle into something rigid From behind my eyes — and I feel betrayed Knowing you’ve been operating from there for days

I watch you stumble over how to make it make sense But don’t you know love is senseless

You want me to appease you But you won’t let the hurt be Chest frigid, stomach heavy Whisper in the dark if I can sleep

I hold your hand and you ask if my eyes are open ‘No’, ‘What about yours?’, ‘Yes’ ‘What about now’, ‘No’

You hold me tight at my centre I put my chin at the top of your head You’re a fearful little boy here on my chest

And I’m a girl playing in the sand alone Writing in blue fountain pen I’m a girl packing her two suitcases On the way to the Eurostar A friend staying in the Upper West Side I’ll see my mother another time A minor on the plane to the DR Staring out the back of the car

And when she hears your doubts I tell her ‘Stay’ When you close your eyes I tell her ‘Stay’ When you apologise I tell her ‘Stay’ When you leave before dawn I tell her ‘Stay’

[abhapoetry]

Feel the Same

I ask my therapist why my chest went cold When you sat on my favourite quilt And said the word space

Why my fingers went tingly, and I felt The room get small, until it made A little box around my heart

Why the anxiety still stirs in my belly Like a big fish in a small pond Activated by the morning sun

Why I try and still feel so damn wrong Like I’ll never really love but still Want to try harder tomorrow

Why I have a desperation so strong Why it rises and beams when I’m happy Why it rips everything up off the ground when I’m not Why the weather turns for others and the seasons change for me Why you think I can make it go away breathing with a cup of tea Why it’s different for me

[abhapoetry]

Draw the Curtain

The world folds into me, tight Like the soggy napkin disintegrating in my pocket Childlike tears have gathered on my face Drops of sadness drops of rage

All I can hear from here is light buzzing Thoughts in me like hot flashes pulsating I avoid your gaze should you cause me to unravel

I’m not me now I’m some kind of substrate Experiencing it all through each of my pores The pit of my stomach opening like a trap door

I wish it could all stop just this once Not forever but at least for now That I could go backstage to take a moment Draw the curtain and hide under the table

I wipe my face with my hands Hide it from the world with my arms I breathe too fast and forget my name I’m somewhere else all the same

[abhapoetry]

Stuck at the Station

I ask you to close your eyes as I drunkenly take off my clothes Watch you naked in the bathtub and make a mountain of foam And isn’t this how it’s been with us?

You reaching and me retreating Turning to you when you’ve lost the feeling Sudden meetings turn into salvation But you’re used to burning through it all And I’m still stuck at the station

[abhapoetry]

Last Stop Termini

The wind blows through the peninsula We fall asleep hot and sticky from the sea salt on the Punta Campanella The stars are clearer tonight, I see one shooting into the sea You hold my hand at moonlight on the sentieri

You have an innocent face and a particular way of cocking your head Young boy set on his own world behind those pretty eyelashes

The cicadas sing as I nap after you get us a gelato special In a big glass: pistachio cioccolato nocciola stracciatella Topped with a cone we make little ice creams out of You and I have one every day it seems like

We missed our stop on the bus and ended up in Termini At some bar whose manager lost his wife and has half a life in Berlin Watching the local teenagers play ball Sunsets over the Mediterranean from our hilltop

Soft motor sounds of the boats making their way to capri Walking in the heat to the rhythm of our similarities You know just how to tease me and I concede Another way you like to bite me

The sun beats down on the nape of your neck From behind you I can see all those golden beads of sweat I smell you still and bury my head in your chest ‘I feel safe with you’ in the forest

Our tent and our towels My shorts and your boxers This shelter I made you Brown eyes I breathe into

A protective spider couple intertwined in the museum cloister Like our legs in the bed of the heavy heat of August I trace your face with my gaze and you ask me what it means I think I’m spinning a web between you and me

[abhapoetry]

Again and Again

I held you like an organ that had fallen out of my body You were always a soft mollusk honey I cradle your head because all I ever wished Was to make you feel protected We talk about all the things we’ve been through Trials and tribulations of our youth How we didn’t know how to do it In ways that didn’t hurt us and How we’ve always had respect and compassion But needed it for ourselves first and foremost This time we’d turn towards instead of away Stay and fix the broken plates And ask again and again How are you And remember again and again I love you And hope again and again I want you And admit again and again I need you

[abhapoetry]

Daughter

You taught me how to give more and more The tape misses my head as it crosses the floor You told me to watch my things Fear what the future brings You corrected my bad posture Let me cry it out and meet you after You comforted me on the couch Cried again about the same troubles You took me to see your mother Told me I never understood you when we argued You told me all about my father Reminded me of your violent brother You called me day in day out when I was away When I visited you’d have tantrums and find it hard to stay I wish I knew the right way to love you The daughter of her mother too

[abhapoetry]

You Remind Me

Remind me How you sing in the shower in the mornings Remind me The golden glow of your skin my darling Remind me How your hands tuck themselves around my waist Remind me The smell of the small of your back and your nape Remind me Your bright clear eyes on a summer’s day Remind me The weight of your head on my chest today You remind me The coffee brewing in the kitchen before I’ve awoken You remind me Coming back to our place devoid of your things heartbroken You remind me How you’d lift your arm to make me turn in my summer dress You remind me Once a lover always in my heart you’ll rest