aprilwashere

[aprilwashere]

inside me

I want you inside me. 

I want your face to settle behind my eyes

so even when I drift into fever-hot sleep, 

I feel your arm tucked neatly 

over my shoulder. 

You remain here, 

shuttered from howling summer winds, 

in my brain, in the moments 

between hazy meetings, past-due bills. 

In this place, we’re still in love. 

Together, we lay on our favorite hill, 

awash in light dancing its way

between red-winged blackbirds,

suspended in mid-flight 

and new, unfurling oak leaves. 

Here, we find a piece of warmth, keeping it for ourselves, 

and whenever I wish you would kiss me, you do 

an answer without a question. 

Then, we fall and become one with the grass, 

forever green and growing. 

Your eyes like to follow the scattered shards of sky

which peek between those oak leaves, 

and in that moment we know

the trees are more alive than we are. 

[aprilwashere]

[aprilwashere]

Your mind evolved to keep you alive, not to keep you safe

You have to be intentional about bringing joy into your life.

[aprilwashere]

the only thing that still bugs me, a year after breaking up with you

The only thing that I can't let go of, after ending things with you and fully coming to terms with how badly you treated me is:

you think you're the good guy

you think I'm worse off without you

you think I'm still depressed, anxious, maybe even more so now that I've let you go

you think that I envy you

you think that I miss you

and I wish I could make you feel how much joy I have without you, how I have grown so far beyond you. I wish I could make you understand how deep and wide my heart has grown, now that I've learned to be unafraid of it. I wish you could see how repulsed I am by you, how I want absolutely nothing to do with you.

Once I learned to love myself unconditionally, I realized I never really loved you. My love for myself, now, runs so much deeper than you would ever let mine run for you.

I hate you not because of what you did to me, but what you did to her - the wide-eyed girl I was when I was fifteen. Some anger is righteous, right?

[aprilwashere]

Abusers will cross your boundaries on purpose, harass you, drive you to guilt, discomfort, sleeplessness, make you so paranoid you make mistakes and then point a finger at you and say “see? It’s all your own fault.”

[aprilwashere]

Submitted by @pennilessphotographer:

“Fear of Being Exposed”

Artist–Zeren Badar

[aprilwashere]

why I love you

You make it feel like there is green grass growing in my heart. 

[aprilwashere]

when you only remember after it happened

TW- SA

Do you fear what your mind crafts lies while you sleep?

Did you make it up, 

the blue fist across collar bone, 

turning you over,

the cool pillow on your feverish cheek?

Was that a lie, 

a lie like that which persuaded you

to take his plastic drugs?

Your dreams, cerulean and orange

expand beyond your fragile skull. 

You are nothing, 

and in that nothingness there is everything. 

[aprilwashere]

I’m not interested in being innocent

and I’m not interested in being ashamed. 

[aprilwashere]

on being the daughter of colonizers

The horizon spares no one, 

not even you, small girl hiding in prairie grass. 

You play in mounds 

carved by buffalo, long dead, 

a victim of your ancestors’ tirades. 

Land, land, more land, 

we consume until we find our tails in the pit

of our sallow stomach. 

You, girl, are the one who stumbled

across fossilized dung and cast shadows

across outlaw graves.

The blood earth holds them safe, 

and you slide over bedrock 

on a raft of your own making. 

Ghosts of spring rains churn the soil, 

bringing up dead leaves from the fall 

from the safety of ancient mud. 

Everything rots.

Even your grandmother, 

willowing into the leather couch. 

Blue light flickers across her hallowing cheekbones, 

flesh melting, candle wax. 

This is your failure:

the shotgun, cool in the shadow of the big bed.

There, you plays hide and seek, 

falling asleep

clutching the barrel close to your baby-fat, 

dreaming of your birthright:

imitation. 

[aprilwashere]

tributary

I would kiss you, as a tributary kisses sea. 

Your altar is a familiar place in a strange land. 

You offer help off the floor, hold my hair. 

You witness my rotten vices- 

the pill bottles spilling their contents into my nightstand drawer, 

the stories of the girl I loved before I knew

I would be strong enough to unfurl linen masts, 

pull the splinters from my palm, 

search for myself and find 

you. 

She, Venus, soft and tall

moon-milk skin, breath of hibiscus. 

Her hair rippled and fell, silk across her shoulders, 

the shoulders I’ve kissed

the shoulders I’ve bruised. 

She, the siren

She, the bright-eyed doe. 

You, Jupiter, small and sinew, 

voice deep, a hunting horn

echoing over rolling hills and rabbit holes

to the base of the mountain. 

This mountain I have known, 

longer than I’ve known my name. 

This climb, 

too sacred to be taken. 

But you set up camp at the peak, 

so tall you reach up and brush space. 

You grin, and offer a hand, 

and together we watch the sun’s death-rattle rays

kiss the ocean. 

[aprilwashere]

[aprilwashere]

♡ yagogazali ♡ 

[aprilwashere]

[aprilwashere]

on losing your virginity and your religion

Compromising is an art:

giving a purity ring for a twin xl mattress,

sinking into a couch cushion

instead of hiding in the basement

defying the black funnel,

a descendant of the dust your great grandfather

fortified the little white house against.

He fought with newspaper and washcloth,

fought to think more about staying than leaving.

Now, his descendant watches the funnels,

the thunder and black clouds and dreams

of running with lightening

across straw and beetle-nest.

Her soft heel toughens against thorns and snakes.

She hears the rattle and laughs,

voice rising, twisting until it settles above the boiling sky.

Her cotton shirt lifts across her bare breast,

bearing witness:

no sermon can revoke a body or a body's rot.

Her tongue knows this taste,

bitter perfume traced across neck and knee

metallic ring through a soft nipple.

You never heal, you only forget.

The storm is in the rain.