bugsthoughtmachine

[bugsthoughtmachine]

Fluffy cotton balls filled to the brim

Bending until they burst

Soft tears trickle down from them

Until they reach my shingled rooftop

The fluffy cotton balls get darker the more

They let their water go

And I notice the wind whipping my hair as I listen

The rain taps and rapps

And rolls down into our plastic gutters

I listen until I can't let it go anymore

I swing open our white and creaky screen door

Running out to feel the temperature drop

Framing our cold concrete porch

A place so gray it matches the peeling paint

Lies a dead flower bed not yet bloomed for the spring

We've had more rain here lately and our yard is lopsided

But the flower bed is calling

Framing our muddy overflow

As with every drop does more mud come,

Are wooden blocks maybe 6 inches long

So soft I could cradle them at night

So soft I could use them to rest

So soft I can hear them tell me everything is going to be okay

I flip them over one by one

Until my mind is satisfied

Busy bustling beetles reach for the moisture

Worms smarter than their brothers on the sidewalk

Wiggling and writhing underneath my shadow

Pill bugs.

I pick them up, all kinds of bugs,

Place them delicately in my palm

I feed the ants my lollipops

After I've licked it enough that it's soft

Sticky fingers and sticky mouth

My sticky face hovering to watch

I love to feed them

Pill bugs all curled up in my palm

I'll stand in this rain until the bugs go home

[bugsthoughtmachine]

Thoughts on the only one I'd ever let hurt me;

Swirl your finger in my ear, tap inside of my eardrum. The reverberations won't sing back whistles of anxiety or fear, only the love that I hold inside for someone. I've loved stronger than that of an old willow tree, rooted deep down into the pits of the universe. I've often asked dogs to please please just bite me, for if I'm left alone I'll spiral into my own forbidden curse. I haven't sang my song to you yet for fear of what you'll think, though I know you were the one to open my vocal chords first. When I first lashed out and bit at your hand faster than I could blink, I echoed the agony of love that could at once make my heart burst. My auburn sunrise that I hold late at night as though I'll never greet you again, please God let me bite at your fingers. Because though it seems my love doesn't pour as much as I swear my mind does rain, the ache of the past still lingers. Do not let me go in this lifetime I beg you, I'll claw my eyes open until I bleed. I haven't felt the iceberg crash more times than two, but I'd sink with the boat if only you'd take the lead.

[bugsthoughtmachine]

Here's something I wrote in 2021 when i was battling an eating disorder. Enjoy the cringe fest won't you?

Oozing crystallized pain from a dark

Place of deep and bruised strain

I find a laceration of hatred

Tucked between the rolls

Butter rolls

No I mean paper rolls rolls of paper

The kind you use to write your equations on

Well no now you mentioned food what of it

Calories

No salary

I only made 12 dollars this week

I ate 1200 calories this week

Are you proud of me

My stomach turns

I've found that bruise I told you about

Deep in the pit of my stomach

It lurches forward

Pie

No cherry pie

No the number pie

Yes math I say school's been crazy

I lost my friend the other day can you make

These thoughts just stop?

[bugsthoughtmachine]

Clattering Spoons

Whisps of cotton

Flung high into the air

Clinging onto hope

My brain spinning against my skull

I breathe in and out slower

My jaw chatters

Who's hands are these?

Who's feet?

My knees clack against each other

My fingers begin to peel

I can't seem to get this right

[bugsthoughtmachine]

I sit inside a draped skeleton

A wooden skeleton

The kind with creaking noises at every lunge

Draped with soft Grey cloth.

I glance at the vipers tongue

Lashing out as sunlight shines down upon it

From the crooked corner.

I see ghosts of lilacs

Echoes of mourning doves

A billowing steam boils over my hands

I inhale the breeze as it catches my neck.

Ticking of a clock serves forth no purpose

Not amidst the echoes of nicotine walls

Not amidst agony washed phantoms

Not amidst whimsical dreams of what is.

I sit a sipping my usual morning coffee

Admiring the forethought I had years ago

Sunbeams lighting up the craters on my cheeks

I still the creaking chair and grin.

[bugsthoughtmachine]

What if I chase the dream and it fails? I asked.

Maybe the more important question is - who do I become when I stop chasing my dreams? he answered.

[bugsthoughtmachine]

When I slipped the pages down my fingers

A pervasive sting causing a wince

Not at the flap of skin left behind

But the bloody handprint

Pressed deep into the heart and soul

Of every single woman that I know

The curvature of the R

Tearing the guts out one at a time

I miss the peace

The piece if me left there with him

30 percent he whispers

Children

20 percent

Women

A creeping crawling seeping sting

The skin begins to break before me

I fold the paper back up

[bugsthoughtmachine]

A conversation with my brain

Me: okay brain! Time to get creative!

Brain: *noises of pure agony and rage*

Me: Okay...time to rest?

Brain: Who do you think I am? Sloth reincarnate?

Me: What about some productive self care?

Brain: I will have a meltdown, right. now.

Me: So what do you want to do?

Brain: Sit on a cold, hardwood floor and count the ceiling tiles.

Me: No.

Brain: oh yes

[bugsthoughtmachine]

I gnaw on the lateral sides of my tongue,

planted firmly to the inside of my hollow cheeks

I ripped a hangnail off too fast,

it ripped up my hand and over my head

till I've pulled a heartstring,

It reverberates through my throat,

making me gnaw harder.

Fidgeting with my skin is a poisonous habit,

an ache an addiction I cannot banish

I wiggle my toes as I hold her picture,

knocking my knee against tables and corners

Smiling as I pull off all of my nails.

Without the girl whose picture I clutch,

I rip off chunks and gnaw off pieces of myself

until all that is left is the blonde girl,

the blonde-haired girl curled up on the carpet

taking pictures of the only things she has ever known.

[bugsthoughtmachine]

Tiny Creatures

Before, when I was small,  everyone said I talked too much. My squeaking voice a door hinge that had never gotten the grease. Before, when I was little, My ramblings were loud and audacious  with sharp edges, like that of a razor blade on every word. Before, when I was tiny, I tried to bite my tongue hoping for the blood to clog my thoughts  when the excitement would well up  heavily behind my eyes. Tiny creatures, tiny children, small angels We consistently feel a tightness in our throat An excitement bubbling inside our belly  ​Until the words curl over as tears. Can adults speak of passion they have never cried out? 

[bugsthoughtmachine]

Flower Kisses in Aching Bones

Deeply I inhale the sunflower scent,  The blue sky boost of Seratonin I hadn't felt the blades of grass in months The orange kiss of the sun It laughed on my cheeks. When my bones lay deepest  Settled, nestled into corners of my skin you cannot reach I dive into the clear blue waters. Full of fissures beyond repair, You have forgotten every quick and vacant sin. As my peace dances among honeybees and tulips Your laugh does grow among the daisies While the rose pettles fall as the sun does set I hear your comfort near, settled into a path I'd never noticed.  I had dug throughout the brush many a cold night Dark mayflies inside of my ears their hum taunting my every desire But the path you'd shown me, so dim at first It was always there 

[bugsthoughtmachine]

To Love the Ocean

The mousey creaking of my voice and his chair, noises echoing off the amber tar soaking up all the porous words we exchange and his lungs are like cotton balls. I imagine plundering heavily through his conscience and lap He shoved me away again, a dynamic intertwined like hemlock roots, I do not understand I ask for a hierarchy Grasping at every clear-celled containment of poison as I fall Down to the pyramid bottom and scrape my knees. To yearn for affection from an ocean wave is to guess when your ears will hum, and salt will burn the blood the scuffle of agony you already felt when he denied you Never, note this down, never ask the ocean to cease its waves merely stand from afar and abhor its secrets  its venomous creatures in its deathtrap nature. I want to be held.  I asked to be held as a small child would if they'd never received it, Hesitantly and excitedly A foul name. Breathlessly I back away clawing at the fissures in my palms In a way, these words carve holes in my ears Big enough for slices of me to slide into To fold into To hold myself. The creaking of my voice and his chair quickly turns to laughter As the footrest slams down and the newly places wave comes to crash down on me again, I remember: He never promised to get better. ​I only expected it. 

[bugsthoughtmachine]

I Hate Love Poems

You trudge through my space as though I do not remember the first time my head found your chest the first time I heard your beating heart and you taught me how to be still. The first time your caramel eyes whispered to me about love. You carry yourself as though I do not remember the feeling of your fingertips running across my shoulders and dancing through my hair  every night that I close my eyes. You breathe in nervously as though I do not elate at the sight of auburn fire a sunrise sent especially for me ​Disguised oh-so casually. 

[bugsthoughtmachine]

I don't know where to Go

I sit along a river bank, the rocky kind, the kind with sand wedged between the snails I don't have much to me, I'm the overall kind, the denim kind where pockets are full of holes.  I watch the fish fly by, the pretty kind, the kind that leap into nets as fast as they're born My lungs haven't scraped the ocean floor, the sandstone kind, the pink tissue kind of lung where an inhale feels like iron. I scoop up dead birds, the black crow kind, as I trudge the embankment with mud in my pores I know I saw a path somewhere, the stepping stone kind,  the kind that could take me home.  But instead, I sit along a river bank, the forgotten kind, Moss overgrowing my once feathery hair, and mushrooms accompany my soft skin as it folds  into nature, the beautiful kind,  ​Where peace and moving forward have not met in years. 

[bugsthoughtmachine]

Abusive Relationships

I felt the dark, swirling eyes dancing around me, A fire circle of judgment I felt over and over again this hate I've never been more curious about a sensation  As if my back tooth aches when I chew And yet I clench my jaw to feel its pleasant sting. I never loved a sensation more than the gentle slicing of his thoughts As I can feel his heart beating and racing against mine Ripping open my wounds one by one sunshine beaming on his face I would die to soak in those rays I can die with these oozing aches.  What does worth mean to an everyday mind it is an enigmatic question  it is an aching amidst the bones locked inside of a freezer they never seem to thaw my bones they hurt and yet I grind their fissures down, ​I have wanted to go home for so long.