cherrylimee

[cherrylimee]

pastina (1/7/24)

Tonight i ate an entire galaxy for dinner. I can feel it spinning in my stomach, running in circles, expanding and consuming until there are star-shaped particles in every cell. I thought about shedding the skin of someone i was 5 years ago but decided to give myself a few more days. I wanted to be fully sentient and alert when i did, driving into the headlights steadfast just as she would’ve stubbornly insisted. I still can’t digest anything about that summer, not a coming of age moment, but a kiss in my sleep and a vow to keep my joints warm. I often remind myself to let go, forgive nostalgia and only welcome her through the door on late nights when i’ve cleaned my room and made my bed. Although, i’ve practically dragged her the whole way here and that’s the only way it would’ve happened. I cling to this heaven and revisit in testimonials, as i no longer worship a god but the truth held in a poignant summers evening. She taught me to paw at the milk moon and pluck the stars like raspberries from a farm, and now i must teach her how to keep the warmth of solar systems within touch, even in the cloudiest winter. I know nothing more than the recipe to a good interplanetary storm. 

[cherrylimee]

passing dance (1/29/24)

It’s a passing dance, proliferating infatuation as the world falls elegantly to rest. It’s a sad kind of beauty where the object of affection is a poor creature refusing to turn over in the night. But if you want love in the morning, you must have love at all hours too; walking home from school counting the different ways you could kiss someone without expecting anything in return. Turning my head, the poor creature reminds me that worthiness is a forsaken burden, daring us to take up space as a rightful member of this universe. I am made of you, you are made of me, each born with stardust in our eyes and a tether to the ceaseless flow of time. I could be touched once more and realize my fate was never to explore this body but let someone else discover it for me. A mutual investigation, a fanciful game of tag, a bat of the eyelashes, and we were done before we ever began. The only shame would be becoming a pitiful distraction. 

[cherrylimee]

poet's disagreeance (7/11/24)

They say the poets disagree, 

When loveless attitude lies deep,

Language of romance,

Tickling whisper,

Meant for smallness,

Readying greatness. 

An inheritance awaiting,

Words not yet coherent,

Words defeated,

A string to attach,

Align your purpose.

Love spelled rhythm,

Lovespells rhythm 

Cast in twitches,

Irrevocable daydream,

My puzzle,

Yet to be muse.

Did you speak?

Or mumble?

Rumble with the stars

Heaven’s only appetite

My only failing.

With goodbye delayed

In scrutiny’s arms

My only holding

Dismissed, reminisced,

Betrayed.

To be something,

Not anything,

To feel the look,

With nothing to say.

To the books,

With nothing to say.

They say the poets disagree,

But not with me.

I am here to stay. 

[cherrylimee]

indigo (12/23/23)

Worn ash gray archaic wools,

Bitter breath hovering over cracked skin,

Say something something, anything, a mistake,

Resonant ringing in my right ear,

Pulses fragmented by depths uncharted.

Not all blood runs red, 

For a brief winter spell,

Mine turned, mutated,

Poured over the porch steps,

Empty sky and nocturnal azure.

Pawing at a milk moon,

Permafrost on our fingertips,

Fossilized and displayed,

Generations of supernovas

Rushing to the scene, 

Melting to be at large.

Lose your enchantress, this is it. 

An imprint of my door on your back,

Not meant to be alive, not quite dead yet,

In it for the run of things,

Indifferent to plight of man,

Ticking with detachment.

Cold, cloudy, tempest winter soul.

[cherrylimee]

tree bark

I am not guilty for being committed to the remnants of this world, the smiles that have fallen through the cracks, and birds of paradise who have molted their feathers. Faded farewells are evidence that something was once there, and I’m no longer worried about having nothing at all. So i’ll go alone and listen to the poetry that’s been left on the side of the road, encompassing lucid feelings that we can’t quite seem to catch or let go of. I’m home when I remember to love for the sake of loving, no matter how naive or problematic it proves to be. I really liked when you came around and I didn’t have to ask for you to stay. 

There were a couple hours late on a monday night in may where i truly believed that nothing could take my love away and it was only because i listened to the trees that were taking their time to grow, rustling in the wind with rejoicing statements that the winter was over. How happy and content they were, how encouraging it felt to progress as nature has directed me, realizing my habits and desires are seasonal sweaters i try on when the weather changes. Back to that night, i was free. The birds coveted my ability to hug the harsh storms and i said their wings were more beautiful in the sunlight. Midnight, they told me it will never get better but expect good things by reading as your home changes. Build a nest, collect shiny things, and stay witness to hassle on the streets.

(11/5/23)

Give us one more day, another lap around, and then I can pass by with accepted harmony. In and out of naivety, watching the lights at night, and wondering what is changing from week to week and year to year. It’s a beautiful thing to access your heart as the center of the world, where these words are hidden and smothered so that they may remain the garden of eden. We were just young. 3:39 with the trees and snow again, said hi to the janitors that morning, never went to sleep, just class and lunch with a friend. 3:40 another cigarette, deep breaths of cold air to vitalize and reincarnate. 3:41 where did i go? To die and be reborn, eating my tail as i grow a new one, continually and paradoxically becoming something new while my head stays on its shoulders. These visions are symbiotic with the circles around the sun, glaring and brazing onto my skin as bruises for memories gone past.

[cherrylimee]

🧩

into the same puzzle but for some the stabilizing forces stand out. evolutionary theory sees initiation because these traits haul the power to sustain. oh how difficult it feels to expect a magnetic force and expect time, in all other ways, to humor someone. you want to keep a key being in isolation at home, being in bed, being positive, moving through life, never aligned.

[cherrylimee]

spoons (10/1/23)

A spoon is to eating as I am to the perishable confines of my youth. Definite purpose is hidden in an ever-changing portrait, running to change lines’ ends, fixating on reflection and retirement. A direction of perpetual motion leads to a hovering cliff guarding a tumble to the edge of being. Yet prophecy hides in shelves and boxes, where rust-stained objects of youth tether fools to their need for a journey. Would such a gorgeous girl like me linger on proposed talismans? Playing with their temporality, poking at the tender apologies and goodbyes, and begging to be taken seriously when it’s stuck in the in-betweens. Chasms from what happened then and now, puzzle pieces, collages, sewing together what was torn apart. The house that was built versus the home that was lived in, and the notion of what should have been. 

A spoon is to eating as I am to cultivating vitality from what is buried within. A spoon will dig a tunnel through cement jail walls. A spoon will balance on your father’s nose as he turns the dinner table into a comedy club. A spoon will snuff out a candle when it’s time to turn the lights out. A spoon will feed you dinner and restore energy until hunger bangs at your door once again. 

[cherrylimee]

unfinished (8/23/23- )

One foot out the door and into the new year,

Embracing and unpacking what was left behind,

Booking flights and buying walking shoes,

So that i may turn a corner and find another version of you.

What is gone must stay gone, 

Where hungry ghosts feast on the love that you declined,

But you packed it in a bag,

Said it would be a midnight snack.

Then for the rats and roaches is the last meal we shared together.

Your mercy is not appreciated,

And galaxies in a cereal bowl could not satisfy you,

So the twilight is enough, 

So you can disguise your insatiability with kittens pawing at a milk moon.

I’ll be here staring into deep space trying to understand the colors,

Because I deserve the “someday” mentality,

And every good smile that beautiful views may bring,

So that with time my guts might mimic the streets that i linger on.

Learning to let go never felt like saying goodbye,

It was a retrieval of power and vitality,

A way to gift the freedom that i preciously crave,

Cutting telephone cords and any strings that tethered me to you.

Do not call, do not knock on my door, do not wait on the sidewalk

Until you are ready to confess.

Truth or myth, your words simmer in my chest,

And instrumental voice memos replay with untitled thoughts of heat.

Night and day, I dream of running into him on the street.

The songs I loved at 15 entering the continuum,

Prayers for a day that I can finally live with them.

Writing set off to the atmosphere and the abyss,

Words I once loved deeply have now been dismissed.

[cherrylimee]

slow whisper long night (9/14/23)

Dialectal differences and the way the heart awakens after every nightmare, sharp breaths in and tingling feet from the envisioning of a greater day. Walls too humid for anything to stick and philosophical arguments for the sake of being right. It itches and burns, a horrible stinging that the conversation must come to an end. Molting what once was and gifting it to the earth so that some vitality might be gained from the remnants of a neutral conversation. It must change. It must evaporate slowly and leave lines inside the cup we once drank out of. Quiet boy, kneeling for a hit of the words he wants to hear, inhaling but receiving no buzz. It all seems too canny yet the offense to learning the truth was never so hard to bear. I know my feelings and my words to be sly candles in long hallways, following them because you know I cannot sleep. Why doubt these premonitions? Why do you not believe I deserve to have an idle rest? Why must you continue to haunt me when I’ve already paid the check?

[cherrylimee]

intuition (9/8/23)

I was speaking to someone on the topic of self and how to cope with the fact that we have limits even the gods aren’t aware of. I tried to explain how we already possess what we need to be whole and there will never be a feeling of completeness as long as we are chasing what does not belong to us. Not to be complacent with inadequacy, but to accept our shortcomings and realize we must desire change for ourselves before making accurate decisions to proceed. In a grand scheme of meaninglessness, there are still fragments of personality and childlike joy that provide us with a semblance of self. I may have not yet discovered everything that is meant to find me, but I know that I like mixing textiles when I get dressed and having a cold glass of water while i’m reading before bed. I will never know why I have an innate desire for fine dining or rainstorms during golden hour but I do not need to know in order to proceed with my life. I tried to explain the phrase “when you know you know” but all we ever hear is a doubtful answer that doesn’t clarify what is right for us. 

When explaining this process of intuition, I realized that my peers possess a chasm between their flesh and consciousness- not one of their cells is sure of anything in this world. I’m still not sure either. It feels as though we possess an inertia that keeps us in place until the climate is ready for us to move, opposed to finding momentum within. The past will always be there for us to return to, memories will not leave, and old beings of self continue to linger in the way we tie our shoes and brush our teeth. The excellence of youth is that it escapes us by convincing past lives that time has already been lost. Introspection will not save us from ourselves, but provide a platform to stand on when the insignificance becomes too much to bear. And so we are insignificant in everything we do, the degrees, performances, weddings, late-night calls to friends because we miss their voices, solo-trips to urban chaos, presentations on abstract painters who came before us. Alone with the consequences of my actions, I still care with atomic intent as to how my self-fulfilling prophecy proceeds. I couldn’t live without these things, thus I am complete in knowing that certain ideas are meant for me right now and others I have yet to resonate with. It’s comfortable because I trust myself and the beauty I have learned to gravitate toward.

[cherrylimee]

the summer self is only ephemeral,

but to have them deep in our lungs forever, a cough you can’t and won’t get rid of,

a reflection on the moments that made naked bodies seem objective,

the hours where all was gratefully lost to dissonance and bountiful recoveries from our falls,

the realization that our honest souls came to this couch to escape from the gold-filled cavities of our youth.

so for a minute the sun fills the spaces between souls,

a high energy philosophy is born,

and anything in the daylight is the exact antidote to human flaws and clauses.

is it true that the weather can affect someone so ardently? so purely that cycles return with exact precision so that light may never feel the same again?

i want off the rollercoaster and onto the beaches with a striped towel and red nails, same as my mother and the mothers that came before,

we lay in the light and grow so that our wrinkles may tell the tales of roaring waves and approaching strangers.

we lay in the light so that we may escape into the recesses of paradise and imagine a life where we may always feel limitless and at peace.

we lay in the light with loved ones and read words of poets before us, becoming the image we see and reflecting all that is good back to the world.

sweet in every season and warm when embraces can truly radiate.

[cherrylimee]

Tanti Auguri (7/19/23)

After two decades, all I can say is that the sun is good- chase it until you die, but do not live without experiencing the moon first.

You will cry, and the next time it happens will be the beginning of old adult problems, however, it is imperative that the weird smiles linger on. Betray the pain in your joints and allow the minutes to flow through and out, in between flexed wrists and into a reach beyond anyone's eyeline. A little ambient in the sun, reflecting all that's golden, pushing light toward any corner that can physically receive it. Bent words and bent legs are only part of the hour, and in a year you can rely on the vibrations on your skin and a couple good friends to get you along. May the years remain as precious as the metal on your wrist. xoxoxo

[cherrylimee]

pin-curls (8/7/23)

For the girl that was too scared to sleep with the light off. 

For the girl that weakened floorboards by relentlessly tap dancing across the kitchen floor. 

For the girl that would check the locks 7 times before she could even consider sleeping. 

She was raised on empty prayers that filled an empty stomach, learning to treat love like a religion while begging to be believed. I am nothing yet everything she wanted. 

It’s for the girl who desired to get free, to sink beneath the surface, to dive until there was nothing left to find. It’s for those moments where she had to prove her existence and belonging to the part she was destined to play. It’s for dusty mirrors and reflections they were hiding. It’s for the 10 beanie baby kittens in the back of the car. 

She was going to be a lawyer and use her persuasive language to fund her trips to California where they said the sunsets were otherworldly. Every plan was lofty enough to have been born in space and she was still young enough to make it happen. 

It’s for the girl who was and still is too naïve to realize that dreams change, that they melt and mold with every bit of laughter and every failed test. They say to give your younger self hugs through the time past, but I think it’s the other way around. I know that this girl with pin-curls would say the realest things to me, just as I wish I could with the version of me that I haven’t discovered yet. I’m sorry to have betrayed her dreams, but if she saw the car I drive now then I assume all would be forgiven. 

For the girl I once was, I refuse to mourn the past and I hope you know that nothing has changed; the sun still hits the same and your bedroom is just as messy. Here’s to the years that have yet to fly by. 

[cherrylimee]

applied heat (7/30/23)

Summer I love you but I think you’re getting lost in translation. I think the wind howls in defiance of the sun settling on my skin. The mirages of heat getting trapped on distant highway pavements are convincing me that I can’t trust what I see. We live a slower life here, one that I wish was elevated by the vibrations of molecules in the air. I only see you because it’s light reflecting off surfaces and I’ll never be able to truly touch you because there’s an infinitely small atomic gap keeping us from sliding through each other. Have you ever been scorched by your eagerness? Well I must’ve been, and these burns convince me to hide away, stay under a safe roof, and fulfill the strange desires by shadowboxing. To swing before you’ve been hit, to attack the blurry lines even when it’s overcast, to allow the prodigal son to leave and come back and leave again because it never seemed real in the first place. 

Summer I love you but maybe I’m the one getting confused and miss the first feeling of lustrous glow when you let me be okay with being alone. I miss when the months were still uncertain and July was only just beginning. In August I’ll light a candle and rejoice in how we were promised so much, anticipating the next elemental shift that I will owe my blood to. Enter laughing for we were never promised the future. Be gentle when the stars call late at night. Cradle the peaches at every second until you devour them on a well lit dock to watch the fish frenzy. Sleep in a new town and never be caught looking at things a little too long. Feel the warmth, the buzzing in your chest, and only trust yourself every now and then.

Summer I love you but I will have to say goodbye and shake the hands of my new docents and I can’t betray the course of the earth’s rotation.

Summer I love you and I know that time will bend so that we were never apart at all.

Summer I love you but this humidity has rusted my joints and I have to get moving, somewhere, anywhere, I have to go. 

[cherrylimee]

untitled (5/27/23)

A summer where the days turn into years,

soft sounds from the sky cradle you like a bundle of hydrangeas that were wrapped in recycled paper and brought to your latest dinner.

Gifts from the earth show that patterns are completing themselves,

even the fish and birds, from completely different realms, are beginning to intertwine.

Is romanticism the collapse of this natural separation?

Or is it the final release that indicates we are all part of the same being?

I am no one without this world or the markings it leaves on every fragile surface.

Unplanned events bring me closer to you and somehow I know they weren’t a surprise at all.

To my lucky stars:

guide me where you please and I will honor it in every tangible way that I can manage. 

[cherrylimee]

sour gummy worms (4/4/23)

Return to typing whatever works best, take time to put it down and into words. I have 6 minutes until I have to switch places, and sit in a new room, craving the same substance that is just out of reach. With 6 minutes, I could do so much; I’ll text my friends back, respond to that one guy who happens to be sitting 20 feet away from me, patch things up so they stop consuming me, maybe get a coffee, and then go outside where the sun has hidden from me. I’ll chase it down and turn it away with my endless pleas for passionate heat and nutrition so that my roots may grow deep. There is not a feeling more painful than emptiness, yet the words are slamming their way out and billowing down the stairs, tearing membranes as they claim their place in the world. 3 minutes left. The song is changing and we feel a different tempo. The space that our thoughts once occupied is now open for what the world pleases. Societal constructs and zoo-like captivity bring us to remember yesterday’s to-do list. I forgot to make dinner. I had no time and eventually filled my void with sour gummy worms. Tangled and bundled, they fuel me now. The more complex their pattern, the more there is to digest. In our last 30 seconds together, I’m going back to eat more gummy worms and wonder why they are only texting back once we are already returning to empty.

[cherrylimee]

xoxo (july ‘23)

It’s times like this where we can’t feel the air on our skin, that the hours are persuaded into twilight. 

It’s not fair as the lights send reflections across the water and onto your face.

It’s not fair when we cannot be submerged in a 2:00 am fever forever.

It’s not fair how when the present is thin, we are most compelled to do the things we wouldn’t dare.

My knees were bloody from the deeds that honor our youth. 

Your hair was polluted by empty sonnets exhaled into decommissioned ears.

It’s times like this where I’m looking for passing vibrations and siren sounds to drag me out before my hand grows into the side of your skull.

There forever in a field of clover, the trees grow over us.

In our motionless gaze, we decay until our bones collapse in on one another. 

To the mushrooms and a feeding frenzy, 

To the desire of being infinitely frozen in time,

To the meditation on images we will never forget.

Couldn’t you just die here?

Staring at the few stars that persist through the smog,

Daring to imagine the day where we return and recycle the moment as proof that we were once good lovers.

Spoken like a true poet, I exaggerate this story as a good one.

Hoping it won’t be the last, 

but if it is then may it be preserved in a temperature controlled room where the hours turn into days turn into years and eventually turn into fondness.

It’s not fair to become only fuel for the fire.

It’s not fair to insist on another lifetime.

It’s not fair for this story to be forgotten as it is smothered by the next passage that’s forced to the surface.

It’s times like this where I thank my singular lucky star for appearing in spite of incineration,

And may we live long enough to see an entire universe be reborn.