internalfires

[internalfires]

Unprepared

When he told me he loved me, my heart was not ready. Confused, my mind was still not accustomed to the idea that good things could happen to me. How could the boy I had loved for years love this girl with bruised insides. I kissed him and cemented this memory like a pressed flower into the pages of my mind. I breathed an 'I love you' into his lips, and the 'I love you too' that came back felt foreign but calming. They tell you not to build your heart around silly boys that are made to break them, But naïveté comes easier than the truth. And I am content to drown in dreams of a future neither of us can see yet. I told him that love is not a promise, Just a feeling. But perhaps I was underestimating the strength of the heart to crack open the ribcage in its effort to be seen. My mind mumbles embarrassed apologies for my hearts behavior, But my heart knows the truth: There is no shame in caring for another person, There is no shame in falling in love, There is no shame in jumping head first into fragile feelings. When he tells me he loves me, my heart is not prepared, But for the first time, I remember that there is beauty in the unexpected.

[internalfires]

When love became okay

It was like something changed. Like a light switched on, illuminating the room, for the first time, I realized there was no monsters hiding under the bed. There would be no consequences when the words left my lips. I did not need validation or reciprocation to voice my feelings, They were there, and valid all on their own— I love you. The way your eyes widen when you're playing innocent and your knack for knowing details. You painted stars in the darkness of my room as your words swirled into pictures that told the history of the world, that night only amplified the feelings my heart already knew to be true-- I love you. Your hands pull my waist close as you lean in and kiss me with a sense of wanting I thought I only possessed, And I wonder for a moment if your lips are made of glass, Because mine bleed stories of your presence. There was the morning I pretended to be sleeping as your fingers brushed against my jawline, and I wondered for a moment what it might be like to never sleep alone. I fell in love with you the moment you became my best friend. Hours passed with you like seconds and for the first time in my life I discovered that I could be ignited by another person. That I could never be alone in the universe, As long as there was you.

[internalfires]

Not so much a love story

We were lying on my bed all twisted sheets and innocent touching, and my mind began coursing with thoughts I had not yet said out loud. A boom box set on repeat in the middle of my cerebrum, I am drowning in feelings that feel foreign in a broken heart like mine. When I tell him I love him, he is silent. I push my head into his chest and squeeze my eyes tightly shut. I am a little girl again, Scared and hiding, I am hoping he will save me. But when his words do come, they do not mend my pride. He is haphazardly trying to sew me back together, but let us not kid ourselves, the only answer to 'I love you' my heart will deem curative is 'I love you too'. So when he shakes out a reply about not being ready, I do not handle the moment with dignity or grace. I cry and untangle myself from his arms. I do not want to touch— I want to disappear. I want to shove the words back and let them dissolve under my tongue. I want to wake up and brush this moment off, as a less than perfect dream. He is pulling my body back towards him and asking me not to cry. But this moment is not about him, it is about a legacy of insecurity and distorted self image. How easily we let ourselves fall prey to the vicious cycles that pave our own self loathing, for in that instant, I realized, loving someone else could never make me love myself.

[internalfires]

Here I sit, in the same car I drove to escape from my feelings last year. Once again listening to slow music and trying to figure out my place in the world. . Last summer I sat thinking about how desperately I wanted to be with him. I somehow felt like dating him would fill this void in my life. I think the biggest thing I've learned while being in a relationship is that the only person who can truly be responsible for your own healing, is yourself. . Be with someone because they make you happy, because they make you better, not because they leave you feeling whole. You were whole long before their hazel eyes graced yours.

[internalfires]

A Guide To Making Me Fall In Love With You

Buy me poetry books— Sandwiched between pages, leave notes, Traces of your existence, Remind me, that you too, are ignited by words. Trace picturesque scenes on bare skin, Your fingers are paintbrushes, Leave my flesh a masterpiece-in-progress. Text me when your mind is intoxicated with thoughts of my mouth, but your blood alcohol content is zero. Kiss me like tomorrow, Yearning, new, not quite here yet. Leave me with a heart so full that I will forget all the ones before, who broke it. Let your tongue never be a sword, Words were not meant to cut, They were meant to heal, and build, and set fires in the bellies of people who feel empty. Ride with me in my car late at night when the world makes a little more sense, Sing with me in the front seat, Take my clothes off in the backseat. Only stop kissing me because you’re laughing too hard to continue. Show me your secret places, between gardens of innocence and deserts of loneliness. Show me your secret places. And perhaps, I too, will become one.

[internalfires]

I want to make love to you in my childhood home, bring your hips to my hips in every place I ever felt small, find better reasons for staying up nights.

“Bunk Beds” Trista Mateer (via tristamateer)

[internalfires]

Love and other four letter words

I was midway through dinner when she asked me, "Have you told him that you love him yet?" . Perhaps, my answer came a little too quickly, maybe, a little too quietly. . "No." . She did not ask me to elaborate and I was thankful. . My mind, was swirling because I said no, but what I meant was, No—because I've risked too much already to say it first. No—because he once told me he didn't believe in love and the fear of unrequited feelings has stayed on my tongue like the taste of peppermint. No—because 'I love you' does not adequately convey the feeling I want to express. No—because what is said aloud cannot be taken back and I have never encountered a more dangerous four letter word. No—because 'I love you' is too easily interpreted as 'I need you'. No—because saying 'when we kissed on Nicollet Island you tasted like fire and the words you speak are like ribbons uncurling themselves in my chest' makes me so vulnerable, I feel paralyzed. . No—because loving you was never a choice, and I so fear the things I cannot control.

[internalfires]

Tell me how you never saw me coming. How you never thought I’d mean a thing. How a doormat becomes welcoming if you step on it long enough.

Fortesa Latifi (via zuiol)

[internalfires]

Fragility

I,

I want to write about car accidents or hurricanes, the inevitability of destruction when two forces meet, the aftermath, I want to talk about every time I spat blood on tiled floors and called it hope

II.

for now I will unpack the boxes inside my chest, rearrange the mirrors color the walls every shade of yellow I will open all the windows until sunlight beams through my skin III now I am the home I crave.

[internalfires]

Krista Lee

I think I fall in love with anyone who says my name correctly without pausing too early or lingering too long my name should be said like a punchline, like the intake of breath before laughing, like sunlight tracing the curve of your lips it should be sacred like a promise to stay the night, like the first raspberries of summer, like hands falling together for the first time it should be whispered like a prayer, like the moment someone lays their head against your chest and finds home, like slow kisses under a sleeping moon.

[internalfires]

Firsts

I have the same recurring nightmare night after night. In it, your lips no longer conduct my heart to beat at a faster tempo, and your fingertips no longer trace the lines on my back. This is it. The moment when reality comes crashing in faster than a meteor— you tell me to not waste time being worried. Perhaps I read too many love poems gone wrong to believe in happily ever afters— you are far too beautiful a soul for this to not end in fire. If only Firsts didn't have a way of feeling like Lasts. Maybe then, your mouth wouldn't taste like a plane crash waiting to happen.

[internalfires]

At that moment, there is nothing in the world but you and her. When it all fades to black, you hear no music floating through the air, no gravitational pull between your eyes and hers. All this means is your hand on her hips and her lips on yours and her fingers running through your hair and your breath intertwining with hers and your heartbeats turning into one. You think, no poetry could describe this. You think, no world can contain it. What you have in that very instant is just her, and even then, it is so much more.

Love in the Air (via inkonapagepoetry)

[internalfires]

Clementine von Radics - “For Teenage Girls”

“Little girls with big ideas are much scarier than monsters.”

Performing at the February 2015 Soap Boxing Poetry Slam in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Subscribe to Button on YouTube!

[internalfires]

Really, I think becoming an adult was realizing that they’re going to kill everyone you love on TV. That it’s okay to swipe right sometimes. In case of a fire, there is one box with meaningless junk that I will take with me on the way out of the window. My mother doesn’t have her wedding dress anymore but I already know it wouldn’t fit past my hips; the zipper is permanently embedded into my back, lines criss-crossing and tripping over each other right down to my ass. I’m cynical about a lot of things, but pizza isn’t one of them. I don’t know what I would do without the zoom feature on my phone. My hair is long and thick as fuck, but I’m on that subtle shit. We are already a long time away from each other, but there are some photos I just can’t delete. The worst day of my life has probably already happened to me, but then again, probably not.

Kristina Haynes, “What it Feels Like to be Softened” (via fleurishes)

[internalfires]

[internalfires]

One does not walk into the forest and accuse the trees of being off-center, Nor do they visit the shore and call the waves imperfect. So why do we look at ourselves this way?

_ Tao Te Ching  (via justicedevil)

[internalfires]

Nicollet Island

Last night, I spilled so much emotion, rushes of pain, flowing from a mysterious faucet in my chest. Today, I cannot say I'm surprised to find that my insides have rusted shut. I searched for answers in the moon above, Hoping its fullness could repair this overwhelming emptiness. Unwilling and unable to string plain words together to make something beautiful. My consciousness is sloppy. Even syllables from his lips could not heal. "There's nothing I can say," he whispered. The truth is, sometimes, there's nothing left to do but squeeze my hand harder—tighter. Don't let go. God. Please. Don't let go. He is the way the Minneapolis skyline reflects on the Mississippi River. Foggy, distant, I could not quite reach his light. The world is turning and everything is falling into the places I wanted them to be, but my insides feel hollow, and I wish that I could pull my heart out of my chest and place it next to his, because there is nothing more beautiful than the sound two hearts make when they are beating in unison. Perhaps, if I listen close enough, its melody could lead me, like a lost child, from the depths of the cavern I have wandered into.