poetryandprompts

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I want to be better because of her. She's an angel who loves the hell out of me.

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https://twitter.com/onlyyagirl_

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good god. i had the dream again. i watched him grow up. i saw the bump in my stomach. i bought him clothes. i saw his heart beating on the hospital monitor. i saw him swaddled in my arms. i saw him opening his eyes for the first time. i saw him playing with cars on the living room floor. i saw him putting ornaments on the christmas tree. i saw him climbing on me and pulling my hair and giving me hugs. i saw him take his first steps. i saw him learn to count. i saw him going down the slide with me. i saw him grow up. he was real. and then i woke up from my dream. where is my baby boy?

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truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.

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my friends moms all love me

maybe it’s because mine didn’t

or maybe it’s because, like their sons and daughters, they feel comfortable around me

or maybe it is all a lie

maybe their mothers don’t like me either

maybe the reason i care is because i want a mother who likes me

and maybe i will go through my entire life searching for one who does

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— Traci Brimhall, Dear Eros

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a woman’s empathy and a daughter’s rage

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my mother left when i was twelve years old.

before she went she gave me her purple coat, 

and said 

to wear it when im cold-

which is so 

very often now.

she gave me her black boots

when i was ten.

she always said i’d grow into them…

now that i did theyre my favorite pair.

i have her smile 

and her hair.

so when i can’t remember her

as fondly as i used to,

i look in the mirror-

with her boots

and her coat 

and her face.

and i pray

because its all i have left to do.

i pray 

because ive been to the school counselor six times.

i pray 

because im too hard on myself.

i pray 

because i miss her.

and i pray

that i might walk inside one day

and see her there

lighting a candle.

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Zehra Naqvi, from The Knot of My Tongue: Poems and Prose; “Dear Baba”

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Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature, they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother. It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard, the wind in the grass. And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual.

“Two-Headed Calf” by Laura Gilpin

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— Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

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i really wanted him to love me,

and i guess he did.

just not in the way i wanted him to.

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You don’t have to belong everywhere!