redhairedlesbians

[redhairedlesbians]

hard woman, stone woman,

invaded and softened by disease.

wraps itself gently towards her soul,

making her gentler in return.

hard woman, turned soft woman, turned weak,

becomes frail and kinder.

she gives away her things, wraps her self in blankets of joy. defeated woman.

we spend time in her home,

straighten out the curtains before we lock the door.

drink wine with the young ones turned old,

laugh all night and then cry when they return to the car.

cold woman turned warm,

warm body turned cold.

[redhairedlesbians]

simplicity.

the muse. the one to be gazed from the artists eyes, the one to be entombed into art. captured spirit, a capsule of time breathed to life to someone who has dedicated something as simple as time.

it could take months, it could take years.

[redhairedlesbians]

in tandem, in humility, in distance.

the great love, the christ hidden in small spaces. corners, attics, the moment the wave hits the water before the crash.

one day i will have been blessed to have known you. one day i will indulge, fall back into trust. one day i will know what it has meant to touch your skin in moments that are not timed. fleeting sand in hourglass, broken clock.

one day i will have known what it has been to be loved by you. i have been selfish, i have been unkind. we have stolen moments and pieces of each other and swapped them for anew.

how long will you wait for me? what will it have been to know you? to love you? what pieces of time will we peel from the earth just to spend them in each others arms?

[redhairedlesbians]

ramona sits in the windowsill and lets her tiny legs swing over the edge. she is blonde, freckled, and gentle. she hates sunday nights because she has to go to school the next morning. she loves thursday afternoons because that’s when i get off work early, so i pick her up from school and take her to get a cake pop from he favorite store.

we spend a lot of time in the car. i show her beatles classics and tell her i’ll let her meet her great grandad when she’s older. he’s a little cookoo, i tell her, rolling my eyes and twisting my fingers around my head.

she likes the watches she sees when i take her to the thrift store. she thinks the books smell funny, but she takes them home and collects them in piles that makes no categorical sense to anyone but her.

she loves the ocean. i’ve taken her there since she was a baby and the first thing she did was try to crawl to the waves. she giggles at crabs, and starfish, and makes quite frankly shitty sandcastles. but who can blame her?

she likes the boba shop downtown but gets half pearls and no sugar. i’m concerned for her dental health, and we save our sugar days for those sweet treat thursdays.

[redhairedlesbians]

i hope you found what you were looking for,

in the girl with red hair you saw across the room

in the nights were everything was dark

except moonlight, and stars

ones that reflected me back onto you.

i hope you filled the hole that i left,

patched it up with sewing kits in cookie tins

using scraps to rebuild our home,

one that i would never step foot into again.

and i hope that you’ve been happy,

as much as you could be

between the girl and the needles and the string,

there was always you.

[redhairedlesbians]

the room is quietly buzzing with unwavering normalcy. a painting she never finished sits in the corner. we watch tv, sky lit in the outside window with ordinary moonlight that piles onto the floor.

if you had still loved me, would you have ever done it? if i was not who i am, would we not be who we have meant to be? if i had felt my body was my own, would i have let you in?

the curtains silently flutter from a breeze through the half-cracked window. it is summer, it is warm, but the room feels cold. he wraps his arms around me, drags his fingers down my legs, and yet i feel nothing from it other than how my nervous system has trained me to react.

we kiss in my car and it feels like dying. like a vampire bite, something of my soul is being sucked from me through his lips. his skin pokes mine and it hurts. i remember each time i never backed from pain and let him do it anyways.

the couch has an indent on it from where the dog always sits. no one else has been here in quite a while. i’m scared to spray perfume i know you like because i feel like it will drive me to call you.

harboring anger at you weighs me down like an anchor. fearing you has helped me fly, but i am off course still. i don’t know where to land, i don’t know where to be, and im scared by the time i have the courage to touch the ground there will be nothing left for me to return to.

it is winter and i am cold. i dont know you in these months. you have only ever seen me half-clothed and exposed. you don’t know what it is to be comfortable with me in a warm room surrounded by cold air.

every year we break up by august. you don’t know what color my hair is. you don’t know how broken i’ve been in these past few months. i’m scared if i never saw you again, it’d be too soon. i’m scared if i never saw you again, i would regret it.

[redhairedlesbians]

bits of you laid on the counter, trimmings of hair dusted on the floor from the cut i’ve just given you. i will forget to sweep right away and think of you every time i see it in the bathroom for the next few days.

my life has been a series of waiting rooms. closed doors, locks and needles and picks. waiting for one to open, waiting for you to call me, wishing on stars and praying towards the moon. you live there, quietly, in a subtle corner of the room.

i put on perfume that reminds me of you and remember what it had been like to be full of your air. something about how your hair moves and how the sun shone off of it. sunburns at the beach, filling your car with sand on the way home.

you laugh, loudly, in my room and i remember how much i’ve missed it. it sounds like a song. something that’s fallen on deaf ears for a few years now.

i think things were better in some ways when you had loved me. when i could call you home. answered phones and letters, advertisements lit up on the wall. walk down paths with me again.

[redhairedlesbians]

another day falls into night. the evening pulls the sun down as i let myself bathe in the illusion of you. conjuncture between youth and indifference.

you wear a vile of my blood, split over your skin coating your hands in me. you are enveloped in warmth that precipitates in the deepest parts of myself. it is sinful, it is dirty, it is wrong.

reaching out to each other in pain. lulling each other to sleep, feeling guilty after. something meaningful, meaningless, being twenty and holding yourself in the highest contempt.

marks on each others skins in both permanent and temporary fashion. leave a bruise below above the tattoo i got for you.

a kiss from you would be nothing but another blow. if you had killed me, it would be of my greatest pleasure to serve you one last time. write your name in the sand, and watch the waves wash it over.

[redhairedlesbians]

shooting star. comet above you, we know each other’s names and faces and see them lit dimly by candlelight.

swim to the deep end. make your way back up out of breath. for a brief moment, you have wings.

i walk up to the door and turn away. nothing bad happens. erased in highlight, everything becomes technicolor.

[redhairedlesbians]

something simple, something kind.

picking up your dorm room the second your body hits the floor. asking yourself what it means, turning the question over to god.

write a metaphor about jesus. ask yourself if you believe what you write.

your fingers buzz with something quiet. something unmovable. something tangibly there.

a boy with kind eyes who works at the pub. something gentle.

desire paths littered across campus. something meaningful. something to write about.

computer screens and feeling lost. something meaningful.

make your dorm bed. lie in it. dream about each other, wake to each others voices. something simple. something kind.

[redhairedlesbians]

seventeen, splashing in the river. full of life, long hair, kind eyes. her mother didn’t speak to her until she was four, but everything is made up when she jumps into his arms.

she wets his dry shirt with her swimsuit. high-waisted, yellow stripped shorts that bring her figure together. he picks her up, they giggle.

there is light in her eyes, reflected sunlight that brightens her brown eyes to a soft honey. she meets herself halfway.

she holds her first child in her arms. her favorite until a new one comes along. that the favorite until the next. down the lineage to henry.

he stumbles when he walks. he learns her name as grandmother and nothing else. he will never know her as the seventeen year old girl she once was. my sweet nancy.

[redhairedlesbians]

a friend who dances softly. light glimmering off the lake, he spins. ballerina, tiny dancer. a small danger in something unknown.

sometimes it is the best things that bring out the worst in us. sometimes it is enough to see and know. sometimes things are felt before they become physical.

there is a man at the bar and he’s nodding off at the edge of the table. there is nothing else here other than this moment. the sound of glasses and chatter. soft sounds on a small tv, murmurs of laughter and yelling.

everything is hazy here. nothing makes much sense anymore. nothing has made much sense ever. nothing is inspiring or tangible.

i taught myself how to write so it means i have never learned at all.

[redhairedlesbians]

a nation, a woman with soft blonde hair. an army vowed to serve her, a sea of men beneath her feet.

[redhairedlesbians]

i want to write a love poem. maybe about you. maybe about something that makes me breathe in air instead of pushing it out. something that makes me regret exhale because any moment i am not filled with you is painful.

she is sitting on the dock a few dozen feet into the lake. the sun is setting and her hair is pink and she is nothing but beautiful. she is angry over news i broke, but she hands me a gentle gift of forgiveness.

weeks spent laughing under covers. moonlight drives to the sea, a bucket list of things to do we have never crossed out. knowing we have all the time in the world to.

she has given me many quiet gifts. laughter, silence, company and presence. a life where all we do is choose each other over again. grateful love.

[redhairedlesbians]

he looks at me as my head lays in his lap. hungry. he wraps his fingers around my shoulders like he will bite. he sees through me, and i am nourishment, nothing more than something to consume.

i want to write a love poem. maybe about you. maybe about something that makes me breathe air instead of take it. something that makes me regret exhale because any moment i am not filled with you is painful.

i want to write something beautiful and mean it.

[redhairedlesbians]

wind. heartbeat. snow. drums. something quiet, something gentle. something better felt than said.

[redhairedlesbians]

nighttime quiet with the window cracked open a bit less than it should be. outside hums crickets and whatever is left of this seasons mosquitos. small birds.