#first poem since surgery 💪

[aspoonfulofmoss]

24 june 2024

cw suicide

i watch teenage roller-skaters like birds flit by my window

i am so old now; seventeen now

i listen to the cacophony of fabric and saliva as the

lovers kiss in hiding under the science wing stairs.

their hands perch places i’ve never been touched

the thigh, then the hand, then the heart, then the cheek

their eyes are closed quiet

the sound of senseless love coils up and

it stings me sharp and bitter.

in such reflections i went to class

i sat and read and listened

as the world sprouted and sung about me.

to whatever entity bestows liveliness and spring

i must have seemed an outrageous gnat

stupid and tiny and unthinkably blank.

my time will come.

i am stupider than seventeen;

i scorn literary magazines and weep at blank pages

i tear garbage from my guts as the

real poets watch me mock their medium with nonsense.

an author visits my school and

she is more beautiful than an author ought to be

the shameless grin too sweet and pink as

she displays the hardback she published at thirteen

the fullness in her hands and reflection in her eyes

disgusted my own empty palms.

i left the auditorium and put my fingers in my throat

to be certain there was something in me to expel

and there was. it did not satiate.

she said i could write if my heart was in it.

i was peeling my skin to the quick of my nails

and smudged the blood on my sleeve.

my time will come.

i was so young when

i saw an old man arching into the Golden Gate

i watched through the fog as he

breached the barriers to salvation

he looked into the water; his gaze crossed

the whole span of empty drop

his eyes held the most fervent reverence

the sweat-slicked palm loosened on

his barely-gripped bar;

in a puff of breath he was gone.

he fell gently, like snow. people called after him.

my mother shrieked in horror.

his eyes swallowed such rapturous peace

shielded in rheum as they were; i almost thought they were mine;

they held such lordlike peace.

my time will come. my time will come.