April 2018 »

Post author:L.e
Post published:April 26, 2018

Guide the words you can’t always say
out onto paper,
as ink and graphite, or paint and pictures.
Give them bodies and form and weight,
somewhere to live, outside of you.
Release them like close friends from the cages inside your chest,
so you can both be free.

Heat

Post author:L.e
Post published:April 21, 2018

Whenever the heat kicks up,

the thick kind of heat that forces you to breathe more deeply,

I think about something I heard a while back.

About how you have all these toxins in your body,

especially when you’re sick,

and you can sit in a sauna or steam up the bathroom with the door closed and the tub running hot,

and it’ll help pull out whatever’s hurting you, right through the pores in your skin.

So sometimes in the summer I reach for a fan or I blast the AC but other times,

I let myself swelter,

and hope to sweat out whatever it is that’s poisoning me.

Hot Air Balloons

Post author:L.e
Post published:April 19, 2018

Sometimes it’s hard to keep myself on the ground.
I’ll be trying to read a book or listen to a friend or a show,
and I’ll find myself running around inside my head.
Desperately trying to weigh down my thoughts with sandbags to keep them from drifting away,
out of control.

The Book Keeper

Post author:L.e
Post published:April 17, 2018

“Don’t rip them!” He pleaded.
Amusement pulled at her lips, “and why not?” Her fingers traced the fine edges of the book’s pages, its paper whispering softly at her touch.
“These aren’t real, Phillip. They’re stories. They’ll feel nothing at all.”
Phillip’s heart quickened.
“You don’t know that,” he whispered, their eyes meeting. “Maybe we’re all alive inside stories and don’t know. “

Illumination

Post author:L.e
Post published:April 12, 2018

There is love right here, between us now.

It emanates all around us as effortlessly as moonlight filters in through the night.

You don’t always notice it, but if you look closely enough, you will see that the night is not always total darkness,
that the light from the moon and the stars are the reason for that.

Love works in a similar way.

It enters through your eyes when you admire how the sky hangs, far out over the ocean.

It slips in through your pores when you feel the rhythm of a good song beneath your skin.

It travels right in and down, into your heart.

Love illuminates you, very subtly, with a kind of light.

If only we could recognize this kind of love as easily as we do our hate.

If only we could let this fill us up, and linger, as easily as our frustrations do.

Escape Artist

Post author:L.e
Post published:April 7, 2018

Sometimes I have this demented fantasy that plays out in my head.

On that day, you’re running from something.

Something you finally can’t run from anymore

so you call up your friends at the police station and you grease their wallets a bit.

You get in your car and you pull the trigger,

right into the seat so that everyone can hear,

but the bullet doesn’t hit you.

You leave behind some joke-store blood and your heart is racing as you get beneath that white sheet

when the EMTs arrive.

They wheel you away and you hold your breath because the world is watching,

so you must be still.

But for the people watching this is not an act, this is real. Some of them are on their knees.

And you escape.

You get away from here and you have to stay hidden under a new name in some new place but you miss me, every day.

And maybe someday you show up at my doorstep with a bucket of lilies and tell me how sorry you are.

For the tears and the missed time.

That you were gone but you were never as far as I thought you were,

and you can explain everything if I could only just give you the chance.