Stardustt-child - Those Stars Man

“Dear God, do old scars ever stop hurting?”

— Stephen King, The Shining

why am I still in love w you

i’ve written you so many poems; i hope you know what it means that your name still tastes like poetry beneath my tongue.  Emma Bleker

i wonder if you still read my poems. if you do, i think about us sometimes too. but I’m glad youre not here anymore and i hope you’ve become a better person than you were before.

This is a poem about how you never get the kiss you want when you want it; how time twines around your neck, its thorns digging into your skin so you can never forget how clinging to a string of hope, threading it between your spine, and having it unravel before you in the span of an hour is worse than any metaphor about nakedness that you poets will ever write. This is my reflection in the mirror. This stanza is the small gap where my fingers try to touch against the glass. You can’t even possess yourself; let alone the person you see standing before you. The moon hasn’t come back from the cleaners yet and I have nothing to slip into tonight that makes my reflection feel beautiful. Time is falling through the hole in my pocket. January is coming soon, and I have a feeling that he’s never going to fall out of love with this December. He’ll still write her love letters. He’ll send her white orchids on every lonely holiday and pretend that love is a place you can cross state lines to get back to, but it’s that time of the year again, and calendar sales keep reminding us all that we can never get back to where we once wanted so bad to lose ourselves in for good.

It Took Time (Shinji Moon)

in a language that doesn’t have the word ‘love’ I say

“I still have the receipt from the film we watched on

our first date” I say “I bought four red sweaters after

you told me it was your favorite color” I say “it’s been

exactly two hundred and twelve days since our last kiss”

I say “last week, in a hotel room, the complementary

pantene shampoo was the type that you use” I say “I walked

around smelling like you and nobody else cried over it”

I say “yes, I’m still crying over it” I say “the other day

somebody’s ringtone went off in class and it was the same

noise you set for your alarm and it took me a minute

to figure out where I knew it from” I say “I’m terrified

of someday not knowing where I knew it from” I say

“every poem I write nowadays is about the same thing”

I say “I’d almost give up writing altogether if it meant

we could try again” I say “please” I say “please” I say

“please.”

another untitled poem where I’m exceptionally loud about how much I love people // WRITTEN BY CAITLIN CONLON