PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

when i’m strong and fierce and full of fire,

running wild

he will not slow me down.

he can smooth over all the cracks,

he can tell you everything you’ve ever wanted to know

and more you didn’t,

he can learn the ropes with no shame.

he holds his opinions close

and his friends closer.

but i still hold back from the free fall,

a fingertip away,

it’s like he’s always searing his edges

and i’m afraid he could steal my fire,

eat me up with the ashes,

leave me barren

even though i know he won’t-

his hands are too perfect to belong to a thief.

i beg without knowing,

kiss without telling,

love without leaving

he plays me for a fool and turns back every time.

all i want to say is

don’t make me

regret.

when i fall

don’t make me

love or hate the zero gravity.

when you touch me

don’t make me

snap,

break the glass.

I lean too much on this description,

I can’t explain straight how I love you

so instead I will paint you in the light of

minutes and falling slow and laughing through the pain,

heat and support systems and split second choices,

skies and canyons, screams and whisper breaths,

gold and metaphors and scribbles…

hope it’s enough.

I’m not scared of falling, you’re going to love the rush

don’t settle for what I want you to be

I won’t beg but I’ll catch you

and when the ice still chokes you in warm weather

I’ll fill this air with antifreeze.

We slip easily into this tango,

a minute in the same room and we’re magnets

No matter how strong I dream the pull

this will never become somewhere

your name isn’t carved in every wall.

I might be foolish but at least I don’t hide it

I’m a creature of habit, I clutch my fears

even when you try to pull them out,

I want to be something you call home.

I shy from your hand and long for your heat at the same time.

I shy from your strength but I’m drawn to your shipwreck

because I can’t possibly fix it.

We have nothing to lose.

What should we be scared of?

I am a head case, you seem to be too

but at least people know it about you

when you stay here with us telling just enough truth

while I keep this inside from my point of view

I won’t tell lies but I won’t tell you enough

I would tell it all but then you’d call my bluff

You can tell when I’m open, when my love’s too full

I won’t tell lies but I won’t give my soul

I am a head case, I run into walls

I’m a misshapen road then a long way to fall

I am a head case, you seem to be too

but at least people know it about you

You bleed, it runs up the walls like a lunatic

I bleed and the rainbow comes back just to ruin it

Like whispers and laugh lines we sneak through the streets

I’ll fall down at your doorstep or we’ll fall asleep

I am a head case, I can’t risk or I’ll lose

I’m the color of echoes in this empty room

I am a head case, you seem to be too

but at least people know it about you

We could have danced all night and played the music loud

but the flash

of course

was blinding

We lived slinking on the stone wall above the jungle ceiling

but the jump

of course

was fatal

In the face of endings

we look to you,

we still think you have it all,

we still live on tiptoes,

the eccentric who have spent a lifetime

carving out a space for themselves

that few will ever see

And as the train grows

I’m lying here and dreading it,

we are not another carving on the wall

They’ve always thought

I spend too much time inside my head

all I want is to prove them wrong.

The world’s worn you down

so I want to be sharp as anything

You ride the tip of every miracle I pray for

I’ve told a million of these stories

sometimes it feels like obsession

but I think I’m just deathly afraid

Leave me stranded like a car wreck, smash

all the picture frames I’ve balanced on your head

you’ve never been strong enough anyway as

this city’s clocktower weighs like whispers on my shoulders

I would place weight on your palms like lightning

and walk out of my skin, show you my thunder

but I know if I did there would be no more unspoken poems in the spot next to you,

you’ve never been strong enough anyway

I can be sharp as anything

if you want me to be,

take a turn holding this world

and it might show you a sliver of skyline.

Somehow I have not been born right

I can't get high on you loving me

even when it's tattooed on you and it's etched inside my skull

When I want to be alone I go out into a crowd

because in the center of me is a guitar

and I don't know how to play it

I need you instead

you seem to read these notes better than me

You seem to sit better on the edges of their smiles

I'm unmoving here, bread on the table

and no one gives me a second glance without your honey

Somehow I have not been born right

I can hear my heartbeat like a time bomb

this distance like a spotlight

until I tremble in a crowd to feel alone again

You make me more dangerous

standing so close, 

I could go off at any moment

and just because I choose you to stand next to in the crowd

doesn't mean you're invincible

Somehow I have not been born right

but I have learned to live it, 

capsize when I suffocate, 

fix broken hearts in the space between alone and claustrophobic, 

reach for you to find bread and honey

I’m an outgoing introvert.

No, that was not a slip or a lie rolling off the tongue or dark magic to sneak smoke between your eyes and my words or even a false identity. It was not a bullet slowing down before hitting its mark or a ship capsized in the suffocating blue. I exist as you do, facing breezes and frosts like everyone else, loving and hating and wanting and needing and sometimes not being able to tell the difference and swallowing my pride and standing terrified as I face my demons.

Every day I leave as an introvert, a girl already too comfortable in her own skin without having to put on someone else’s, facing a world that thinks introvert equals shy stuck-up awkward uncommon useless. But every day I walk confidently as an introvert, leaving unasked questions on my bedside table when I enter the world in the morning just so people don’t scatter too quickly before I can see their magic.

Every day I leave in this skin wrapped around my talkative core, and I am the loudest quiet in the room. I buy my weight in sandpaper and minutes from people who would pull me up a mountain before I even open my mouth to ask, I live on the edges of the pits in my stomach that strangers can fill, I live on the highs I ride like waves every time I lean back in a chair from letting go and laughing too hard but don’t fall because a beautiful human is there to catch me and I cling to them, still too scared to ask for the word love.

But after spending so many hours with my species it feels like winter should have passed, I close my eyes and fall back headfirst into the sleep of writing and music and knowing all the oxygen in a room is mine to breathe, I don’t have to share it with anyone. I delve into every dream I’ve lived that day, painting murals and lining corners with what I wished I had said and what I’m glad I did say and what I’ll remember for as long as I can. I am an introvert not because I am silent but because the spikes of emotion that those people bring, the same people who tell me I talk too loudly, the same people I love, drain me. People pull the air out of me hour by hour and I deflate, and only I can fill myself back up. I capture energy every time I open a notebook, slip on headphones, dream a story.

And as an introvert who loves people too much for her own good, I struggle to tangle their lives into mine just enough to let her cry on my shoulder, twist his hair in my hands, turn around to see them behind me every step of the way, without tying impossible knots that scare them all to death. It is a gift and a curse. I am bound so tightly to these people, but as the two sides of me pull at one another in an extreme tug-of-war, my foundation crumbles too easily and sometimes I break with wanting.

But at the end of the day I’m just as I am, writing and thinking and dreaming, not needing to be an extrovert to talk to you or laugh with you or fall for you, needing to be wanted but wanting to be needed, just another climber on this treacherous slope we call love.