Watercolors

 

Some days I’m convinced

It’s the pain that makes me real.

Reminding me I’m breathing.

That I am happy to be here.

That I am strong… but some days

 

Some days it spits and hisses,

and I just can’t love it when I feel so fragile.

It is replaying a slow beautiful loop of misery

Thundering down paper skin

sparks are bursting through the surface

and they are arranging themselves

into prickly and asymmetrical patterns

 

I close my eyes and I am rocking gently

counting the notes of this symphony

but my breath is coming in waves again

Those wild gulps are cresting the dam I’ve built

A dam made of “I can do it”s and porcelain

For a moment I give in and lean against it

Pressing my cheek on the cold reality of it

Hoping it will hold a while longer

But I can feel it giving, rubble is littering my lap again.

 

I’m trying to bite back a weakness

but my face heats as I feel the tears

It’s gone feral again

and in all its uncontrolled glory

It is flinging ugliness at my skin

It splatters and spreads like watercolors

Painting everything I touch a sick eggplant color

and leaving copper on my bitten tongue

 

Because I don’t look fucking sick Do I?!

I’m a tough girl!

It’s been this way so long…

Haven’t I gotten used to it?

 

Some days

Well, some days it just surprises me

 

 

You See Yourself

 

i see you, i see you seeing yourself

i wish I could see if you pick at the fuzz

on the arm of your sweater

when you read what I write,

that’s what I imagine

and yes I imagine too much

so much

picnics and fresh air and fresh fruit and fresh smiles

dark nights and warm fires and

really

good

books,

 

books that you might actually read,

because you read things.

and you would remind me that i imagine too much

 

so much

 

but its never quite enough

i find myself spinning in your footsteps

like a vacuum

picking up whatever you have dropped

breathing it in with a whir and a grin

because like a vacuum,

yes either kind,

i am hungry

and empty

and always trying to fill myself

 

with

your

self

 

and if i was a betting woman,

and i am,

i would place money on the he loves you petals

 

because he does

 

at least in some small way

or you wouldn’t be reading this,

you wouldn’t be trying to figure out

how to stuff all these very visible feelings

back in between lines,

the lines i read between to get them.

 

Maybe we speak different languages,

maybe you don’t speak…

i worry a lot,

so much,

i should start a therapy group.

i wouldn’t invite you

of course

you would already occupy so much of that hour.

 

by Raychelle Lodato

 

Raychelle Lodato is a 36yr-old mother, wife, and poet who writes under the names Cybilseyes and Diminished.Me

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