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