Hey there everyone. I'm here to share a poem I wrote sometime last year. Hope you like it :)
01.
We used to keep our wishes
in glass jars
to save them for later.
We stored them on the shelf in your office.
Your cat knocked mine over
and it splintered into eleven shards.
I cleaned it up and replaced it with an
empty
identical one
and I never told you.
07.
We would sit on your back porch and
peer into your yard at
the fireflies, little flittering orbs of orangey-yellow,
and you’d say how they were like small
specks of the sun, glowing in the black of night.
Sometimes you’d call me your firefly.
03.
We shared our dreams with
each other, and yours would usually leave me with
my own nightmares.
You told me that once you had a dream that you cut me open
and my ribs were ivory and my lungs were crystal
and you’d chipped away at my bones and smashed my organs with your fist
just to claim my heart,
but in the end there had been nothing but a hollow mass of rotten black.
I cried myself to sleep that night, feeling like maybe
my ribs were too tight
and my lungs were too small.
09.
We’d lie on the shaggy rug on your
bedroom floor,
exchanging nothing but whispers and secrets
and kissing not lips but collarbones and fingertips.
You would exhale into the shell of my ear,
your breath cold and vacant like the sound of the ocean
in a seashell,
except much weaker
and less eternal.
05.
We decided that our favorite color
would be green, because green is the color of
bliss
and sin
and your cucumber-glazed eyes.
You drew vines on my ankle with emerald marker,
telling me that my skin was the prettiest canvas.
They’re still there, wrapped around my leg like
strangling choking killing restraints.
11.
I’m laying on top of my mattress, clutching
your wish jar against my chest,
and wondering what had been in there before I’d unscrewed the top
and dumped it out my window.
A firefly lands on my pinky finger, and instead
of sunset-orange, it’s glowing a pallid jade.
Glass Jars by Shaqyl
We used to keep our wishes
in glass jars
to save them for later.
We stored them on the shelf in your office.
Your cat knocked mine over
and it splintered into eleven shards.
I cleaned it up and replaced it with an
empty
identical one
and I never told you.
07.
We would sit on your back porch and
peer into your yard at
the fireflies, little flittering orbs of orangey-yellow,
and you’d say how they were like small
specks of the sun, glowing in the black of night.
Sometimes you’d call me your firefly.
03.
We shared our dreams with
each other, and yours would usually leave me with
my own nightmares.
You told me that once you had a dream that you cut me open
and my ribs were ivory and my lungs were crystal
and you’d chipped away at my bones and smashed my organs with your fist
just to claim my heart,
but in the end there had been nothing but a hollow mass of rotten black.
I cried myself to sleep that night, feeling like maybe
my ribs were too tight
and my lungs were too small.
09.
We’d lie on the shaggy rug on your
bedroom floor,
exchanging nothing but whispers and secrets
and kissing not lips but collarbones and fingertips.
You would exhale into the shell of my ear,
your breath cold and vacant like the sound of the ocean
in a seashell,
except much weaker
and less eternal.
05.
We decided that our favorite color
would be green, because green is the color of
bliss
and sin
and your cucumber-glazed eyes.
You drew vines on my ankle with emerald marker,
telling me that my skin was the prettiest canvas.
They’re still there, wrapped around my leg like
strangling choking killing restraints.
11.
I’m laying on top of my mattress, clutching
your wish jar against my chest,
and wondering what had been in there before I’d unscrewed the top
and dumped it out my window.
A firefly lands on my pinky finger, and instead
of sunset-orange, it’s glowing a pallid jade.
Suddenly I don’t like green anymore.
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