Grief Written

Not a poem just a thought: He said he wouldn't write anymore, But he did, And he turned my metaphoric being into someone else. Maybe when he wrote that, in between the lines, he meant he wouldn't write about me.

"She wasn't breathing, Her body showed courage, real courage, Killing her so that she could break free of her bones; Her spirit could be born into the world again."

I have a lot to say always. But really I just never say it. I wish everything I wrote was pretty and beautiful. But it's not. Poetry makes my heart hurt. Poetry makes me want to put my fist through a wall. Which isn't at all like me. Poetry makes me cry. Which I guess is a lot like me. I want to quit writing But thats like wanting to quit breathing It doesn't really work. It doesn't make sense. But it does. Scratch that. Scratch all of this. Scratch it all out and crumble it into a ball and throw it in a waste basket. Poetry reminds me of him. Poetry reminds me of him. A different him. A boy wrote a poem. It made me want to lay in a fort with him. Not in a romantic way. Because I'm in love with someone else and he is too and our lockers used to be next to each other when we were in seventh grade and still growing into ourselves. I think we're still growing. He's taller. He's sweet. And I just wish he wasn't ...

I grew up in a family of seven, five kids including me. So when our parents asked the ever so common question, "How was your day?" Each of us had a lot to say. We chatted over the top of each other with untied shoelace tongues tripping over the words in our mouth.  Our stories tended to fall on deaf ears because honestly you couldn't hear a single story. We were a bowl of spaghetti, you couldn't just get one piece without pulling up another.  So my mother began asking us one by one.  "How was your day?" Addressing each child in their chair, gradually working down the line. We used to go on roadtrips, and with a lot of kids in one small car we started calling role call. We assigned numbers to names, eldest to youngest, and being number four out of five it took some time to get to me. My parents used to worry about my schooling. Because instead of going 1 2 3 4 5. It would turn into 1, 2, 4...3, 5 Or 1, 4, 2, 3, 5 Or ...

It's the bitter metallic taste of pennies in your mouth. The tension in the air as time pulls tight like a rubber band. His hand gripping one side across from mine and we're slowly walking away. Silence stretching between us. The sting across your skin when it's broken and he says, "I kissed another girl." He kissed another girl. "It didn't mean anything" "I still love you" "I just wanted to kiss someone." And I must've swallowed the pennies, because god I can't breathe. There's something lodged in my throat and it's warm and metallic. Pennies. My palms are pressed deep into my eyes because I can see it. And I want to rub it away because I'm choking on pennies and I don't want my last memory to be of him pulling her in and his lips brushing hers.  The pennies must've dissolved or something because suddenly I can breathe but it doesn't sound alright. It sounds like an old rusty machine grinding down....