September sun is a glittering coquette,
warm promises betrayed by icy winds.
She offers you comfort - nothing is said of love.
Garish colors mask broken boughs, a weak shield
between her imperfections and her eyes. Gold
is the softest metal; self-esteem is an unstable isotope.
Greedy eyes seek out the beauty of decay;
autumn leaves and empty girls both bruise
from the inside out.
The night is darkest just before the dawn. by anoraborealis, literature
Literature
The night is darkest just before the dawn.
I fell asleep as the first streaks of grey peeked through the trees.
In dreams I wandered through a maze of my own design, conscious of my unconsciousness but unsure how to use that knowledge. I rode on the back of a silver-maned wind as melody’s perfect knife pierced my silent heart. I woke to find that four hours of fitful sleep had not carried me to the fall.
More tragedy played out beneath my fingertips as unsugared waking filled my veins.
“I like the sound of metronomes and steady heartbeats, but ringing telephones sound too much like heartache, and silence is too empty to leave any room for trust.”
I’m leaving my
i've been forgetting,
lately -
for every day spent drowning in disappointment
biting blood from my lips
mindlessmaniccleaning, there'll be days
like this.
like four heads, bent
close over a puzzle and sunlight
trapping steam from bitter coffee and
featherlight snowflakes whispering
that there'll be days
like this.
like blue fingernails thawed by
oven-fresh muffins and shrimp
still sizzling in garlic and
the contours of his shoulder
promising that evermore there'll be days
like this.
like arms tight
round my waist and gin
(i think they call this love) by anoraborealis, literature
Literature
(i think they call this love)
my hands are covered in mozzarella;
hers smell faintly of flour.
his cookies sit on top of the oven, cooling
intoxicating us all with peanut butter and maple.
within, the pizza stones; sticky dough
stretched thin and baking hot.
the cloth is red, as are the tomatoes
picked last summer and roasted
every autumn saturday; that scent,
as described by a better writer than i,
could drive a stranger to propose.
what else? mushrooms
a quick sauté before ceding the pan
to bitter onions, soon made sweet.
music - you do know whose house
this is, don’t you? a good sax line
makes me weak at the knees because of
nurture, not nature (
with your sandbox shovel
you move mountains twice your height.
you are sovereign king of a frozen realm
where snow drifts rise to my hips
and your head comes just past my knees.
you lift icy boulders larger
than you can wrap your arms around.
you struggle through perilous dunes,
risking your life in sinking quicksand; dangers
must be braved if the car windows are to be cleared.
your cheeks are red and
your lips blue but no,
you are not cold; there is
a flame in you too fierce
for ice to much bother you.
statistically, you ask fifteen hundred questions
every day. half of those start with why.
today we are all you, with red cheeks and
You called me once while standing in line at a Chinese restaurant.
I heard the voicemail hours later,
three minutes and twenty-seven seconds of your rambling.
"I called because I miss you," you said, and I teased
when I called you back, "you saw me four hours ago,
how can you miss me already?"
I didn't want to say how good it felt to be missed or that
I only stopped missing you when my hair was tangled in your glasses, that
I stole your warmth and tried to hold it after you were gone.
You were forever running away.
You called me once while standing in line at a Chinese restaurant,
when I was tired of aching for you but
too stubb
Can you see her?
She's sitting on the floor in a long, narrow room. Three walls are full of windows, the fourth is paneled wood with a doorway at each end. Two couches nestle side by side. On chilly winter afternoons, they beg to be napped on.
Spread before her on the rough carpet is a coloring book. Beside her, an old basket carries a picnic of crayons. On the television above, a flying squirrel talks to a moose.
The smell of grilled cheese sneaks in from the kitchen. It is just the way she likes it - American cheese on white bread, grilled with lots of butter. It sounds simple, sure, but it's nearly impossible to make it right. Only Gran
i. I keep my heart in a birdcage whose salt-ruined hinges do not open easily, even for you.
ii. I am a cruelly unfair.
Every hug you give me is a pop quiz, ever tear-streaked conversation an exam you are doomed to fail because I never told you it was coming.
Tonight's test is not open book.
iii. If you truly care, you'll round up a team of wild horses to drag the self-prescribed poison from my lips. You'll insist on worrying with each breath I draw to forbid it. You'll beg for my trust, desperation creeping into your voice as you plead with a stoic cell phone tower.
iv. Ever as stubborn as myself, you don't stop asking
not when I bury m
Clouds over Wonderland by anoraborealis, literature
Literature
Clouds over Wonderland
Streetlamps on rain-soaked streets.
It's the kind of night that makes her wish she were a poet,
not a silly girl with a notebook
sitting by an open window as the rain pours down.
The clouds spill
their ink onto her empty page
or maybe those are tears, because
it's the kind of night a girl could fall in love.
She won't be falling tonight,
she's already at the bottom of the rabbit hole,
looking up to where he stands on the edge.
He won't jump.
He'd rather stand in the rain than drown with her in Wonderland's sea.
Angel girl with those summer eyes,
don't you let them take away the way you fly.
They bound me to earth so long ago
but I look to the clouds where you're floating still.
Golden princess in your land of dreams,
they toppled my throne before I could be queen.
Ignore when they say the kingdom's not yours
my leaden crown is gold no more.
Fairy child with the dreamy stare,
they will try to destroy your castles in the air.
Don't give them the magic you use so well
they didn't believe, so this fairy fell.
The night is darkest just before the dawn. by anoraborealis, literature
Literature
The night is darkest just before the dawn.
I fell asleep as the first streaks of grey peeked through the trees.
In dreams I wandered through a maze of my own design, conscious of my unconsciousness but unsure how to use that knowledge. I rode on the back of a silver-maned wind as melody’s perfect knife pierced my silent heart. I woke to find that four hours of fitful sleep had not carried me to the fall.
More tragedy played out beneath my fingertips as unsugared waking filled my veins.
“I like the sound of metronomes and steady heartbeats, but ringing telephones sound too much like heartache, and silence is too empty to leave any room for trust.”
I’m leaving my
i've been forgetting,
lately -
for every day spent drowning in disappointment
biting blood from my lips
mindlessmaniccleaning, there'll be days
like this.
like four heads, bent
close over a puzzle and sunlight
trapping steam from bitter coffee and
featherlight snowflakes whispering
that there'll be days
like this.
like blue fingernails thawed by
oven-fresh muffins and shrimp
still sizzling in garlic and
the contours of his shoulder
promising that evermore there'll be days
like this.
like arms tight
round my waist and gin
(i think they call this love) by anoraborealis, literature
Literature
(i think they call this love)
my hands are covered in mozzarella;
hers smell faintly of flour.
his cookies sit on top of the oven, cooling
intoxicating us all with peanut butter and maple.
within, the pizza stones; sticky dough
stretched thin and baking hot.
the cloth is red, as are the tomatoes
picked last summer and roasted
every autumn saturday; that scent,
as described by a better writer than i,
could drive a stranger to propose.
what else? mushrooms
a quick sauté before ceding the pan
to bitter onions, soon made sweet.
music - you do know whose house
this is, don’t you? a good sax line
makes me weak at the knees because of
nurture, not nature (
with your sandbox shovel
you move mountains twice your height.
you are sovereign king of a frozen realm
where snow drifts rise to my hips
and your head comes just past my knees.
you lift icy boulders larger
than you can wrap your arms around.
you struggle through perilous dunes,
risking your life in sinking quicksand; dangers
must be braved if the car windows are to be cleared.
your cheeks are red and
your lips blue but no,
you are not cold; there is
a flame in you too fierce
for ice to much bother you.
statistically, you ask fifteen hundred questions
every day. half of those start with why.
today we are all you, with red cheeks and
You called me once while standing in line at a Chinese restaurant.
I heard the voicemail hours later,
three minutes and twenty-seven seconds of your rambling.
"I called because I miss you," you said, and I teased
when I called you back, "you saw me four hours ago,
how can you miss me already?"
I didn't want to say how good it felt to be missed or that
I only stopped missing you when my hair was tangled in your glasses, that
I stole your warmth and tried to hold it after you were gone.
You were forever running away.
You called me once while standing in line at a Chinese restaurant,
when I was tired of aching for you but
too stubb
Can you see her?
She's sitting on the floor in a long, narrow room. Three walls are full of windows, the fourth is paneled wood with a doorway at each end. Two couches nestle side by side. On chilly winter afternoons, they beg to be napped on.
Spread before her on the rough carpet is a coloring book. Beside her, an old basket carries a picnic of crayons. On the television above, a flying squirrel talks to a moose.
The smell of grilled cheese sneaks in from the kitchen. It is just the way she likes it - American cheese on white bread, grilled with lots of butter. It sounds simple, sure, but it's nearly impossible to make it right. Only Gran
i. I keep my heart in a birdcage whose salt-ruined hinges do not open easily, even for you.
ii. I am a cruelly unfair.
Every hug you give me is a pop quiz, ever tear-streaked conversation an exam you are doomed to fail because I never told you it was coming.
Tonight's test is not open book.
iii. If you truly care, you'll round up a team of wild horses to drag the self-prescribed poison from my lips. You'll insist on worrying with each breath I draw to forbid it. You'll beg for my trust, desperation creeping into your voice as you plead with a stoic cell phone tower.
iv. Ever as stubborn as myself, you don't stop asking
not when I bury m
Clouds over Wonderland by anoraborealis, literature
Literature
Clouds over Wonderland
Streetlamps on rain-soaked streets.
It's the kind of night that makes her wish she were a poet,
not a silly girl with a notebook
sitting by an open window as the rain pours down.
The clouds spill
their ink onto her empty page
or maybe those are tears, because
it's the kind of night a girl could fall in love.
She won't be falling tonight,
she's already at the bottom of the rabbit hole,
looking up to where he stands on the edge.
He won't jump.
He'd rather stand in the rain than drown with her in Wonderland's sea.
Angel girl with those summer eyes,
don't you let them take away the way you fly.
They bound me to earth so long ago
but I look to the clouds where you're floating still.
Golden princess in your land of dreams,
they toppled my throne before I could be queen.
Ignore when they say the kingdom's not yours
my leaden crown is gold no more.
Fairy child with the dreamy stare,
they will try to destroy your castles in the air.
Don't give them the magic you use so well
they didn't believe, so this fairy fell.
They're not very good with trust. They keep their feelings to themselves, and neither of them likes to admit that they need anyone. It's probably why they get along so well. They trust each other because they have never asked each other for trust; they are willing to need each other because neither one ever mentions that they know the other needs them.
She hates for anyone to see her cry. When the lump begins to form in the back of her throat, she bites her lip until it bleeds and forces herself to smile until she can be alone. But when he sees the pain in her eyes and wraps his arms around her, the tears leak out onto his shirt and she let
She is a rain-soaked
neon sign at eight o’clock
on a Thursday night.
Her light is too cold,
pipes twisted, full of fluid,
I’m open, she says.
The door is always open
Isn’t that what I’m here for?
Isn’t that my job?
Hollow, dim, dull,
there’s not much else she can do.
Come in here, she says.
At 1AM on
a Sunday, she’s still open.
Chemicals buzzing.
He comes up behind me, tugging at the hem of my shirt, tweaking the skin of my elbow, muttering all his plans for the evening into my hair. I do not want him here; I push him off my stomach, telling him I don’t have time and we can talk about it later. He is insistent, prodding my side, grasping my wrist. His arms curl around me, and his fingers twine into my hair, grabbing a handful and pulling, forcing my head back to look him in the eyes. They are burning, wet jade, hard. In them I can see my friend’s SAT scores, every single one of my boyfriend’s ex girlfriends, the pizza I ate the night before, all the lives I’m n
I want your breath in mine
Your heartbeats like the most beautiful bass I've ever danced to
Your laugh like my favorite song
And my name spilling from your tongue in a gasping prayer
Y(our) arms, legs, fingers twining like overgrown ivy, clinging to my crumbling walls
I want this to be the best disaster to ever happen
in the twin bed that is too small for us,
but much too empty for me.
I want to do the most unholy things
(although isn't this as sacred as you can get?)
I want to pin you down
Take you in
And sin
With your eyes and your hands and your grin
And, damn, your skin skin skin.
Dear daughter-I-do-not-have-yet,
You will be my perfect. You will be my proudest moments in one small person. You will be made in love, or maybe anger, or maybe even desperation. But that won't matter. What matters is what you will be made into.
You will have Daddy's hair and his nose, and my eyes and my smile, the smile that happens not because someone with a camera told you to, but because you're genuinely happy. But you will have your very own heart and will be full of all the things that give you your you-ness. Whether you sing in the bath or make Valentines for everyone in your class or give your last homemade chocolate chip cookie to
Hi. This is me. I learned how to read when I was three years old and haven't stopped since then. When I was thirteen, I began a passionate love affair with theatre that shows no signs of ending - but you won't find me onstage. The sound booth is my home. When I was younger I wrote constantly, but in recent years I've given so much of myself to music and sound effects that I've forgotten how to use words. So here I am, writing for myself and anyone else who will listen, trying to put my emotions into words as easily as I can turn them into an intricate pattern of soundwaves.