honest the day couldn't have been better if i'd have picked the damn day
there are maladies that live inside me parades of perdition on well worn routes
there is staving 'round each bend firelocked ghouls and my grandmother's laugh hard echoes each
rising sun quiet city lake cathedral against the sky
i mean i perused the catalogue and no way
3. One day - rupika kumar
One day you will stop air kissing the synthetic proximity of my plastic cheeks,
to pinch me where it really hurts till that stubborn pain is released.
One day you will stop distracting yourself with trinkets of frivolous recreation,
to focus on being miserable with earnest boredom and longing.
One day you will leave aside your online ego and digital hesitation,
to reach my door step and blatantly admit that you missed me.
5. Starving - Ritika Deb
Fear sits like a fracture in my blood vessels, Leaking a heartbeat all over my bones. I stain this season cherry Not even the rain can wipe away the emptiness I have painted.
I’ve swallowed enough triggers that every time lightning Shakes the house in April I am a firecracker of bullet holes.
Maybe I spent so much time swimming in my own head I should have learned by now how to drown out the voices when they come.
Lately every song is a cold November haunt, It brings me back to when I needed to swallow pills So I could stop wanting to go still Then I needed more pills, different pills, To make me want to stop swallowing so many pills in general.
I am guilty of stuffing my sadness into my stomach so often, That only hurt satisfies my hunger now.
2. Searching - noah schnaubelt
There are feathers on the inside of your skin. When you walk I can hear the wind like brush reeds, miles stretching out behind you of so much sky soaking in. You have learned 937 new shapes from the clouds so far, you have learned the names of three mountains and their favorite types of snow, you have from so high in the heavens, learned that God lives down on the ground, down there in the details in the checkerboard farms in those goosebumps hills in those tiny cartoon creatures all making their way somewhere in search of love you have been flying upside down in a blue corner shaking hands with storms getting bit by lightning fighting to feel something much clearer than all this goddamn rain. In search of love you have learned so much about others but still can't sit still for long enough to feel your own heart beating down there in the basement of your chest you have given rather than gathered so much of your soul have you ever just sat by your own side in the candlelight and told yourself "I love you." You will. There are feathers fighting to shake themselves free of your bones there is God fighting to finally be known in every stone you turn over there is love, 937 beautiful shapes of it to play with and counting.
4. untold - Raquel Burgess
I dreamt a dream of you last night The second time this week I saw your face then hid my own (Like it should matter if I’m asleep)
You left your socks, you pulled them off I found them on the floor I wondered, should I share the things I’ve never said before?
I took a pen and on one sock My feelings for you I wrote Secrets kept even from myself All jotted down in a note
I went to leave the sock of yours Beside the other on the floor But in my pocket instead it went With the words you never saw
A dream is just a dream, you say But even in my sleep So delicate I’ve held my love for you Too precious for you to keep
I’m sorry to leave you just one sock But this one’s now mine to hold Awake, I smiled to a thought that you Might wake with one foot cold.
