Icarus Incarnate

We all play god sometimes, be it with ants
or the boy who will love us no matter what
we do. 

Love is born in the space between the walls of your mouth
and tongue. Each taste bud knows my lips by name -
just as I know the dry skin at the end of your nose or how
you take your coffee.

The shadow of a dream sleeps
beside my weary body, thrust into a fractured
fetal position, and all that lingers is the scent

of you. I am used to sleeping alone most nights,
used to my arms twisting their way around my pillow
as if it were your body I held,

but please do not let this be just another poem; do not let this
become the most recent addition to the growing list
of letters I leave at the doorstep of your heart - no,

let this be the beginning
of something fresh and clean, like sheets
that have not yet been slept in.  

Last night I learned
that love
doesn’t know my name,
and that you don’t know it
either.

1. have you noticed?

2. Caroline moves like the earth
stops spinning with every clunk
of her Doc Martins against the pavement.
I want to tell her it’s spring
and she must be hot in all that black
but she just sits there tapping her toes
against the leg of her desk. She doesn’t say
much. When she does, I swear her vocal cords
are dusty from not being used.

3. Fall
and we all come back from the Bahamas
or some other paradise island in the middle
of clear blue water. Caroline’s vacation
was lopping off her dyed black hair
with a pocketknife. Her blonde roots
are growing back in and she starts biting
her fingernails until they bleed, not noticing
how the tips of her fingers are swollen
and red. there are scratches on her arms. I see them
during english class. I don’t say anything.

4. Winter, and Caroline is dead. 

They ask me
what you and I are - our hearts
are tangled but we do not love,
our words are tender but they do not hold -

and I say, simply, that we keep each other’s
secrets. Our mouths move only
in silence and we bend our bodies backwards
to keep the other from falling;

my hands stretch miles to keep you from the ground. 

In my fury I cursed at the sky,
broke myself over the dark water of the streams
near my town

but she watched me - wide-eyed - from the banks
of the river without words twisting from her mouth,

and my fists crumbled like sand castles
In the warm wake of her smile. 

I have an extra copy of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar for sale for $10.00 (original price was $15.00). It’s brand new, hasn’t been read, no rips or anything of the sort. It can be shipped in late May (it’s at my house and I’m currently at school) and you can pay by money order - just sending me ten dollars in the mail. If you’re interested, please message me!

Thanks,

Kit :)

p.s. if any of you are interested in buying young adult novels from me, I have tons. They’re all really good. Some are more worn than others, but they’re still just as good of a read. Let me know!

All my life I have loved
too deeply, loved everything
my fingers brushed up against
in antique stores, loved everything my heart
saw in films, believed (too firmly)
in the pearly white of dreams.

All my life I have struggled
to find something worth dying for,
but these days nothing is good enough
so I keep on living, keep breathing
until my lungs shrivel up
like peapods left in the sun too long.

All my life I’ve been wondering
what it’s like to not love or struggle
at all. 

It’s raining outside.

I can hear the drops plop in puddles outside
my window, rain boots thumping on the pavement.

Inside, my heart still
burns.