Live

Hey there,
Hope you've all been fairing better than me. I'm going to explain the two month silence, but not today.

Today, it's not about me, it's about a poem...
And a weirdo, hehe.
This human taught me many things, including how to play playstation games, put me off FIFA forever by beating me 10-1 on my very first try (and the one I scored was only because he went to the kitchen to get juice or something.)

He pushed me down a hill to teach me how to ride a bike, he also gave me cash on my first date because (and I quote) "there's nothing as unappealing as a girl who can't pay things for themselves."

Also my first (real life) crush and I were on our roof and once my brother saw him, he came up and chased my crush until he jumped down from the roof. My crush was only 11.
Without further ado his favourite poem...

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables.
Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day
I would be grounded, rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away
to where the darkness lives.

The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight.
Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do.
I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling.
You will find a good man soon.”

The first psycho therapist told me to spend
three hours each day sitting in a dark closet
with my eyes closed and ears plugged.
I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking
about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.

The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth.
Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness
when they care more about what they give
than what they get.

The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.”

The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me
forget what the trauma said.

The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”

But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped
from the George Washington Bridge
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”

My bones said, “Write the poems.”

The lamplight.

Considering the river bed.

To the chandelier of your fate hanging by a thread.

To everyday you could not get out of bed.

To the bulls eye on your wrist

To anyone who has ever wanted to die.

I have been told, sometimes, the most healing thing to do-

Is remind ourselves over and over and over

Other people feel this too

The tomorrow that has come and gone

And it has not gotten better

When you are half finished writing that letter to your mother that says “I swear to God I tried”

But when I thought I hit bottom, it started hitting back

There is no bruise like the bruise of loneliness kicks into your spine

So let me tell you I know there are days it looks like the whole world is dancing in the streets when you break down like the doors of the looted buildings

You are not alone and wondering who will be convicted of the crime of insisting you keep loading your grief into the chamber of your shame

You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy

I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside

Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside

Some days I know my smile looks like the gutter of a falling house

But my hands are always holding tight to the ripchord of believing

A life can be rich like the soil

Can make food of decay

Can turn wound into highway

Pick me up in a truck with that bumper sticker that says

“it is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society”

I have never trusted anyone with the pulled back bow of my spine the way I trusted ones who come undone at the throat

Screaming for their pulses to find the fight to pound

Four nights before Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington bridge I was sitting in a hotel room in my own town

Calculating exactly what I had to swallow to keep a bottle of sleeping pills down

What I know about living is the pain is never just ours

Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo

So I keep a listening to the moment the grief becomes a window

When I can see what I couldn’t see before,

through the glass of my most battered dream, I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind

and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds.

So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin, don’t try to put me back in

just say here we are together at the window aching for it to all get better

but knowing as bad as it hurts our hearts may have only just skinned their knees knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be coming

let me say right now for the record, I’m still gonna be here

asking this world to dance, even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet

you- you stay here with me, okay?

You stay here with me.

Raising your bite against the bitter dark

Your bright longing

Your brilliant fists of loss

Friend

if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other,

my god that’s plenty

my god that’s enough

my god that is so so much for the light to give

each of us at each other’s backs whispering over and over and over

“Live”

“Live”

“Live”






Photo by Brian Masila

Poem by Andrea G.