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grief hidden beneath worn smiles lies gifted to me long ago my childhood cat chokes on silver tinsel the dead surround me their message on repeat no one will tell you what you need to know until it is too late it is too late the angel of death writes on my skin a love letter of loss clawed in cursive his scythe is a fountain pen ink as good as blood the key to the red door is beyond the self Azrael 's dark cloud whispers bloom in a sky without stars i dream about empty apartments furniture broken for firewood this ending is taking too long let's begin again i am planting the seeds of destruction tearing at roots too deep follow me into the dark the only place to breathe the only place to close your eyes
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sun is fly paper moon is my reflection in deep water mirrors are portals to other worlds my sadness strings maps to other dimensions red yarn tied and tied again this knot is my blood this knot is my protection memory is a wound i pick at a rusty thumb tack goes here at seven i spit grapes seeds on cement and the patterns told me where to go next there is nowhere to go now so i sit in the circle of the moon i had a feeling we were going to be more than friends i saw you when i was a child i was alone i had just scraped my knee after crashing on my bike i was picking concord grapes off a bush in a yard where no one looked out the window i didn't know you would follow me whisper to me in the dark tell me the future for the rest of my life i wished then i could close my ears shoo you away like a fly but your scythe was in my hand and i felt your cold breath on my neck you want me to remember how those grapes tasted more sour than sweet on that autumn day when your hand wrapped around my neck i only leaned in because i thought you were the wind i walk my dog at night
so i don't have to give that fake smile the head nod that leads to a wave at some car to someone i don't care to know these social norms that i detest painted on smiles that seethe venom later in pretty boxes known as home in the dark mailboxes appear as shadow people scraping souls with jagged knives trees appear sinister as they surround my path my footsteps are the only sound the occasional light is a painful reminder of another day gone by no answers found the ghosts follow behind me holding on to my sorrow i clutch the leash my dog pulls they trip at my heels their desperate whispers remind me of middle school my hands burning as i tried to climb the rope in gym i held on when all i wanted was to fall my dead friends
walk backwards at night time is still and time reverses as a child i watched twin peaks in the night crosslegged on the dog-hair-matted carpet with bated breath i was laura palmer only younger and not dead riding my bike with bloody knees on empty small town streets because it was more freedom than home blue couch closed curtains cigarette smoke in the light of the tv the half moon table in the kitchen held the only phone the only connection to the outside world besides the two doors that no one ever dared to knock on my bedroom felt like an attic a slanted closet door a lead-painted window that stuck stubborn in the summer and winter the bookshelf and tv were the only things that were allowed to tell secrets at a hotel room i look in a trash can for clues next to the staircase in the street i see a dead body zipped up in an orange sleeping bag on a dirty table in a makeshift clinic i lay naked i travel in a time machine that looks like a shitty one bedroom apartment my big grey dog is bleeding under a sheet i have to adjust his oxygen tube several times i need to go back to 1987 because it was cheaper to do laundry i hold change in my hands in the middle of an empty yellow laundromat time travel is bloody there is blood everywhere i am tired of surviving i cry this again and again in to the fur of my now dead dog at night i reach 1987 when i fly over the ocean the lighthouses wink at me i fail to notice the beauty in this i didn't sleep again last night
i am in perimenopausal purgatory my rage keeps me up as i remember all that i have tried to forget nights sweats and regrets my heartbeat blooms curses at all those who have wronged me i think of those times where hope was a shrine and my placating was considered a feminine art form by those who didn't bother to see me my body protested this invisibility ovaries burdened with cysts my uterus harbored fibroids as i cried in nondescript bathrooms and homes where i wasn't at home my womb never stopped weeping at that miscarriage that was silenced because it was just another normal nothing it rained that day i hid in the clouds while the X was busy pretending that working out at the gym wasn't just some code for that other woman that wasn't me my identity just air that slipped out open windows i have learned that hate is an art form that calls to all all the wandering ghosts their unfinished business is mine my resolution is their ticket to elsewhere my daughter at risk of slipping out a window like i did going unnoticed into the ether the planets shift i watch stars fall at my feet at 3:00am the dead will surround me conjure my future that chance they didn't have hands still fists directed at the men they knew that had a part in ending them dead women and children eyes swallowed in darkness this what hope is to me now this remaining long after your story has ended thinking you can change time this nightly vigil just another communion with death follow those yellow lines in the road until you forget that every crossroad is just another vast desert i have a bad taste in my mouth
that begins in the morning when i awake from another nightmare the nightmare is real chaos and violence not wanting to leave the house government lies death and more death and all the people so many people pretending that making the same mistake again and again will have different outcomes it is raining the rain is a conversation i have at night with no one a desperation that only exists in the familiar sounds of nature i keep drifting to the past i am a child in dirty sneakers sitting on a grassy hillside i hold stones in my hand make wishes as the wind blows only some of them will come true none of them will feel as good as this moment when i am alone in the cold thinking of all the different futures that can be things are so bad now
in the world that i reminisce about my shitty childhood when there was no virus and toilet paper was a plenty summer was freedom walking the small town streets while my parents were working fear was hidden violence and hate were just a bad reaction like hives or a volcano every family watched tv together because they had to and it was enough to pretend we connected black flies bit you on the beach and it was just another relief to the frigid winters endless spaghetti canned vegetables and the cold slush that filled your cheap boots sunsets on swing sets the smell of hamburger frying in a pan cold winter days my mother smokes a cigarette in a department store while i hide in some circular rack of clothes everything that was supposed to be awful is beautiful now in the closets of my childhood home i found playboys and penthouses and my neighborhood friends had the same experience we talked about it in dead end streets with stolen candy bars in our pockets life is just an ashtray overflowing while mtv plays in the background it is white snake and some half naked girl on some red sports car and you are just a preteen wearing fluorescent yellow i can't swim
because i am afraid of drowning in deep water in a past life i lost my husband to the sea i had to raise my daughter who in this life is my mother i ran a boarding house i cooked i cleaned my mother/daughter was traumatized after from the death of her father she watched him drown in the waves when all i could think about was now that the captain had drowned that the remaining seamen would rape me and my daughter lifetimes later i get sea sick my mother is still my daughter and my daughter comes from another place a star in the distance i glimpsed in the in between while she longs to shine bright i peruse the darkness looking for answers she wants to connect she is the star in a constellation she can not shine without my darkness but she doesn't understand how i lost my light i swallow the nothing so she can see she is something it hurts my soul to remember when i was like her when i believed in a meaning when i believed that people were good we orbit one another in this vast space i am drawn to the past that other life when smiles were pennies found heads up on the sidewalk when lemonade stands were on every corner in the summer |
AuthorMichelle Tinklepaugh Archives
June 2023
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