Posts tagged poetry

I wonder if this is what it felt like
for you 
when I was married
to him,

looking in from the outside,
fresh set of eyes
unclouded by fables of love
and apologies,

seeing through the promises
and conveniently timed 
one-eighty degree turn-arounds
(however temporary)

while balancing the feelings
and confidence
of that one you love so much
but can’t speak the truth to. 

Such a powerless feeling, 
how did you do it?

-Olanna, 2013

Once upon a time 
I needed to be alone. 
I claimed it gave me 
what little sanity 
I could claim. 
I grew irritable in its absence. 
I wrote in its embrace. 

Once upon a time 
I thought I’d lost my words,
or just my sadness,
in return for finding 
your love. 

Once upon a time 
I recognized that look on your face
that meant you had an idea,
and I knew you would write 
and I loved that I knew you 
that well by now. 

Once upon a time 
I wasn’t quite sure 
what happiness meant
but it didn’t really matter 
anymore.  

It’s that space where
your arm meets your shoulder, 
where my head rests perfectly 
and my lips reach just below your chin,

it’s the sound of smiling
that is immeasurable yet 
warms your insides 
in the most pleasant of ways,

and it’s the way that I can 
imagine forever
when you declare  
“I’m gonna marry you someday.” 

-Olanna, 2013

They said witnesses had mistaken
her blood for a red dress 
covering her naked and bruised body
-there was so much-
as she stumbled into the 
movie theater parking lot
in the northwest corner, 
our corner, 
of metropolitan suburbia
last Thursday night
as the late show let out. 

I wondered her name, 
withheld by local media,
and grade level, a sophomore
or junior at sixteen, 
I wondered if she was black or white
or brown or yellow, 
I wondered if she was beautiful 
before she’d been dressed in that gown
by that unidentified man
and I wondered if she’d survive. 

But mostly I just wondered
how I was supposed 
to keep my own daughter safe. 

-Olanna, 2013

I saw my reflection
in the steam fogged mirror
for the first time in 
what seemed like years, 
 
mostly because 
I didn’t avoid eye contact
with myself the way 
I don’t even notice 
anymore that I do 
 
until I notice.
 
I saw my face and
I noticed my wrinkles,
how when my face is relaxed
my brow is permanently furrowed
and my laugh lines are faint,
 
the crow’s feet now deeper
than the skin under my eyes
that hasn’t felt taut 
in too long to care
 
but my eyes are brighter 
than I can remember possible
and my lips are soft with use
 
my skin bears traces 
of your fingertips that
only I can see 
 
and I feel beautiful. 

-Olanna, 2013 

olanna:

To say that time ceased
to exist on that
lazy, Sunday afternoon
is such a cliche,
but I can find
no other words to
describe that
nothing-else-matters
way I was lost in you.

olanna:

It hit me all of a sudden,
as suddenly as something
that has festered beneath the layers
of my consciousness
could ever astonish me.

An acute awareness
that summoned
     Bitterness,
         Loss
             Tangible pain,
                 Acceptance
Relief

both a tangled knot deep
in my belly and an
ease of breath, as if
my lungs suddenly inflated
and my heart didn’t hurt
quite so much anymore.

It was that moment 
when I not only knew,
but understood
that I had to walk away.

What was different
this time
was that I knew
I could do it.

-Olanna, 2012

olanna:

The number of times
You’ve said “I’m sorry”
Should be an indicator
That if ever I was to run
It should be now

-Olanna, 2012

olanna:

There’s something about
The comfort of your touch
That defeats me
Every time.

-Olanna, 2012

I don’t know that I ever really 
believed in things like 
love at first sight or 
fate and destiny,
even as a little girl
there was never a prince 
on some far away horizon
and perhaps that is what led 
me to settle for ten years 
or to later fall in love 
with ideas of love 
and surely there was never going to be 
any third time’s a charm 
in my world so
I thought it was more like 
happenstance chance based on 
complicated combinations of 
thought and time and space
that led me to the same place as you
on the same night and 
I wrote away explanations 
for my unguarded behavior and 
you wrote me whispers on paper
but as the arguments progressively 
number less than the months
I have loved you
securing the theory that this, 
this is perfect, 
I can’t help but sometimes wonder 
what brought you my way 
after all. 

-Olanna, 2013

Surely I’m biased, but I think this is my new favorite. 

pedanticpersiflage:

I had never dated a woman with children,
until you, had never seen
that look of exhaustion on a lover’s face
that comes from making all the arrangements
for everybody else, that look that
until now I’d only seen in my own mother’s tired eyes,
and on sitcoms, and I’d also never
seen such pleasure on another lover’s face
that comes to yours
when I rub your back, and your shoulders,
and your thighs, and your feet—in between the toes.

I called you my massage whore, but
that was just an inside joke, which I have to reference
now as an inside joke as to not be dubbed cruel
or harsh or insensitive to other readers
who might stumble upon
our private-public communications
via our blogs

because truthfully,
I had never known what it was like
to love a whole family
just to love one, and
I had never known what it was like
to receive romantic love
from someone who’s been programmed
by nature
to love unconditionally.

I had never realized how beautiful
a woman is who’s too tired
to care if she looks beautiful.

I had never realized how much that beauty
would make me
want to unknot the tension
with my palms,

and well, my most special of ladies,
while you may be whoring,
I like that you only accept payments
of gratitude and love. 

blankslate:

fall over me. i want to
remember your skin like my childhood home.
i want to taste the santa ana
winds in your breath. i want you to knock
me to the ground when i try to run.

kiss me like the november sun. the one
that would clear all of the
smog from the sky. the one that would let
me see the mountains. let all of
the beauty be owed to you.

give yourself to me. all of your
cracks and potholes will be as beautiful
as the rain that finds a home in them.
i’ll find a home in you.
you’ll make mere nostalgia pale in
comparison to everything your eyes will
make me remember.

trixclibrarian:

hush
if you are still of mind
a listening
soul
you will hear
trickling
a baby trickster
fledgling
an infant pledged
to do no good
without introducing
trouble ahead
flying off
a mother’s tear
bare witness
to carry our stories
dear 

I could blame it on the hormones 
that seem to paradoxically multiply
the older I get 
when nature’s curse 
makes its monthly house call
 
or I could blame it on a mother’s love
easily transferrable 
(in an almost sort of way)
to another’s child 
or just a soul in pain. 
 
When the semblance of sense 
has been lost from the world 
around me, far and away and
much too close to home and 
I can’t organize my thoughts 
long enough to understand 
my fear or 
how to even begin
to process 
anything 
 
and it’s times like this that compel
people to blindly believe in things like
religion because how else, 
other than a vengeful God, 
would you explain such horrors? 
 
And it’s this God that people 
rely on to give them 
paths to enlightenment 
or salvation, this blanket of morality 
and reasons why
woven to make them feel better
 
so what do you do when you
don’t believe in such things and 
there’s no use searching for blame, 
no questioning of my instincts 
to protect my own and even not
but it’s right there in my backyard
and the way to fix this
(is there ever a way to fix this?)
is just out of my reach? 

-Olanna, 2013

There’s this thing that I do 
sometimes
that I don’t ever tell anyone about, 
this morbid imagination melding with
big-picture looking and 
future planning so that
sometimes 
I wonder what I’d do 
if those dearest to me 
were to die. 
 
I have imagined 
when I’ll be the one
who must be strong and 
handle the arrangements
because no one else can
and I have imagined the 
necessary road trips 
or phone calls to be made
 
and I have imagined how 
grief will get the best of me
and I have wondered exactly 
how long a leave of absence 
from work will be approved 
when the unimaginable 
might happen because surely 
the standard three to five days
bereavement time would not be
enough.
 
But I can’t imagine 
or begin to fathom
the depth of pain
when your child, your world,
is taken suddenly, violently, 
tragically,
or any way at all and 
sometimes I catch myself
what iff-ing and 
 
sometimes,
I even make myself cry. 

-Olanna, 2012