mollywritespoems
"Lift me up."
My dad would lift me up into tall trees--taller than him. His hands were cold, but strong. I clutched my Sesame Street doll and smiled widely for Mom's camera. Things were better then. The worst I could do was fall.
I think I'm still waiting for him to catch me.
Medical. I've never been a sickly child, or an accident-prone klutz that cycles through casts. But what I do suffer from is anxiety. It's like cancer; it swells; it feeds off itself. It clogs your throat until there's no room to breathe. It puffs, marshmallow-like, through your life until you can't see two feet in front of you.
Balloons. Such a beautiful thing when clasped in popsicle-stained hands, but what about after they are freed? What about the animal who chokes, who dies alone? We are monsters. We are blind. We are so afraid to be released to the sky.
I remember looking
for shelter in you, all dark corners
and rain-weathered wood,
vines staggering up your sides,
eyelids purple with bruising.
You were broken, but I was lonely;
and in a way, that's worse.
We huddled together, finding
that when cracked edges stand shoulder-
to-shoulder long enough,
everything else begins to hurt.
The track team runs right near my house. Sometimes I want to watch her, in her tight uniform, her strong legs pumping under a jacket of sweat.
But I don't. I don't go. That part of my life, our life, is over. There's no use. She's gone, and I'm not whole. She can stop running.
I can't.
She's flirtatious--in a pissed-off sense,
like maybe the rest of us
don't even deserve to see those eyes,
that skin. She is simply pleasuring us; we're
her good deed. She'll pretend
to open herself up
like some desert flower I read about
that only peels back when the sun is almost gone.
Just a wink, a tease. Her breasts
fill the air as I bind myself, laughing.