Maiadvicestudios

Remember Me

when you drink a cup of tea too early/and it burns you/how I burned you/with the sharp tongue of morning breath/with every breath of winter air/the stark cold filling your lungs/the way I used to fill your bed/my body humming beside you/vibrations in anticipation of your touch/the soft touch of that blanket I stole from HomeGoods/that you stole from me/that I stole back/that we shared/in what we shared/and what we never got to/in Babu/a typo that became significant/the bench next to the softball field/a piece of wood turned significant/how you and me became/we/became significant/remember me in the change/changes you made/made to better yourself for me/me too/too little I changed for you/you who I loved too much/in Steve/the main rebuttal against my green thumb/a death that was unnatural/but still happened/happened to you/not because of you/ remember how I loved to beat around the bush/but at the end of those/long/rough/too many old white bitches at once days/into your arms/I would always run straight towards/in your arms I knew home/in your arms lies the memory of me/me/whom you don’t want to remember

Exhaustion

I am so tired, it must be ancestral. The blood of my mother, her mother, her mother, and the mother before her and before her back to the first mother, runs through me. Inside of those red blood cells rushing through my veins, their fatigue lives too. The tired I feel cannot just be my own. It is too great a weight to not also be the fatigue of centuries of sleepless nights.

The Mental Hospital

gave me validation/I didn’t know I needed/I did know I wanted/to not feel alone/when surrounded by crazy/you feel a little less skinned alive/a little more/warm

Alarm Clock

On the days I wake up before my alarm. When my eyes open suddenly, like they’ve been open all this time. And my dreams were but a blink. When the room is soft with dark powdered light and the pressure in my spine to stand isn’t there yet. When my breath is so silent, I forget I’m breathing, until I remember, and I breathe deep, drawing this morning into my lungs, pushing it into my spine. when fluttering eyelashes and an expanding chest are the only things moving in my bed.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

I wish I hadn’t.

Hungry 

I got used to being a midnight snack. Of letting hungry lips drift over a full breast. Sticky fingers clutching a thick thigh. Ravished for a moment. I got used to cleaning up alone.

Being With You Is…

white Sunday light on my pillow

warm hands

sweaty hands

held hands

soft lips that pushpushpushpushpush

their way into my heart

diving deeper and deeper into regions I didn’t know existed

past boxes of best kept secrets

lies I told myself then forgot I told myself then lied that I forgot I told myself

a blistering stark cold truth

like how dry my hair is

playing with hair

dry hair

wet hair

dirty hair

tear-stained hair

wiping away my tears

salty kisses

laughing so hard I can’t breathe

getting used to not being able to breathe

promising I’ll never leave

breaking that promise

crying so hard I can’t breathe

wiping away my tears

salty kisses

warm hands'

dreaming of white Sunday light on my pillow

Ode to My Notebooks

Every single one of them. From the 50 page 50 cent 50 minutes till it was full 5th grade notebooks that started this whole creative mess I think it’s called poetry/I think it’s supposed to express something/like those tear stains in my high school notebooks expressed lonely. A quiet lonely/not nearly as loud as the fire truck engine red swirling doodles looping all the way across the cover to the back. Where I like to shove my feelings. I like to shove a lot of things to the back of notebooks/it’s in the back of notebooks you’ll find what I wish I never found myself. Scribbled pieces of the shadows that hover in my room. Hastily scrawled spells to ward off the fear that comes with lonely. The passionate fear that comes with a cold sadness and flushed cheeks. Ode to the warped covers of notebooks that know how those flushed cheeks feel at 3am. Sticky with salty sweat. To those bent spines who met their crooked fate in anxiously clenched fists. Thank you for not breaking. At least one spine should stay strong. Ode to those moments I’d spend with you/resting under a tree/a soft summer breeze/the caress of calm so sweet on my cheek those moments the words would flow in rivers on your page and you’d take every single one of them. You were the first to take every single one. To take every part of me. I was never too much for you.

Your pages never bled/never too heavy with the weight that I’d grown tired of carrying. I have given you so much notebooks and I don’t have to take it back. I hope when this body is nothing but tears and dust people remember me in the strength of your spine. In the pressure on your page. Remember me in the lives/the dreams/the unsent letters/the memories/and the bits of soul I wove into your pages.

Grandma Bettie Who

Grandma Bettie who chops chicken like it owes her money

And asks if I’m still paying attention.

Who is summer sun and winter breeze

Who is Old Bay seasoning and typewriter

Whose hands are rough like sandpaper

Is too tired to take visitors today

Who calls me Maia-bird when she wants something

Who never listens to doctor’s orders

Whose memory is that of goldfish

But the things she does remember could be engraved in stone

Her words resonating and grounded in hope

Who doesn’t try to see the best in all people yet expects them to see the best in her

Is scared.

Is shaking leaf

Is Bambi in the bush

Waiting for life to return to a normal that’s been forever lost

Is holding on to something slippery with her salty tears

Who needs her son to be her husband, father, friend

Is grandfather clock nearing twelve

Who is spiraling near and far and near and far and near and far from the brink of death

Is harsh and bitter like misdirected anger

Asking how much time is left

How much time is left for me?

Alarm Clock

On the days I wake up before my alarm. When my eyes open suddenly, like they’ve been open all this time. And my dreams were but a blink. When the room is soft with dark powdered light and the pressure in my spine to stand isn’t there yet. When my breath is so silent, I forget I’m breathing, until I remember, and I breathe deep, drawing this morning into my lungs, pushing it into my spine. when fluttering eyelashes and an expanding chest are the only things moving in my bed.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

I wish I hadn’t.

Heartache

I once read that heartache is a hungry caterpillar that must be fed so it can grow wings and fly away. Can the same be said of my depression? Is my lonely just a hungry child, waiting to be satisfied, to be nurtured to an adulthood it will spend far from here?

Garbage

The air is pungent with pent up prophecies no one will ever ask for. Heavy. Not with anything. Just. You know how air can be heavy sometimes? To the point you can almost hold it? It’s like that. Sticky. Heavy. Stinking. The air in this room is garbage. And no one seems to mind. No one seems to mind the tension that’s built in the silence. Silence we allowed. Silence I’m quickly becoming sorry for. Silence is building a wall and it’s almost too high to climb. Neither of us ever liked physical activities anyway. Maybe that’s why we don’t speak. Why we won’t move. Why neither of us will ever take our trash out. Even though the air smells like garbage.

Being Happy

is not easy. it is hard. teaching myself I deserve a smile even if I was not productive today, is hard. that you don’t have to deserve a smile. that smiles are free. and your sadness is not. in the middle of one of those undeserved smiles I can’t help but think, who are you to be happy? that thought unties my shoelaces. it trips me up so I fall down

down

down

to a place with all the answers I already knew. I am no one to be happy. But that begs a new question: who do you have to be to be happy? serial killers are happy. when they kill. that thought builds a ladder. who decided happiness before they decided man? that thought builds an elevator. I am no longer in the hole.

“Hey are you okay? You look sad.”

I smile. Being happy is hard. Faking happy is easy. Maybe one day my teeth won’t clench so hard, when I try to be happy.