ShopDreamUp AI ArtDreamUp
Deviation Actions
Literature Text
- i.
we were seventeen
when you promised me that
this tiny dustbowl of
a southern town was not going to be
everything my life was made of.
it wasn't hard to believe
because the maps you'd spread across
your ceiling never lied (since you claimed
it was easier to dream when they
were stuck above you
in the night).
i remember the lines you'd drawn
in a felt pen, red because it seemed important,
seemed louder than the rest, and
i remember how you
would trace the roads with your eyes until you
fell asleep. you had a knack for
memorizing every escape route, and when i asked why
you answered that it was because one day you
would have to run.
when i asked if i could fly away with you
you said yes, and that night i dreamt
of runaways and falling stars. i never was sure
if they were supposed to mean something bigger than us.
ii.
sometimes when i lie awake at night
i wonder now how far we might
have gotten if we ever left, if we had jumped into
your old impala and left the road behind us -
it's too bad we never could fix
it up all the way, and that all the grease stains on our
clothes were left behind as shadows of
what might have been,
someday. it might have been
utopia, allowing our reckless
old souls to find a way to fly free from
their cages, but i think our keeper
clipped our wings.
we only ever got the radio to
work in that car, and i was so angry that i left you there
with metal pieces scattered along the
garage floor like driftwood. when i came back
you were singing along with your eyes closed,
and when you saw me you just
smiled.
you made me think that we would still get
free, and i think that's where the
heartache lives -
somewhere between the half-breathed
promises that lived in the creases
of tomorrow and maybe. it was what held me together, and when
it was gone, i fell apart.
iii.
we found time to dream even after
we should have left it for the children.
all it took was a spare
patch of grass and two sets of desperate eyes
to look up at the stars and say
we could be the ones who found a way.
but stars were always
set up for the heroes to reach, and
you and i never qualified. we would have
taken a wrong turn at
jupiter and ended up lost,
anyway.
(as much as you loved to believe
it, your maps couldn't always take you
to the end)
.
i woke up to find you
gone and i think that's what hurt
the most. we were supposed to run away together,
leave nothing but a
memory, but somehow your
ghost still hangs around.
i can still see your face
at times when i stare into my hands, and i'm
not sure if it's because you were my
lifeline or because you
were the only break within my heart -
at times i want to wipe
it all away, but remind myself
that the stars always make these decisions
for a reason -
still, i stare
up at them and wait for your smile
to map itself among those
pinpricks of light, even though you
would never find your place.
i have found that
it takes paper strung up
with red lines crisscrossing this planet
like a dream catcher, but sometimes i can
see what we might
have been --
if we were heroes.
Literature
things that fall apart
2:36, new york city, i can
imagine you
looking out your window,
watching the cars pass by instead of the waves, and
something isn't right, because there's ocean in your blood and
i anchor you.
love,
you still believe in the girl i used to be, but
she's been gone longer than this white sky summer.
Literature
Atelophobia
Atelophobia
The word sticks to my tongue like cotton candy
The sweet, fluffy combination of letters
struggling to embody a correct connotation
And even the dictionary definition seems sugarcoated:
"Fear of imperfection."
Is that what they say when I'm up until 3am,
editing my English paper for the umpteenth time
The tick-tock tick-tock of the clock
promptly proliferating the room
And I just sit there changing good to great,
and peaceful to quiescent,
hoping that my teacher will be drunk in his bungalow
while he grades my chicken-scratch calligraphy
And he’ll see stars instead of how horrid it is
Or is that the word they use,
when
Literature
a list of things colleges don't want to know
1. i have a cactus named atticus that i bought
on the day i thought i was going to die,
and i never forget to water it, not
even when i forget how it feels
to breathe without my lungs rebelling
against my brain.
2. sometimes talking feels like walking on gravel
in a Georgian summer heat.
i try to keep talking anyway,
and hope that eventually
my voice will lose its softness and grow calluses.
3. once, a man whistled at me
outside of a grocery store from
the safety of his car.
four years later, i still haven’t stopped looking
over my shoulder.
4. i drive too fast and i take turns too sharply
and i never put enough sugar
in my tea
Suggested Collections
Featured in Groups
and one to just keep spinning down
so um. yeah. i don't know what this really turned out to be, but i kind of like it. so here you go.
so um. yeah. i don't know what this really turned out to be, but i kind of like it. so here you go.
© 2014 - 2024 Khaimin
Comments87
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
I'm sort of curious as to what the backstory is, for this piece, if you wouldn't mind sharing. The atmosphere of this poetry is angsty, nostalgic, and bittersweet all at once.