whatpumpkins

Once I met a girl who carved the world flat just to tell me I was beautiful. It went without warning, in the morning when we left our sheets and searched for a bed of leaves beneath my mother's apple-tree; I settled crooked as she leaned against my side, and even as my muscles cramped I wouldn't shift her burden from my shoulders even to walk a free girl again. I was the real Atlas, the true one so willing as to ask to bear the weight of the world on her back for all of time, and you wouldn't know it to look at a ghost like me. August, I said to her, and when I waited for her calling voice to come back I couldn't stop thinking about the way

I have tilted the table of all that you know. The glasses and dishes are shattering and spilling, and we only stop and stare at one another as the end falls around us - I ask you to speak, I ask you to scream, I ask you to cry, yet you stay silent. You are the warmest statue I have ever known. I could pass my fingers over your lips and feel them still, the ghost of a smile or a frown and phantom breath escaping, and I want to paint you with gold. I want to bring you into the world and tell it to love you, because you are too unassuming to ask and they cannot love you in your family's gallery; it's in the sea-garden, the fronds reaching aro

It was 5am, and the sun was only beginning to hit the windows as she said to me, I think I wrote a poem about you. And I said, how does it go? It goes like this, she said, and it was beautiful. It was shooting stars, pulled wishbones and a thousand things unfulfilled, all blown birthday candles and dandelion clocks; the superstitions we embrace so that sometimes, for a few seconds, we're allowed to have any dream we want despite it all. At the beginning it was the regret for things, said and unsaid, breaking into sharp pieces in our palms so we could never hold them; then it was a confession, and then a heartbreaking demand, only to know

i), Once upon a time our stories were simple. Once upon a time our mothers turned the pages for us, held our hands, and promised to read out the words we still stumbled over, sometimes, if we were tired or alone. Once upon a time we were taught to walk only so we could begin that ancient human race: the desperate sprint for success, power and fame. The one where your mother lets go of your hand and tells all her friends that you can do it without falling sometimes, if they pretend they aren't watching or they shake a rattle at you; the one where coach says the people sitting at the side-lines are only kids who can't run fast enough, who di

and now i want you, you're savior of the greatest, you're shallow and supreme; yet somehow i'm seeking more when you reign my ev'ry dream. i'm saying, let's share our secrets now, start sailing for that sea. by the docks and under stars; promise, meet me by the quay. and now i need you, there's ripples in the water; i'm wand'ring far past shores. the seconds slip by slower now and while i unlock my door i'm saying, this time i'll be singing, you are my heartfelt song; these silver sounds are shaky, but i feel like we belong.

i'm dedicating this dream to you: my match-girl, my cold alleyway ghost. wishes for you are reasons without - so i'm filling up my palms with straws, clutching on desperation so i don't reach out - because the second your hand is here, i'll give you all of me, i know it. i'm dedicating this dare to you: my match-girl, my cold alleyway ghost. haunt me always at the end of hallways, but don't come any closer to my skin - i'm too cold and frightened here, with no earth to grip in case i fall - crush me to the ground, leave me gravity.

i'm whispering to my friend jonny i wish that girl was mine, she got eyes like the star altair i wanna hold her bones and feel her shaking with me white sticks moving, calcium dancers and five metres turns into miles 'cause she's never near enough to hold my hand, my heart, my head oh, jonny, that girl is a time traveller she's filling me up with future thoughts of years and white dresses and dusty old photographs sun-bleached on our mantelpiece i want this now to be a memory before i knew her, before she was mine.

i), The first time I met the girl who started a revolution the sky was throwing down so much rain it felt like we were underwater. It was hard to breathe; and maybe that was because of all the rain, but probably it was because I looked at her face, under this dark red hood, and inside I was a story with all these feelings I could never say. I guess those feelings could only ever become words on paper - words in ink - not the kind I could ever speak aloud to anybody, if only because I couldn't bear for a person to see the look on my face while I remembered. Despite how good it felt - so hopeful, so desperately happy for what it was and could

she fell in love with the sound of dying storms, and lost herself in the blind spots accompanying her every furtive glance her downturned spine labeled her: pitiful, and her relentless divulging to overcast skies defined her as needy; but still she offered the seeds of her pomegranate heart to anyone willing to settle down inside the breeze and she was abandoned, long ago, (once upon a time, no one cried) by wolves with insipid fangs and human eyes (her glittery irises never quite belonged) they discarded her when she asked if self-delusions were a state of mind and she is poorly veiled, so see-through under our cracke

dehumanized: I am a stirring in the breath of an unswept sky, an itch in the throat, a tear in the lining of the sleeve you keep fingering- like reminiscence will repair loose strands (I woke up this morning in a new carcass, trapped, by fleshed out flaws and dismal dreams and the hush hush thrum ,steady, [pulsations are riddled with intent] of my veins) I am the dents in the floorboard where boxes of I-can-never-forgets lay, I am the aching cold of walls untouched, I am the callouses of your fingers forgetting how to work. (my voice will melt the icecaps, it will draw all salt from the ocean and carve a careful coffin

have you ever felt me choke in the moon slipped night when i can't seem to catch my breath wheezing and, perhaps maybe; paper lace ribs that expand, contract (i'm always okay but you're always afraid) and contracts written in direst secrecy between me, you, and a thing we like to have you ever seen a person drown paper lace lungs contract, contract written in salted oceans as i watch the last bit of oxygen leave (they can't seem to catch their breath) caught in deathly silence secrecy death visits them and maybe death will have you ever felt a person burn felt the fires of heretic sarcophagi skin lit up, sardonyx like and i can't seem to ca

When I was presented with you, wrapped up and swaddled in layers as you were, I was not sure what to do with you. I have never been as unconfident as I was in that moment, confusion overwhelming my senses as I thought, wow, I have no idea what to do. Presented with you, I was stunned into an incomprehensible state. The possibilities I was presented with completely took over my entire being and I paused, froze up, because I hadn't been placed in a position I had no control over in a long time. Since then I had grown up a lot in a few short years and I had grown to be confident, but not with people, and not with people like you. People like

Part of me evaporated in big sky country. Scattered in all directions, easily startled by the naked wild. Blue mountains sprung from rolling hills, too far away to save it from becoming the rain. Past the peaks, past the desert, sailing the vortex of trees in which my own heartland could so easily drown, the bedrock smashed our bow. We became as deadwood on the Beaver State rapids. You built the strangest vessels from my creaking words, and I tried so hard to steer them towards the sand. But I am no captain. What I took for conversation was nothing but splinters riding glacier-back, returning to the valley of death and r

As we sat in silence, child small, we made shadow puppets on the wall; and with our right hands, fingers arched, good lord! We made a heart. But as soon as our fingers touched, as though preconceived, all at once, our hands gave a jerking start; and we each tore it half apart. So many times it's come undone and I've fought for love and hardly won, but it's never, ever been much fun, at least not half as much as breaking fingers on a wall, sitting in a silent hallway, waving candles, child small.