an elegy in birdsong. by comatose-comet, literature
Literature
an elegy in birdsong.
Attic apartment, birds nesting between roof-tiles, I hear them scratch and I hear them cry. The rustle of their mother’s wings, the quiet sounds of sacrifice and hunger, these pink-fleshed chicks inherit their parent’s strength and swallow it down with clacking beaks, I hear the slow devour of motherhood, the gentle expansion of growing wings sprouting feathers.
My bed-sheets awash with haze, outside the city shivers in the winter air and gathers itself into suits, newspapers, morning commutes, polite conversation and I watch the sun catch my ceiling with unblinking stares, prying its way across the room, frothing up tidal at the
It is okay to be getting your hair trimmed for the first time in eighteen months.
It is fine to let yourself inflate a sad story and then another,
like pink gum bubbles
In the direction of anyone who will listen.
You can now chew over the last year and a half of your life
from a distance, when you’re at the hairdressers,
after she notices the short patches by your sideburns with an inquisitive look.
You can hold back the tears with relative ease,
as if telling of someone else’s illness,
rolling the grief around in your mouth like a gobstopper
whist her acrylic nails gently graze the backs of your ears.
You can use an entire palm
i thought i had grief down to an art:
throw the ashes to the wind,
catch them in your mouth,
and move on
but i can't work through this
as if it were a checklist
loss is not linear,
a recipe reading:
simmer in sorrow, sadness, anger
until it is reduced by half,
a glaze of grief
at the bottom of the pan
my doctor can keep
his Kubler-Ross model,
give her five stages
another five years
because i am not finished
tearing at my shirt,
painting mascara Roschorch
on my pillowcase,
letting my blood
of the oxygen we both breathed
i hear the respirators
when the rest of the house is asleep
your funeral flowers still
hang in the rafters of the at
read this when you're so angry you shake by MisfitableGrae, literature
Literature
read this when you're so angry you shake
little drops of oil make rainbows on wet concrete
and i don’t know how beautiful you find that,
but sometimes you gotta learn that
the littlest things are the prettiest,
like the shape of your fingernails and the crinkles
you get at the corner of your eyes when you laugh and
when you grow old and i know i said “grow old”
like it’s a temporary thing, but that’s because it is.
you can think it’s forever but it’s really
a split second because you don’t matter, not when
the universe is still growing and speeding through a nothingness
we can’t even fathom, not when color doesn’t exis
01.
the sky was earl grey
and the clouds were steamy sips
and i wanted to drink it all.
02.
the leaves were star yellow
and the bark smelled of coffee
and the bakery was selling a moon made out of cheese.
03.
there was an old man on a bench
he threw his wedding band in the sewer
i cried for him.
04.
the birds were dreams
and the mountains, my obstacles,
tally ho young adventurer tally ho
05.
i ran into an artist today
he drew signs on corner post buildings
but he also gave his lunch to a homeless boy.
06.
my mom holds black holes beneath her eyes
and for the first time in days, she spoke to me,
"i'm worried about you.
Dear Maybe-Mama,
I was not a mistake.
It’s strange to think that exactly half of my DNA comes from you, and yet we could pass each other on the street and not even recognize each other.
I’ve never really believed in searching for you, my biological family. I never asked my parents the heartbreaking questions that Hollywood makes small, blue-eyed orphans ask: “Why didn’t my real mother want me?” I’ve never believed in any of that, and I don’t expect that you’d want me to, anyway.
But if we ever did meet, what would we even say to each other? I don’t speak Chinese, and you probably don
i could tell you it's going to be hard.
i could tell you life is a roller-coaster
of heaven highs and lows that drag
you all the way to the core
of the earth
and then finds a way to somehow pull you
all the way
back
up
so it can break you all over again.
i could tell you he's going to love you-
eventually.
i could tell you to stop worrying about
that first kiss you're not gonna get until
you're six
(teen)
because honestly kissing's going to suck
until you meet him
and maybe even for a little bit after
until you guys get it
just
right.
i could tell you to stop being such a bitch
to that chubby girl in your class
because one day after you
Letters to my younger self by comatose-comet, literature
Literature
Letters to my younger self
i. Dear ears, when I was three
You have heard the pyrrhic silence of your mother’s quiet solitude in the clap-back echoes of his absence; trust me when I tell you this will not be all you hear, dear ears. Trust me.
ii. Dear eyes, when I was five
You have seen the glacial gelid shards of his pebble eyes fix their sights on you and you have seen silence as a sheet of ice frost-bitten over his face as he whispers that he is proud of you with all the conviction of a question mark; trust me when I tell you this will not be all you see, dear eyes. Trust me.
iii. Dear hands, when I was eight
You have been riven and empty since he left like a