Tag: love

Will you always love me?

Will you always love me?
Will you always love me?

With cliff edges at my 
fingertips,
tigers at my heels, and
thunder
in my chest?

When ghosts cling to my back
while I flavor dinner
with my weeping?

When I come home hissing
like a glass-breaker?

When I’m sighing, 
sinking into sofa cushions,
and I have no strength
to pull off a smile,

so instead, I push?

Will you still think I’m strong?
Will you love me always?

Written May 20th, 2018.

A poem I wrote when I was grieving, and thinking of my significant other who had to live with me while grieving. Understandably, I was a depressed, anxious, weeping mess. It’s nothing fancy or full of any special techniques. Just feelings on a page.

Prompt: Clandestine

Prompt: Clandestine

To the royal gardens, the Empress of the East retreats.
Heart torn by the Emperor, and his mistress. The Empress,
hair claret as rubies, waters her scarlet roses with her sorrow.

A clandestine letter from the unmarried King of the West.
Tied with carmine ribbon — a proposal.

Lovers from rival realms. On horseback, the Empress rides West with its King.
The red roses of the west are rumored to never be as radiant as the East’s.
The Western Queen’s vermillion smile, however, there is no comparable beauty.

You can find this poem, and the rest for this contest on WattPad: https://www.wattpad.com/story/306715590-moon-gate

Prompt: Dream

Prompt: Dream
A freshly baked blueberry pie rested on his doorstep.
What floundering tippler misplaced this pastry at first light?

He jested, perhaps it was left with intention — sans-poison.
Crafted with affection? Hah! Nothing, but a dream, he gleaned.
No lady could ever love a beast as frightening as he.

A feminine squeak. She unceremoniously toppled out from his shrubs.
He froze at the sight until — he felt a note tucked beneath the confection? 
Her cheeks flushed, she looked up at him, eyes brimming with endearment.

Art By Abigail Larson

Prompt: Heart

Prompt: Heart
Plouton’s realm is guarded, as is his heart.
A perished land, the unseen one presides
Goddess of Spring offers her loving warmth
Hark thee, King, she sings, your dread Queen has arrived!

I, Persephone, will be yours — ichor and soul, flesh and bones.
My undying devotion, I hope to depart with one hundred roses. 
I offer companionship for the rest of our lives. To Hades,
King of the Underworld, I offer myself as your bride.

----

Lore Olympus (the art used) belongs to Rachel Smythe.

You can find this poem, and the rest for this contest on WattPad: https://www.wattpad.com/story/306715590-moon-gate

Scissors

Scissors

When you cut me from your life,

did you use scissors?

 

Did you cut carefully

like I was a curving,

challenging,

stencil?

 

Occasionally I feel like

a frayed ghost limb

from a thoughtless tear.

 

Maybe I was creased first

before you casually

pulled           me              apart.

 

Tugged. Me.

With the same soft swipes you’d use

to shoo dust off your loved one’s cheek.

 

Did you use a cookie cutter?

I’ve felt shaped differently since.

 

I don’t feel you balled me in your fists before discarding me,

but I feel crumbled nonetheless.

 

Did you commit my calligraphy

to memory?

Recalled our childhood and chronicled

all we had,

held me to your heart,

before you severed us?

 

Whether you shunned me away into a

water-stained box, full

of your childhood knick knacks, waiting

for your hands to wrinkle to be

treasured again,

or tossed me into the same wastebasket

of shredded due dates and credit card offers,

I still have to ask.

 

Did you have the decency to use a pair of shears?

Once they said we were cut

from the same cloth.

Yet I still feel the ripping

from your bare

clenching hands.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, September 2017

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Untitled

Like tryna’ to catch water.
Could never win, no matter how much I fought her.

A pointless carousel, I watched it dissolve.
Those revolving doors,
couldn’t take it anymore,
as they took us round and round,
and I wound up a deserter.

Couldn’t pretend, couldn’t float on the deep end,
felt like an accessory to murder.

Whenever she defiled her worth, didn’t matter what she deserved,
but I couldn’t weather the rewind.

Had to repeat history, had to re-loop misery,
Couldn’t remain blind.

I tried to be hero, tried wise mediator.
Instead I became a powerless spectator.

Maybe my shoulders weren’t strong.
Like slow motion she willingly leaped off
into an ocean of sharks.

Like rolling under a the wheel of a truck.
Like running through a fire.
Poking an electric socket, she was dead set on drowning –
Wired.
No matter the life jacket, what advice she gets,
the only place she could live
were those thorny roads I abandoned.

When a part of you gets gangrene,
you cut it off.
There’s nothing more helpless
than loving one who doesn’t love herself.

And so I swept it under the rug.
Saved myself even though it hurt.
Had to release her from my clutch because I loved her too much,
and I was done being burned.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 3/12/2015

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I once had a friend who was more like my sister. She was a part of me, but she was no good for me. And she was no good to herself. Sometimes when you love someone, you’ve gotta let them go. It’s one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make in my life, and sometimes, I miss her… I hope she’s out there, and I hope she’s finally learned to love herself.

A Country

Somewhere in me,
a country rises,
of cobble-stoned roads,
street lamps like raised eyes,
3 panel windows on brick,
of blown glass, wind chimes, and freshly baked bread.

Somewhere where it’s winter.
Somewhere I only find
when I’m taken from everything else.

A man I don’t know,
but is the type only I could ever truly know
on the other side of a barely cracked door split to show
heavy wooden furniture, sofas and curtains,
answers in a defeated tone to his cynical father,
“She’ll probably go back when the winter’s over anyway.”

I know he means me,
but I’m not sure where it is I’ve come from to return to.

He has dark hair that whips in the front the way beaters fold cake batter,
glasses, a long sleeve sweater on his long arms –
red.
I push the door open with my breath not being the only thing I leave behind.

Dusting a layer of snow from my red coat,
I tell him it’s cold outside
before inviting myself to his flank.
If he was surprised,
he only let it slip for a moment before he secures me against him with one arm.
Warm.

Does he know I heard?
A shop owner,
a woman I apparently know who knows us,
but only him individually,
asks him a favor to which
he answers with a grumble.

He looks at me look at him
and changes his mind.

“Let’s go.”

The kiss is as quick as the dot of an exclamation.
I’m not sure it happened,
But my face senses the intrusion and bares teeth.

She gives me that look.
The, “I know you’re staying whether or not it’s winter forever,” look.
Out in the winter,
my coat and his red scarf,
he reaches for my cold fingers
before country sinks again.

I open my eyes to the
winter that hasn’t gone,
but I’ve left against my will.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez ?/?/2014

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Wurzelbrot

I like me a man with a bit o’ boyish charm
who smiles from his cheek
has Andes chocolate mints on his huff
and a scolding as hot as firebrand
arms that can gently swing a heavy jackhammer
a name with rolling R’s and lulling L’s
who’s baritone can ace the Richter scale
a hide like the ha’s on frostbitten mittens
a bull dog mug
who shows culinary care in getting the rise
out of hissing yeses and the grease from fatty hips
coat hangers for shoulders
because they carry my burdens
and a preference to sleep in Wurzelbrot knots.

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 2/15/2010

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.