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a moment of your time      I am a writer because my mother says so.
      
      I am a writer because I am teaching myself to look for my pothole blue eyes, fat stomach smile, and popped-bubblegum cheeks in mirrors, television screens, and reflective surfaces. I am a writer because one time I had an innocuous crush on my second cousin and I still cherish all of his two-line emails. I am a writer because I am the stereotypical, spoiled, overloved only child.
      
      I am a writer because my grandfather, who
memento mori           I.
Death has been standing outside my house all night.

Last night I wiped my eyes against the cool glass and I watched him out the leaves of my window; watched while he circled the perimeter, his hands dancing near my rosebushes, giving light touches to the leaves and breaking them off along the neon vein lines. I touch the patches on my face and I try to make out the lines on his body: hooknose frame, dark lidded eyes, nailed mouth. The ceiling of nighttime rushed over him like a blanket and a smile, and I fell asleep with the crook of my head against the sill, images of his dead-star hands floating on my eyelashes, dripping off
i'll let you in on a secret:       You suffer.

       I know you do; you know you do. I've always been here for you. I've seen you cry and I've seen you yell and mostly, I've seen you dream. I am the one pinching your lids closed, I am the one wrenching your lips open, and I am the one squeezing the tears from your drainpipe eyes.

       You don't need to tell me, because I know. I have you all figured out. You're sick, you know that, and you're nearly dead, always nearly dead—but you persevere, and you hold out, and you're so beautiful, and I'm just here to h
take my hand.              I.
       It all boils down to fear.
       
       You just watch. Your depression, your anger, your terror: fear (manifestations of, lovers to, expectations within). I know you have these things and I know what you make of them, because no one knows you quite like I do.
       
       You sit and you are afraid of dying and you are afraid of madness and you are afraid of losing an
anorexia nervosa. _part one      a.
There is something you should know about me, before we begin:

I have anorexia nervosa.

      b.
The denial was thick.

Anorexics, I believed, were skinny girls with even skinnier bones, combing their falling-out hair against mirrors where they appear as a sliver of a profiled coin, dying as the air beats them and hating their folded-paper bodies. Anorexics, I thought, had to be girls who achieve your standard perfect grades and are incredibly athletically-gifted, all the while going on zero calories for days at a time. Anorexics were built of disgusted strength, sickened
the other sondear james,

your name means "hold the heel,"
among so many other things,
and i think i could list them:

=

dear james,

your eyes are funny. during saw v i saw your pupils
and i thought, hazel. his eyes are definitely hazel.

and they aren't: they are green-gray, they are gray,
they are tinted with blue, they are stung with brown,
but mostly, they are a soft, indecisive green, and your
lids are permanently half-closed, lazy, and you continuously
look like you may be waking up from a dream, and i am

continuously wondering if i was in it

=

dear james,

i can recite things about you.

all kinds of things. your middle name is
david.
for my motherYour daughter is afraid to go downstairs in her pajamas because she feels like a balloon animal inside of them. (Do not take this as an excuse to go out and buy her new ones.) Your daughter would extremely enjoy the sight of two men kissing. (In fact, your daughter is somewhat of a homophiliac.) Your daughter has only seen porn twice, but she has read porn more times than one should count. (The second time was in the corner of the screen during American Psycho; the other, on a stumbled-onto-out-of-curiosity Web site.)

Your daughter is nervous about a lot of things. (Including, but not limited to: drugs, tornadoes, fire, insects, heights, pai
anorexia nervosa. _part two      o.
I lean back against the rim of my bed and dig my feet as far into the floor as the carpet will allow. The panic leaves me like an ocean wave, scraping up against the sand of my head and leaving me breathless. I want to hurt something. My arms settle neatly around the other, touching on my wrists, rubbing down my forearms, clenching my hands together.

Someone should have shot me as soon as I made it out of the womb, I think, and my hands settle around my neck.

      p.
Sometimes, I broke.

There were two months where, every Saturday and Sunday, I had Poptarts for breakfas
cat-burning                        one and a half.
       i cannot teach babies to speak, cannot take their lips into my fingers and impress the words upon them, cannot summon the voice with my nails and form it between my fingers like loose ripped cloth, syllables dying their tongues pink and brown as they speak until they turn white and die, legs snapping like frictionless fingers. once i close my eyes with a little palm curled around mine and i heard him, talking to me, and he said:

  &
fear of butterfliesI have discovered that I am invisible.

I think about this in the middle of a crowd. It comes into my head, a gray and blue thought, and I hesitate and stretch my forefinger out before me. I wrinkle the skin on the side of my hand and I brace my knuckles, white and red. My bones leap out of their skin and I close my eyes, so the sun is a big silver-white flattened circle on my eyelids, and inside of it, I can see spots of black and orange.

I think about once, in the fifth grade, when I heard my first curse word: shit, uttered from a mouth with fork prongs for teeth. I think about the girls in middle school who called each other whore and the
our descent into heaven1.
He leans in and shakes his drink, and the ice cubes rattle into each other like old brittle bones, dancing and bumping haphazardly into the other.

You have to watch the quiet ones, he tells me, taking a swig. Everyone thinks it's the noisy ones you gotta be careful of, but that's wrong. The quiet ones'll get you if you don't make sure.

I wonder if he is a loud drunk, a mean one. If he likes to hit his wife, fuck his children. If he trips up crying to himself. If he likes to dredge up and whine about every bad, black-stain memory. If he's a giggly, excitable drunk. If he'll want to dance and sing and kiss.

If I'll have to quiet him.

I.
you have such a pretty smilei.
it has been scrawled and every letter looks like a hooked crow's talon, and i am sitting with my jeans all rolled up and my feet are made of seeds and wrinkles like protrusions of stems and dreamy roots, and i am exploding stars in my mind and they shatter like yellow confetti, slivered gold glitter, and i read so slowly like the words might escape me before i can finish, the tail-ends of ns turning into legs and the es unfurling and falling delicately away and the m scattering away like leaves coated in sulfur and membrane and silk, and on the wall is scrawled a picture, a color, that looks like this:

ii.
my stomach opened up wide
a
ear to your chestyour inner child is speaking and wants
ice cream by the gallon. it is playing
made-up, off-key drumbeats on its stomach,
playing until its fingers are sore with
skin and dust, belly-button lint and
dreams. it does not want to be an astronaut,
a fireman, or a police officer: it wants to
be a food taster, a librarian, a
smoke-maker and a diamond-cutter. it
wants to bleed, beautifully, and it wants
to never feel pain for the rest
of its life.

                  (please. please, never let
         
existentialism in heaven1. First, we have a lesson in breathing.

(I stutter, and in the back of my head there is a slide and small children are slipping down and losing their lungs, tucking under inside of them, and I came around afterwards and picked up all their organs and buried them inside the tanbark, hid them away in a little box that only I will have, every thought they expelled with their breath and would've liked to keep, and I press my fingers down and they are gathered around me and they say st-st-stutter with their necks like paper cranes for hope and peace and a hopeful mouth. They do not love me.)

She opens up my mouth, peeling back the ridges of my
your skin likes the noiseHold a mirror up to your skin.

You will be amazed.

=

I hold my hand before my face.

"The swept up, skinny bones of birds. The corpses of pieced-together, pink ants. Shelled and filled-up cocoon bodies. Tree-branches with God's stolen skin and slabs of white, dust-bone dough. Pasted, solidified pale mucus. The wrapped and tethered, life-given joints of dolls. Limbless and pudgy sticks, fleshed-out and caved in. Matchsticks coated, rolled and thickened with skin, virgin from the tongue of fire. Shrunken and weathered poles, scarred tissue of dragon, shriveled bone, poverty-stricken and skinned-straight gemstones, broken and bended fleshy he
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More from ~livingcomforteagle

commitmentHe's lounged over the chair like a disjointed doll, his head tilted and sunshine splayed on his face. He looks like he's on fire. Textile leg unfolded, the cat moves about him, blue-tinted fur and rosemary eyes, her forehead pressing against his leg, matting her fur with flesh.

He smiles. "My cat loves me," he murmurs.

A voice interjects, with crystal fingers pushing at his eyebrows, throwing them in a downward heap. "It's to mark territory," it says. "She's telling the other cats not to touch. You're her property."

Her scent lathered all over his toes, her glands kissed each one of his pinkie toes, she looks up, dubiously, with a hidden s
three days in brooklynThe sky is dark when you're looking down on it, like a handful of angry, scattered stars. The clouds look like pails of fluffy knives. All of the stewardesses look thinly tired, rugged around the eyes but lithe around the arms. They have flashing IDs and their names are sweet things, like Cherie, Shannon and Kathy. They look at you like a disdainful cousin and offer peanuts like a homeless person with an empty cup.

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leading from my eyes
to the stars in my palms.
if you cut me open, you'll
find old newspaper clippings
from last january, and old
musty sharpies in a spectrum
of rejected colors, with dust
layered over the felt-tip curb.

ants can carry things ten
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drowning, home, into a little
cradle that was made for a
little boy who died at my feet
and was born of my crescent
eyelids, the stomach lining in my
mouth that burns occasionally.

ii. i said,
i think hate is the opposite
of love,

you said,
but is love the opposi
, anyone?                                                                         on sad sundays,
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and crying when your second-cousin went face down and
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in the pursuit ofI cannot define happiness without simply referencing a myriad of other yellow-sounding adjectives: joyous, pleasant, euphoric, loving, warm, merry, blissful, festive, idyllic, overjoyed, elated, pleased – things that don't even really mean happiness, just equate it in my head.

And that makes me nervous.

How do you define happiness? Real, emotive, unguarded and unbridled happiness? How do you describe the dizziness in your toes, the warmth at the top of your head, the numbness on the front of your teeth? The woodlike quality that comes with it, the sort of anesthetized, delirious, passionate happiness?

Without the clichés, maybe?
a frown like bandaidswe breathe. we're walking on the tables, strumming on walls:

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hands never loved someone with two hands around your
shoulders in the moonlight of a cherry-tomato

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pandora used to have wings

:iconlivingcomforteagle:

i found your feet
by the kitchen table.

closer, you say,
while i attach them back onto
your salt bones, tabasco blood dripping
onto my fingers. i am lost in a
waterlogged river of
browning thoughts and pasty dreams.

i hold my breath, a dirty thought
inside my mouth. closer,
you whisper.

you grab my hand and trace my fingers
along your insides, and i look away
at the ceramic
enforcing order on the kitchen tile,
pretending i cannot feel you
between my fingers.

i could squish you, i think.
i could grab your skin and bend it
against my nails: i could use
your tongue as a washcloth, i could
skip beats with your heart,
i could play hopscotch with your
smeared blood.
i could twirl your hair around
a maypole, and i could
steal your eyes for my dreams.
i could have you.

and i could tell telephone wires and
biblical travesties and maternal clouds,
loose-leaf paper and rawboned ears;
things about you that
you will never understand, that would
make god crane his eyebrows
in wonder.

there are things i could tell you,
i begin.
i raise my eyes to meet steel.
there are things we could know,
together—

you walk outside in your
new yellow feet. the rocks cannot
penetrate your skin. i watch as the sky
turns to green above my head,
and the door clicks
shut.

i wring out the white sheets
and tell the birds your secrets
through the window.
:iconlivingcomforteagle:
jane said when she laid on her back,
the sun hit her body like an ugly landscape.
but some things never get better,
like used cars and bad livers.

back at the hospital,
you got no visitors at all.
she visits you in your sleep,
but that newspaper gown is always on fire.

yesterday you gave your burden a name,
yesterday you gave your burden a face;

but your burden looks an awful lot like her.



this refused to be titled.

this refused to be titled and i cannot stop writing bad poetry.

this refused to be titled, i cannot stop writing bad poetry, and my mother will not speak to me.

someday i will make a soup.

word count: 247
listening to: love rhymes with hideous car wreck - the blood brothers
(c) LeeAnn - 2008
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:iconmoonfreak:
~moonfreak Jul 31, 2008  Professional Writer
I really like the feeling I get from reading this, and the title is great. ^^ My favorite part is the second to last stanza because I can really see the image.
Reply
:iconlivingcomforteagle:
~livingcomforteagle Aug 1, 2008
thank you so much! :)
Reply
:iconmoonfreak:
~moonfreak Aug 1, 2008  Professional Writer
You're very welcome!
Reply
:iconmentaldragon:
~mentaldragon Jul 26, 2008
wonderful...I really like your use of imagery, especially in the first few stanzas.
Reply
:iconlivingcomforteagle:
~livingcomforteagle Jul 29, 2008
thank you! :)
Reply
:iconeverydaysaint:
!EverydaySaint Jul 25, 2008  Hobbyist Writer
Hey!
This piece of literature was featured in my latest news article, L I T E R A T U R E.
If you would like to see it, click this [link]
If you enjoy it, I would appreciate it if you would favorite it!
Thanks :nod:.

-- Jude Skylar
Reply
:iconlivingcomforteagle:
~livingcomforteagle Jul 29, 2008
holy crap! :faint: thank you so much.
Reply
:iconeverydaysaint:
!EverydaySaint Jul 30, 2008  Hobbyist Writer
Of course!
Reply
:iconrchelsea2005:
~rchelsea2005 May 23, 2008  Hobbyist Writer
I've missed your poetry SO, SO much. Maybe it's because it's easier for me to digest than prose in general. (Although your prose is beautiful, don't doubt that for a second.) Poetry has always been my first love...and you do the medium such justice.

your salt bones, tabasco blood dripping Ah gawd, no one, no one could beat your images. I can just picture it so vividly; color, texture. Geez...

i could squish you, i think.
i could grab your skin and bend it
against my nails: i could use
your tongue as a washcloth, i could
skip beats with your heart,
i could play hopscotch with your
smeared blood.
i could twirl your hair around
a maypole, and i could
steal your eyes for my dreams.
i could have you. There is something wholly disturbing yet wholly beautiful about that...kind of like...wanting to capture someone in some condensed..simplified form so you could keep them close to your heart...you describe that want many of us feel in our lives very succinctly, and in the end it really hits the reader. But it's one of your wonderful punches; that subtle, sneaking that we don't even realize until we've made it to the end of the poem...with the whole thing as a whole and realize you've been planning that the whole time.

and i could tell telephone wires and
biblical travesties and maternal clouds,
loose-leaf paper and rawboned ears;
things about you that
you will never understand, that would
make god crane his eyebrows
in wonder.

Just wow. I love how random your images are.

i raise my eyes to meet steel. raising eyes..to meet someone else's has always been a theme in my writing. For some reason...it always makes me think of looking at God (or something like that)...that form that loves you but that you are still so afraid of...that theme of feeling undeserving of salvation. That's what that image always connotes, for me.

i watch as the sky
turns to green above my head,
and the door clicks
shut.

i wring out the white sheets
and tell the birds your secrets
through the window.

Holy crap. I can't even...just...

Shit. I'm speechless...yet again. You know how hard it is to render me speechless? I talk so damn much, you couldn't get a word in edgewise but here...geez.

ps. I'm stealing your endings. And keeping them all for myself MWUAHA
Reply
:iconlivingcomforteagle:
~livingcomforteagle May 24, 2008
..:heart: i am still wholly in love with your comments. they deserve to be in glass casing in their very own museums.

haha i just reread this and my writing is always more disturbing than i ever intend it to be. :XD: oh dear. this probably says something terrible about myself. because yes, that is a very disturbed stanza.

i think that's an interesting interpretation--i have difficulty meeting people's eyes, so the idea of closing/opening/meeting another's eyes has always been really present in my writing as well. maybe not as present as bones, limbs, mouths, colors and "you," because seriously combinations of those are in every single piece of mine ever, but hey.

D:!! but if you were to take my ending then the new ending would have to be
there are things i could tell you,
i begin.
i raise my eyes to meet steel.
there are things we could know,
together—
and then you'd have to keep taking all of successors until there would be nothing left.
Reply
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