I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry

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I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry Page 6

by Halsey

and then he came

  inside

  her.

  So now I’m with Sam

  at the place with a plan

  waiting for the results

  of a medical exam.

  She’s praying

  she doesn’t need an abortion.

  She couldn’t afford it.

  Her parents would “like totally kill her.”

  It’s 2002

  and my family just moved.

  The only people I know

  are my mom’s friend Sue

  and her

  son.

  He’s got a case

  of Matchbox cars

  and he says that he’ll teach me

  to play the guitar

  if I just keep quiet.

  The stairwell beside

  Apartment 1245

  will haunt me in my sleep

  as long as I’m alive

  and I’m too young to know

  why it aches in my thighs

  but I must lie.

  I must lie.

  It’s 2012

  and I’m dating a guy.

  I sleep in his bed and

  I just learned to drive.

  He’s older than me,

  and he drinks whiskey neat.

  He’s paying for everything

  (this adult thing is not cheap).

  We’ve been fighting a lot.

  Almost 10 times a week.

  But he still wants to have sex

  and I just want to sleep.

  He says

  I can’t say no to him,

  that this much

  I owe to him.

  He buys my dinners,

  so I need to blow him.

  He’s taken to forcing me

  down on my knees.

  I’m confused

  ’cause he’s hurting me

  while he says “please.”

  And he’s “only a man”

  and these things he “just needs.”

  He’s my boyfriend

  so why am I filled with unease?

  It’s 2017

  and I live like a queen.

  And I’ve followed damn near

  every one of my dreams.

  I’m invincible!

  and I’m so fucking naive.

  I believe I’m protected

  ’cause I live on a screen.

  Nobody would DARE

  act that way around me.

  I have earned my protection,

  eternally clean.

  Till a man who I trust

  gets his hands

  in my pants.

  But I don’t want none of that?

  I just wanted to dance?

  I wake up the next morning

  like I’m in a trance.

  And there’s blood.

  My blood.

  Is that my blood?

  Hold on a minute…

  You see

  I’ve worked every day

  since I was 18.

  I’ve toured everywhere

  from Japan

  to Mar-a-Lago,

  I even went onstage

  that night

  in Chicago

  when I was having a miscarriage.

  I pied the piper!

  I put on a diaper!

  And sang out my spleen

  to a roomful of teens.

  What do you mean

  this

  happened

  to

  me?

  (You can’t put your hands on me?

  You don’t know what my body has been through.

  I’m supposed to be

  Safe

  Now.

  I’ve “earned it.”)

  The year is 2018

  and I’ve realized

  that nobody is safe

  as long as she is alive

  and every friend that I know

  has a

  story

  like

  mine.

  (And the world tells us

  that we should take it

  as a compliment.)

  But heroes like Ashley

  and Simone and

  Gabby,

  McKayla and Gaga,

  Rosario,

  Ali.

  Remind me

  this is the beginning,

  it’s not the finale.

  And that’s why we are here,

  and that’s why we rally.

  It’s about Olympians

  and a medical resident.

  And not one

  fucking

  word

  from the man

  who is president.

  It’s about closed doors

  secrets

  and legs

  in stilettos,

  from Hollywood Hills

  to the projects

  and ghettos.

  When babies are ripped

  from the arms of teen mothers,

  and child brides globally

  cry under covers,

  who don’t have a voice

  on the magazine covers

  and you can’t walk anywhere

  if your legs aren’t covered,

  they tell us

  “take cover.”

  But we are not

  free

  until all of us are

  free.

  So love your neighbor.

  Please treat her kindly.

  Ask her her story,

  then shut up

  and listen.

  Black

  Asian

  poor

  wealthy

  Trans

  Cis

  Muslim

  Christian

  Listen.

  LISTEN.

  And then yell

  at the top of your lungs.

  Be a voice

  for all those

  who have prisoner tongues,

  for the people

  who had to grow up

  way too young,

  there is work to be done,

  there are songs to be sung,

  Lord knows there’s a

  war

  to be

  won.

  STOCKHOLM SYNDROME PT. 2

  Abandonment

  is a complicated complex.

  You’re longing

  for somebody who will leave.

  I walked into a promised land.

  A decorated,

  perfect man.

  With something vile

  hiding up his sleeve.

  I wonder

  what I’ll ever have control of.

  Rejection breeds

  obsession,

  so they say.

  I left my heart

  and all my hope,

  my vindicated tales of woe

  in Sweden

  on a freezing winter day.

  LONG-DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP

  that fleeting moment

  at 4 a.m.

  when I am shaken from a deep sleep

  because I can’t feel your skin

  against mine.

  when my entire body hangs

  suspended

  in that silver sliver of time

  is a tiny speck of fear

  that reminds me

  that I love when you turn over

  and kiss my neck

  two feet of space

  2,753 miles

  any distance becomes too much to bear

  a warm bed as wide as the world.

  SMOKE

  It’s funny, the human fascination with smoke.

  Every writer has flexed

  and fucked

  and abused the metaphor for centuries

  “It vanished like smoke”

  “Her body wound like a thin stream of smoke”

  “I inhaled his presence like a cloud of smoke.”

  We are enamored.

  Schrödinger’s element.

  It is there when we restrain ou
rselves from touching it,

  And it disappears when we reach for it.

  It looks solid, it holds form,

  and then evades our grasp as if to taunt us.

  Not transparent, not opaque.

  Is it arrogance?

  Smoke, the reminder of the fire we started?

  The flame that humankind willed into existence in desperation.

  Or is it fear?

  The remnants of something we need to survive,

  but could die in the thrashing embrace of.

  Does it arouse us,

  to watch the smoke?

  The lingering aftermath of the thing that we feign control of,

  But are at the mercy of?

  Do we envy the smoke?

  (If I could disappear as quickly as I appeared,

  I would.)

  In my 65-degree bedroom,

  On a duvet covered in dog fur,

  She puts her cigarette out by smashing it between two fingers.

  Like a final period placed on a hand-penned letter.

  I reach out to touch her,

  But she rolls over and her mind escapes

  to an empty corner of the ceiling.

  Knee-deep into my own cliché,

  I sink.

  ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER

  When he is away from me,

  my heart reaches from my chest like a wet toddler in a crib.

  His voice fills my ears like brown whiskey in a crystal glass,

  occupying every single tessellate crevice.

  When he is away, his smile shines like sun on fresh snow,

  And his eyes flicker like chunks of glitter

  falling through the clear goo in a snow globe.

  When he is away,

  His touch seems hot and scarlet red.

  Feverish and desirable.

  When he is with me,

  My heart retreats like a salty oyster into its shell.

  His voice rips through me like a scissor in a seam.

  When he is with me,

  his smile is so loud I hear it with my eyes shut

  And his nose drips

  and his mouth drools

  and his hands are clammy and awkward.

  He is gilded in light from 5 feet away.

  He is bothersome from 3.

  Why can I love him,

  only when he leaves?

  READY

  I knew I was ready to forgive you

  When I wrenched the knife from my back

  I held it up high

  and it cast a menacing shadow

  over the face of the young man in front of me.

  Its shiny metal gleamed and glistened.

  I stood heaving

  and the veins in my face erupted

  like tree branches gnarled into the forest floor.

  I held the weapon

  retrieved from my own back.

  I gripped it once,

  twice,

  and then

  I put it down.

  REFRIGERATOR BLUE

  2 eyes

  the cold comfortable blue

  of a refrigerator light

  glowing in the temptation of a midnight snack.

  How I rub your head

  with my fingertips

  and press my open palm against your skull

  like I could push right through the bone

  and grab a gushy handful of your brain

  and take a chunk of it home with me

  to devour later.

  In my underwear,

  off a plate,

  in that refrigerator light,

  like cold Chinese.

  Grip my face

  and scold me

  for taking more than you wanted to give,

  and I can feel my smile rising

  push my cheeks through your fingers

  like a handful of clay,

  malleable in your grasp.

  I’ll miss your lap

  and the heat between my legs

  and showering off my sticky thighs

  in the quiet when I get home.

  Oh will I miss the stern, saccharine voice

  melting from your lips

  hovering over my open hungry mouth.

  THE CAVE

  I don’t suppose I really know you very well—

  but I know you smell like the delicious damp grass

  that grows near old walls

  and that your hands

  are beautiful

  opening out of your sleeves

  and that the back of your head

  is a mossy sheltered cave

  when there is trouble in the wind

  and that my cheek

  just fits

  the depression in your shoulder

  and that is all I need to know.

  PARASITE

  I thought I knew what a muse was until I met him.

  I’d been inspired before.

  I’d been intrigued.

  But I had no idea what a muse was

  until he put his pink lips to my neck

  and spit parasites into my ears.

  Let them climb in and make a home

  in the soft tissue of my brain.

  Bred

  and multiplied

  and bit into my mind

  till the memories of him opened

  like sores

  and festered in the heat of my anxiety.

  I opened my mouth

  and Times New Roman print flew out

  like a plague of moths from its depths.

  For 48 hours I was held captive

  by the college-ruled lines

  of a composition notebook.

  Wrapped around my wrists

  like the leather-bound work of a dominatrix.

  He cracked a whip against my skin

  and sliced my flesh open,

  scarlet

  like the margin taunting me.

  The violet bruises on my neck,

  my chest,

  could hardly compare to the scar

  that rose when he petrified me.

  He shocked me.

  Terrified me.

  Because he inspired me.

  I wasn’t prepared

  for the chaos that would follow.

  A muse.

  A parasite.

  A symbiotic relationship.

  Feed his hungry mind from my open mouth.

  FOREVER CURSED IN LOVE ARE THE OBSERVANT

  My mouth tastes like cinnamon whiskey

  and menthol cigarettes.

  Cabernet Sauvignon,

  spearmint gum

  and your hot heavy breath.

  My mouth tastes like all the things

  I should have said.

  I don’t want to be this way,

  but I have been since you left.

  I should have never counted your eyelashes

  when you slept.

  I should forget the way you take your tea,

  but it haunts me.

  2 sugars,

  please.

  THE PATTERN

  What will be left

  when I have broken all of my favorite things?

  When the glue of sweet apologies

  and bat eyelashes no longer repairs them?

  What will be left when I have shattered it all?

  Carelessly, it will evade my grasp.

  And I will have

  nothing.

  I WOULD LEAVE ME IF I COULD.

  This must be a nightmare.

  It couldn’t be a dream.

  I’m washing in the shower,

  my limbs clean,

  until they bleed.

  I sometimes miss the quiet;

  the chaos of the streets.

  I keep it all inside my mind

  and every night

  I scream.

  I can’t remember

  what it’s like to smell the ocean.

  I can’t remember

 
what it’s like to feel the sea.

  I can’t remember what it’s like to face a mirror

  and not hate the person staring back at me.

  I wish that I were dead

  or at least somewhere else.

  I try to keep the riot quiet

  like a diet

  for my health.

  Stealth.

  It’s moving silently.

  It’s heavy.

  It started from my knees

  and now it’s creeping up already.

  Just another second now,

  ’cause here comes the confetti.

  Please, hold the camera steady.

  I encore 7 more

  and everybody’s like “That’s plenty!”

  I would leave me if you’d let me

  I would leave me if you’d let me

  I would leave me if I could.

  BRIGHT EYES

  They told me that she’s beautiful

  with bright eyes and fair skin.

  She’s from a city off the coast somewhere

  where the girls are “made for men.”

  Is she a naked mess in underwear

  on a dirty bathroom floor?

  Do you look at her disgusted,

  thinking that you deserve more?

  But does she scream at the top of her lungs

  praying you don’t leave her?

  Does she scream from an open mouth

  begging you to feed her?

  Will she set alarms obsessively

  to check in on your breath?

  Does she know the ways to touch you

  with her lips upon your neck?

  Is she agreeable and careless?

  Does she answer all your calls?

  Because I know you needed someone

  who was fine with feeling small.

  But does she scream at the top of her lungs

  praying that you’ll need her?

  Do you scream at the top of your lungs?

  Do your veins bleed her?

  DEVIL IN ME

  I won’t take anyone down

  If I crawl tonight

  But I still let everyone down

  When I change in size

  And I went tumbling down

  Trying to reach your height

  But I scream too loud

  If I speak my mind.

  BRING ON THE BLACK!

  Can’t decide what’s fake and what’s fact

  So you’re up late screaming, “Bring on the black!”

  Smoked so many cigarettes alone on a bathroom sink

  I think my lungs are full to the brim with ink

  And I can’t get it past my throat to my fingers

  to the paper

  to the stingers

  of the hive in my head

  Last week I had a dream you were dead

  I was on the phone calling

  Begging for your body back

  Screaming, “Bring on the black!”

  I’m opening a faucet and I’m scared to let it run

 

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