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Lauren Lee Poem
How to Feel When Your House Burns Down
The home you are raised in is a mother tongue.
I was four when it was built, an age when innocence
turns river water and all that lives within to blood.
First birthdays and first dances fortify the mantel.
This home transports milestones, our own vessel
to move us from sidewalk chalk to the attempt to outrun
the stagnancy found only in the debilitation of the long run.
At seven, I held him in my arms and love upon my tongue.
Promises danced on my lips and ran rampant on my vessels.
College funds started in a baby bottle, tiny wishes held in a cent.
I remember grappling with his growth, attempting to mantle
the affinity we pinky promised deep into our own blood.
At twelve, my father taught me to dance in the blood
and glass on the hardwood. Still, I watch his fingers run
to sow flowers in my mother's hair, her back, mantling,
the image of infatuation, true love, in our minds. A tongue
of tenderness has our childlike innocence
giggling and shouting at the inamoratas and the vessel
of devotion in which each of us was vesselled
into this life. Each of us was born in the fervor of blood,
so sweet. My mother threaded honey, burned incense,
and chewed lemon slices whole to hold us near. She ran
baths of salts and oils, to cleanse the ever growing tongue
of infernos that caressed, more captivated, our mantel
of consciousness. For many years, we tied sheets to mantels.
With pillows and blankets, we’d build ourselves a vessel
to a land of fairies and warriors who shared the same tongue.
Pool noodles became swords. Here we spilled blood,
convincing ourselves if we were to sprint, leap, run
fast enough we too could fly amongst the rest, innocent
to the world around us. At nineteen, I watch the innocence
leave our home. Adolescent memories that kiss the mantel
turn to sharp licks in the wild fire that is running
through the bones of our sweltering home, the vessel
of affinities, dances, compassion, imagination, and the blood
that connects it all, now lapped up with tongues,
too heavy for the innocent, a cancerous burn in our vessels.
The mantle of snow is no relief to the flames that drip like blood.
And still, we do not run, we wait for the final lick of a mother's tongue.
Copyright © Lauren Lee | Year Posted 2023
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Lauren Lee Poem
The Art of Being Empty
I was baptized in the TV light of The Biggest Loser
and worshipped a version of myself that I believed
could go forty days without eating, like Jesus.
I packed my lunchbox with a communion
of teeth-whitening strips and cherry red lipstick.
you’re only allowed to donate blood once a month,
so I bought fake IDs so I could go twice a week.
Those 1,400 calories had me in a chokehold.
I carry years of Diet Coke and sugar-free gum in my rib cage.
The holes in my bones were carved deep by a middle
and a ring finger both digging six feet into the ground.
I took pride in hiding bones behind thick cotton–
my own little treasure hunt, X marks the spot.
Skinny is beautiful, but feeding tubes burn like hell.
And yet somehow knowing you need one makes you feel like God.
This is not pretty. This is being forced to sing when you pee,
so the nurses know you aren’t vomiting,
counting the calories in your toothpaste,
and watching your parents read their eulogies for your imaginary funeral.
If you are not recovering, you are dying.
I remember the day my mom found my body crumpled on the stairs.
I would take my dinner in my room just to watch potatoes
float like loofahs in a bath of toilet water.
My dad bought every food I loved, just to watch it rot in the pantry.
I haven't gotten my period in six years.
I still don’t remember how to live, when dying felt so damn good.
I am still reminding myself that Zoloft and a bowl
of ice cubes do not count as dinner.
Yesterday, I forgot to eat breakfast, and for a split second
I remembered how good it would feel to forget about
lunch and maybe dinner too.
And suddenly I am fifteen years old again, sewing rocks
into my socks to meet my weekly weigh-ins.
Lauren, forgive me.
The truth?
I miss the feeling of a belly full of water and chapped lips.
What I am slowly learning is that
lunch boxes can hold glitter and my mom's tea sandwiches.
I can worship the version of myself who can swim for miles
and hold my little brother in my arms without passing out.
Slowly I am filling the holes in my bones with
sunlight and the sweetest fruit.
I now baptize myself with big breakfasts and fresh flowers,
and cups of sugary tea. The truth is so much more
than a Feeding tube could ever conserve.
The truth is this time, I will give myself what I deserve.
Copyright © Lauren Lee | Year Posted 2023
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Lauren Lee Poem
the girls
He will not let you forget.
You will wear his hands around your throat, a chain of honey and sweat.
His calluses grating across your thighs are still carved in memory,
And with dirt-caked fingernails, he demanded everything you ought to be.
Expect years before you ever trust another lover,
Expect 2:00 AM panic attacks and 11:11 wishes for your mother.
Never again will you forget to leave the house without pepper spray,
Or forgive your dad for the day
He brought you a rape whistle and your brother condoms.
You will not forget who is part of the problem.
I have felt in the heat of the streetlamps, the bruised fingertips of the women before me.
I have fought. I have nursed the kind of fresh
Wounds that only ever seem to come from men from whom
I receive flags staked in my supple flesh.
You pretend to be marauders. You leave the womb,
Only to fight tooth and nail to crawl back to such divinity. Broken men searching
For liberation behind closed legs and crossed arms
To what extent is this too much flirtation, and too little harm?
Too many gulps of the story we are drowning in.
When will “She wanted it” stop painting over the bruises on her skin?
Believe that even in my cries, I did not cry.
Though if not our fault, whose?
The mayor's son? the valedictorian? the businessman? all will be excused.—
Since anyhow we little girls are dead,
Slaughtered each time our legs are forced to spread,
Mourned each time we remember what really happened in that bed,
Buried each time our underwear is rethread.
You spend your days executing, then wondering why there are funerals.
You were born, you were taught consent
That looked like ****. There is blood on your hands, wine-red and iridescent,
Hot and thick. tell me, is it drying? Do you still think you’ve won?
Because I still bleed on anything I touch. Some wounds
cannot be
Undone.
This poem is an imitation response to Gwendolyn Brook's "the mother"
Copyright © Lauren Lee | Year Posted 2023
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Lauren Lee Poem
I am slowly finding recovery is a penrose staircase
I climb, I step, and I see you on my walk to the coffee shop
you wore jeans and a black T-shirt you looked at me like your
very existence should be an apology and suddenly
I am at the bottom of the staircase
Climbing, stepping, climbing, stepping…
Copyright © Lauren Lee | Year Posted 2023
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Lauren Lee Poem
Sticky Fingers
The first time I knew I was stupid,
I went to kindergarten and couldn’t figure
out how to pronounce my name. Forced
to sit on my hands, dirt caked the back
of my throat and soon turned mud as tears
slid down my cheeks. Who am I without
my mother tongue pooling like honey
in my palms? What will I learn to say
when my fingers run dry and my voice
begs to be used?
In Sign Language, certain words
do not exist. To, be, am, from, of,
are empty shells in my brain.
And like all little deaf girls,
I was used to my hands
molding vases to hold words
my lips have not yet learned–
I was a potter in a room full
of musicians.
When I was a kid, my mom
told me if I grew enough leaves
I’d touch the sun. In every new
syllable that kissed my tongue,
I grew branches and roots, bark,
and sap. I fought through many winters,
to live in this spring. And somehow the closer
I get to the sun, the more I realize she
burns too.
Copyright © Lauren Lee | Year Posted 2023
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