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Julia Wright Poem
A silk sheet of black covers my head while I am sleeping and seeps into my skin,
Reaching my brain and interrupting dreams that are far from reality’s reach.
Slowly, surely, on soft feet.
Creeping up on me, unexpected.
Chasing me through dark forests that once held flowers without thorns and birds that sang on the many Sunday mornings of spring.
Heels sinking into weak, helpless soil as it gives in to the pressure that pounds upon it again and again like a never ending migraine.
Toes scratched and bleeding from sharp, jabbing rocks that hide themselves and wait for their next victim,
And leave them with scars to line their flesh.
At night the hurt will sit with their legs crossed tight underneath them as if they are protecting them,
And their cold fingers will trace the scars upon their toes
Over and over
In a rhythm, a melody of sorts that only sounds beautiful when it can be understood by the ones who know it best.
I turn corners and pass trees that loom over me,
Old and wilted,
Threatening to fall on top of me and crush me
So I am molded into the ground below it,
And no one will find me because no one cares about the trees that fall,
Or the plants that die,
So why would they look under the fallen tree to find another girl,
Lost and thrown away in the process of trying to run away?
They chase me still as I run so fast that my legs want to detach themselves from my body and leave me lying limp.
Leaves fall into my hair and the thought to pull them out does not occur to me as the soil squishes between my toes, the wind stings my eyes and ears.
Every time I look down,
Beneath me seems to blur,
and I cannot see any of the branches that threaten to trip me as they know what I am running from.
I will fall and be stuck as weeds wrap around my ankles and wrists and prevent me from rising back up,
They will hold me down as if I am a child throwing a temper tantrum,
Restricting me from kicking and screaming.
They want it to catch me and take me away,
To conquer me,
Control me.
But maybe,
In a way that is unknown to me,
A plague that infects my body piece by piece,
Maybe it already has taken over.
Copyright © Julia Wright | Year Posted 2015
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Julia Wright Poem
My fingers are laced together behind your neck as if my two hands are holding onto each other for safety,
The numbness within them seems to increase as my nails dig deep into my skin and create the simple color of white upon my flesh.
I feel my insides twist and turn with the fear of losing you once again,
Your hands waver uncertainly on my waist like they did when we were in middle school and had no clue what love was.
I am very much aware of the way that you look down at your feet every few seconds to make sure they do not accidentally step on mine,
Just like you used to make them do on purpose so you could hear my laugh and whisper in my ear that it was your favorite song.
I find myself wishing that you will pull me closer to drive away the seemingly mocking void that lies between us.
You spin me carefully and I find that this time my hair does not spin with me, but instead hangs limp around my face of carefully hidden disappointment.
We are dancing around the topic of the love that we believe we have misplaced.
As I come twirling back to you and watch you prepare to catch me, I see that you have outstretched your arms to keep me at a distance from you
And your heart.
I decide that this love is not laying on the ground where we dropped it, waiting patiently for us to pick it back up again.
It is clear to me that this love has instead been broken, torn apart and thrown away like the notes that you would leave in my locker every day before my first class, so I would think about you all day long.
Even now that I know the notes are far away, you are still in my mind,
Day after day,
Night after night,
And I feel as if maybe I still love you after all
Copyright © Julia Wright | Year Posted 2015
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Julia Wright Poem
The thought of you leaving me scares me day after day
It haunts me and kills me in my dreams at night, when I am alone inside of my head and no one can pull my hand towards them to save me
Every morning I wake up, and I picture you doing the same in your own room, just a block away
Stretching and yawning, so you fingertips are straightened out and extending towards the pale, white color of your bedroom ceiling that I know so well
And I can hear the voice inside of your head whispering to you while you are still half asleep and naïve to your conscience
It speaks out to you and tells you about me while it wraps its thread of doubt around your brain
Twisting and tangling itself into the depths of your soul
Your eyes will be opened up by the hand reaching out from inside of you
And from them I fear that you will be exposed to all of the faults that others find in me
All of my flaws and imperfections will be laid out waiting to be held under your inspection
Row after row on an endless table with a rough, wooden surface that causes splinters
The object in your grasp will now be my confidence rather than my shaking hand, that is only still when I am with you
Because once I did not know what love was, and neither did you
I taught you, and you taught me
And I have loved you in every way that I have ever known
So if this rarity of my existence is lost and thrown away
I will end up the same
As you quicken your pace in the direction of the sun I will crawl towards an unknown darkness
You will run
Far, far, far
Away from us and the memories we have made
While I am here where you left me
In a void that can only be filled by you
The love that I can no longer have will take hold of me
It will grab my throat with its clammy hands and strangle me
Suffocate me
Until I fall from lack of air and land in a pile of heartbreak and ruins
And I hope that one day you will find me here with tear stains on my cheeks and fingerprints on my neck
I hope that on that day you will cry and hurt and bleed over me and what you have done
I hope that you will love me again for all that is left of me
Or right now, on this day, and every day that comes
You will learn to love me for who I am
Or I will learn to leave you (and it is hard to leave you, trust me)
Copyright © Julia Wright | Year Posted 2015
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Julia Wright Poem
He always told me we should never love each other.
We would hold hands when we walked down the street, and up the two concrete steps that were rough and scalding hot on my bare feet
Mid-July when there were no clouds to block the sun’s rays from shining on us and putting his lies in the light for the world to see.
The crooked door with the wooden handle gave us splinters unless we held it right.
It would open smoothly until it got stuck on the floor board half way through and we had to slide in sideways to enter
With him gripping my hand the whole way in.
He would turn on the lights and they flickered once, twice, three times before they lit up the room and made his blue eyes sparkle and shine.
But then he would let go of the door and it would slam shut, pushing away the neighbors and covering their eyes with a blindfold of darkness so they could not look inside.
And he dropped my hand from his grasp like he did every night.
We had to hide from the eyes that he thought were desperately trying to look in, we only needed to be in love for the world.
And I believed in him and the way that he held my hand outside like he was proud to have me.
My hand was numb from the tightness of his grip but I let that pain sink to the bottom of my stomach like a wrecked ship in the roaring sea.
Dragging down the ship was an anchor of doubt.
A lingering question kept me up until I could see the sun peeking out from behind the trees,
The question of why he was only proud when under the inspection of eyes that did not belong to me.
Why he told me not to love him, but to be with him forever.
Because he needs me, he still claims, I have to belong to him in every way.
And on another endless night of lust slowly being lost and myself asking him the same question that I continue to ask him every night he says to me,
“But love is just possession.”
And I bury the answer deep within my soul with all of the same answers that live there.
But with each one a day older than the next they rot and decay and eventually disintegrate,
Like a metaphor of what he is doing to me.
Copyright © Julia Wright | Year Posted 2015
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