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Taylor Erxleben Poem
with you, i remember the moments.
i remember what you were wearing?the first time i saw your underwear?inching up your back as you bent over?your passenger seat. i remember your bed,?comforter bunched up like bath cloths?lathering the only body you knew how to feed.
i remember climbing out your bedroom window?and rolling joints on your rooftop,?pretending we were on the planes?flashing seamlessly through the night sky?like a rescue mission. i remember air?heavy with summer, smoking weed in?my underwear between breaths. i told you?it felt like i was dreaming and you laughed.
we got lost in a state park once and?we had to jump a fence in the darkness.?you tried to kiss me in front of the flowerbeds?because i didn’t take your hand coming down.?the sky swallowed the stars whole?that night, but i was too busy staring?at your eyelashes to realize that we kind of?like it when our dark smothers our light.
i remember the first hickey you sucked out?of my heart, imprinting the bruises?on my body, vodka harsh on your lungs?like thunderstorms. i remember you?held my hand, cheeks roaring like forest fires.?my hands started shaking, fists like newborns.
with you, i remember the moments–?and with him it was all him him him.?god, i loved him so much i couldn’t sleep.?i remember waking up missing him?like his lungs were attached to my breath?and smelling his scent on my skin?for three days after we met.
i remember feeling hallow. empty.?climbing through dark tunnels with?nothing to grasp onto except?for old feelings. i remember feeling?like a character in his novel that everyone?knew the title of but me, where the first?kiss goodbye felt like crumpled leaves.
but you turned my story into potpourri.?and with you, i remember the moments
Copyright © Taylor Erxleben | Year Posted 2018
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Taylor Erxleben Poem
used to be one of those people that didn’t really understand triggers and how the simplest of things could send you tumbling down a rabbit hole back into that memory. i never understood how something like a word or making breakfast or the way somebody says a sentence could cause your stomach to heave and your mouth to go dry and your fists to clench so tightly that you think your palms are bleeding. i never understood any of that. i never got how somebody’s mind could be wired to such give such tiny, irrelevant things such big meanings, how a syllable could become the equivalent to a landmine, how a gesture could become the same thing as a trip wire, and then you happened. and i got it. i got it too well. i understood because then suddenly, somebody reaching over to rub my back would make me go still. too still. and for a few seconds, i wouldn’t be able to move because it wasn’t my friend, it was you. suddenly, somebody is singing a song you used to sing and i have to leave the room because i can feel my heart trying to claw its way out of my throat. it took me over a year to let somebody call me ‘angel’ again because that was what you called me and every time i thought i was ready to be over all the stupid minuscule bull parts of us i just wasn’t. i’m still just not. you commented on one of my photos a few months back and it ruined my entire day. i could not let it go. i can’t let it go. and maybe this isn’t what having a trigger is like, but it sure feels like there are landmines peppered everywhere i go and tripwires all around me for other people to get tangled up in so they can watch me run, or cry, or do absolutely nothing at all. maybe this is the remnants of the heartbreak i never realized was happening until it was too late to fix it. maybe it’s just that, and maybe i’m not as ed up as i think i am. but it feels like i stepped off of one battlefield just to get caught up in another. it feels like you’re not gone no matter how much i wish you were, but i can’t bring myself to block you because that would mean you’re definitely gone, and i don’t think i want that, yet. or at all. is this what abuse does to people? this back and forth, this tiptoeing around? is this what an aftermath is like? because i want to go back to not knowing how this feels. i want to go back to not getting it and not understanding how small things could rip you to shreds within seconds. i’m so tired of being scared to walk around.
Copyright © Taylor Erxleben | Year Posted 2018
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Taylor Erxleben Poem
Good morning
Hood morning
Never a good morning in the hood but let's discuss the mourning.
Im talking tear shed cross on a sidestreet, oh he knows
Black boy knows
Black boy morns
Black boy says good morning to his mommy before he leaves for school
Black boy walks, walking dead
Black boy freeze
Black boy hands up
Black boy stop resisting, unarmed black boy
Knee on the neck of the community
Mama cryin black boy, begging please black boy
I can't breathe
I can't breathe
I Cant breathe
Good morning america
Hood morning america
DO YOU HEAR US NOW AMERICA
Sing the song black boy
Let fire reign from your voice black boy
Burn the path for the next black boy
Good morning.NOTHINGS CHANGED.
Copyright © Taylor Erxleben | Year Posted 2020
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