Four Sunday Break Poems

1:
“The last life boat.”
That was the start of a really great thought
I totally lost ahold of.
Oh well.
If it means anything to you,
Let me know.

2:
You were drunk at the northside bars,
The shitty ones, in the planned community,
And I called you back,
And you told me two surprising things.
You like my wispy hair because it reminds you of corn husks.
And that you think I’m a good person.
These are things you don’t say to me when you’re sober.

3:
I sit here and I fight jealousy,
And I fight myself feeling fat.
I actively try and keep my face neutral.
And I have to calm myself down that it’s okay.
I don’t have those entitlements,
You don’t feel that way,
And I have no right to care who’s in your apartment, even if it’s my roommate.
Then I take a walk

4:
I walked five miles up a butte,
But I told my mom I walked up a hill to avoid the jokes about buttes,
And of course, my butt was sore,
It’s been sore all day.
After taking the wrong path down,
The twisty-turny one that makes you do so many hairpins,
And now my butt hurts.
But I was happy while I was there,
Complaining about something.

Ten Poems for Late August This Year

1:
And I’m sad again,
They’re in the living room, and I’m trying to work,
Getting something done that should only take an hour but is taking me three.
I’m sitting on my bed eating snacks
Trying to work,
Still thinking I made a mistake moving away from all those places I recognized
To sit here and read and feel dumb and study.

2:
It’s hard to be around someone who’s smarter than you all the time.
Brighter, faster, funnier.
What’s the fun in that.
Like I get the, surround yourself with smarter people bit,
But like no one really believes that there aren’t some people who aren’t always going to be smarter than you.
But, I don’t want to have to prove myself,
I want to have a conversation with you,
A full conversation,
With the back and forth bit,
Not the information given bit.

3:
I left the boyfriend,
Why didn’t he say anything?
Why is he being antagonist?
I don’t understand.
I want it to be all about me, please.
For just a minute.
Tell me I’m pretty and special.
You didn’t even mention it. I don’t understand.
I’m starting to question myself, was I supposed to …
That always makes me nervous.

4:
What if I don’t want to do a PhD in what I’m studying.
What if I want to write instead,
Bad poetry I post on the internet,
Will they let me do that instead?
Please.
And pay my rent.

5:
It’s 75 degrees and I’m freezing.
I have two sweaters on.
This is what I get for moving from Texas.
To somewhere that gets cold starting in August.
I’m going to die.
Someone please bring me a blanket.

6:
Do you know how much I love you?
The way you’re only nice to me when you’re sad,
And the times when I can hear your dog’s collar shaking in the background,
And you’ll argue with me with your mouth full.
I don’t think you’ve ever felt it, and that’s okay with me.
I’ll hold on to this while it lasts,
And I’m still glad I told you.
Not always but sometimes,
When you’re being ridiculous about how to organize the dishwasher.

7:
I sat crisscross on the floor with my friend,
Who had never been in a library before.,
The libraries outside of the universities,
The regular people libraries.
I said I had to show her my favorite book.
And I found the children’s book my dad loved,
Everyone poops. It’s called.
And we read it on the floor together.
And she thought it was hilarious.
She took a picture to send to her boyfriend.

8:
It suddenly mattered again
How much skin showed between my pants and my ankles,
If my top stopped at the right length,
If my shoes matched in a way I hadn’t cared about.
Since we went back in person.

9:
It’s me who will fly back to my hometown to take care of my mom.
That way we avoid all the drama.
Me and mom.
We do okay together.
We’ll be fine.
Not my brother who lives an hour away,
Or my sister who has the flexible schedule.
Me, half a continent away,
It’s me who’s coming to take care.
And I’m glad it’s me.

10:
I called you for your birthday,
You let me.
I sang as loud as I could.
I loved it.
Did you know that?
How much I love singing badly to you for your birthday.
And I also love how you save all my voice messages I send you.
I really do.

Ten Poems for a Summer Breakup

a bit of a muddle

1:
When I go home,
We’ll just go back to being friends.
I said through sobs. You didn’t disagree.
But then you hugged me for so long at the airport.
And you said you’d mail me my favorite hair clip I left in the door of your car.
And you said you wanted to take a trip with me.
But you don’t think we have a future,
Because I don’t want money the way you do.

2:
I made a whole chicken today.
I went full housewife.
I was going to buy more deli chicken because I made too many sandwiches yesterday.
And thought, well, I can just buy a whole chicken.
It’s cheaper.
Lying to myself I have the time.

3:
I looked at him and felt nothing.
This boy who I left my boy for.
I sat with him,
And nothing,

4:
I remember this one position.
When we were sitting on your couch,
Me making sure we were the first people to have sex on that couch,
Like I made sure we were the first people to have sex on your other couch,
With my thighs around your turned body, sitting there by your unpacked amazon boxes,
A mess of not moving,
Thinking, we’ll never be like this again.
You won’t have this space for me the next time I’m here.

5:
Why did you have to tell me you missed me.
You’re not sentimental, but
You were sleeping on my side of the bed.
You ate all the food I made you.
You said your dog was waiting for me to come back.
You cared more about me when I was gone, than when I was there.
Why couldn’t you have cared when I was so depressed I couldn’t move?
Why couldn’t you have cared when you couldn’t arrange your schedule?
When it was my birthday?

6:
I told you, you know, I love you sometimes.
Not all the time but sometimes,
While we were doing dishes.
Rather you were doing dishes for me.
And you were so tired you weren’t quite working right.
And I felt it, so I said it,
So I didn’t regret it later.

7:
Am I driving you away?
I think those were your actual words.
While we were eating tacos at my sister’s favorite food truck.
I couldn’t say anything, think of anything.
You said, your silence says it all.
I wonder if she overheard us, the lady who made our lunch.

8:
I write it down because the depressed person’s short-term memory is shot.
That’s why I’m writing everything down.
It’s not some trying to be better than you competition, be the better note taker,
It’s because I probably won’t remember if I can’t find it somewhere.

9:
All I wanted to do was sit with you,
Your legs on my lap,
And listen to Astral Weeks, with nothing else to do.
No one who would call,
No plans to take my time.
I wanted to feel something at the same time you did.
I thought maybe someone else’s rhythm could help with that.

10:
We worked so well, that last week.
So well.
I made food, and you ate it, and complemented it, and were nice about it.
And I kept thinking maybe it’s a mistake.
You said, in our postmortem relationship phone call,
It would have worked if we weren’t far apart.
If you were depressed, if your mental health were better.
I thought, maybe, but maybe we never would have started.
We never even had to come up with a how we met story.