A poetry zine created summer of 2019 about the movements we feel when we are alone.
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Primary.
I don’t want to rest easy
or lay softly
in the pauses between your words,
I want to fill this space
with Red
and Purple,
and Green, Yellow,
Blue.
Colors that spill out of my mouth
in an attempt to,
keep your presence near,
where I’ve found padlocks on your tongue
and chains of silence,
I am abound to this vision
of a quiet,
more passive, Red
more inviting some may say,
but I want to burst
and I want to feel every edge,
Every Red.
every mistake, and
Everything
in your words.
I want to feel
keep unhidden,
unshameful and undone,
in my expression to you,
these parts of me
that wish to be earthtones.
But here I feel Primary.
Here, I feel whole
And undefined,
understood
Here, I feel like
The High Priestess
The Star
Here, but I am
The King of Cups
Here, I feel.
***********
Skin to Body
Looking at your face,
I wish I could pick my eyes
out
of their socket.
Save them, Polish them,
clean them with
peroxide, betadine
Healing agents
meant for closing the wound,
to scab and put back together.
Threads of skin, binding
at your attention to injuries
but you hold my attention for hours
And I forget
what it feels like
to take care,
make amends with my body.
Pay attention to my
Itchy eyes
my lungs wheezing
as I take my breaths of air,
Are they trying to tell me
Something? Perhaps that I
should keep my mouth
away from,
delicately touching
Warm skin That relaxes, breathes underneath me
as if I’m not there.
***********
what the wind speaks
All of what the wind
told me last night,
whispered to me this morning
And collected things that
were not known since
yesterday. Leaves me sitting with it
for a while before a good night's sleep
which in its absence,
I would be nowhere.
That’s when I see
that the things you love need care,
seek and achieve at finding comfort
even in spaces unfamiliar.
For they are expandible, but it's complicated
Everchanging, everlasting / everything it is not
***********
In the meadows
The trunk of an Oak tree
spoke to me the other day
It collided with the wind, and
they pressed my heart into the earth. They told me
I should walk carefully
amongst the meadows
be careful of ticks, be careful of staying out too long
I get dried out.
My eyes will stay too fixed on the plants,
on the sun, on the sky
and I will forget
to avoid taking flight
with the falcons nearby
***********
Good Food
Thank god for good food.
I used to eat
all I ever wanted to speak,
words I probably shouldn’t have
Heard. Words I probably should’ve
Avoided. Words I searched for,
those I kept hidden.
But I had an appetite for what
I didn’t know and for what
Hangs in the air,
after a day of realizing
I could do with less.
Less attachment to my body,
Less on my plate,
Less in my head.
However the less of it
could not make up for
how a full moon feels
in a body made of crushed little stars, and
Entropy,
reliant on my ability to produce heat
That will come from
feijão preto
A friends look at my face
Green Tea
burning tattoo needle on,
My skin
Skin on my chest,
and that warm reassuring kiss
From forehead down,
My body will feel everything
so,
Thank god for good food.
***********
Love (reimagined)
In a morning when blue sky
breaks all that was
mixed orange and red, purple
some evenings too, what the moon
carries from 8pm-7am
(when love decides to peak)
and moonlight was held
Still above our eyelids,
the clouds that have parted ways
for my clear night,
So the rhythm in which my pulse next to yours
chooses to maintain itself so I can
have another night, in my starry eyed vision of love
I made a mirror of myself
Where I see myself making love
to the image I’ve constructed
of a night that extends beyond
our end at 4am,
which maybe not an end
but a deliberate pause
in our collective frequency,
Because after certain points
I will see that while my
universe contained, has been
Ever-expansive
I will see
that in our slow awakening
in the morning,
the clouds are slowly pulled back
into the sky with the
heaviness of my eyelids,
strewn from your kisses,
held together by My Thread
of Love.
***********
heavy, cold air.
Scraped hands and
Knees hurt. When you fall
something is taking you away
to be brought back another place
unexpected. Your vision is focused
on the ground beneath you
so you watch your step, and know
For next time.
Life is made up
of the movements around us.
in the earth all that shifts,
in our heads, in our hearts
and in this heavy, cold air tonight.
All poems written, and edited, by me! Sarah Tello :)