everything feels surreal and wonderful right now.
don't ask me why, i don't know. i've gotten a few hate texts today, it's way too hot outside
and my room is messy. all signs point to me being in a bad mood but i feel pretty good.
i want to submit this poem to a magazine.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
god gets vertigo
by caitie davis
electricity lines buzz above your head,
like the gentle passion that attaches to words
and falls from the hinges of your lips.
a flower, strong and beautiful, begins to wind
its stem like numb fingers
around the electric pole, innocently. her deep,
blooming face reaching toward lines
that weave their thin bodies in and out of our houses.
I am the observer, holding my own body in
my arms, and watching the involuntary movements
of your jaw muscles. my eyelids, as thin and
fragile as petals, cover my eyes and cradle them
sweetly
if you were God, you tell me,
you’d use your rough, tendered hands
to place trains on tracks
like Christmastime when your dad was still around.
I had a picture of you in my head-
a smaller, more joyous you,
that marveled at toy plastic trains moving their way
through toy plastic people and falsified settings.
I have a picture of you in my head-
the duality of your two bodies
swimming in concentric circles, led by a braided rope
tied around your throat.
if you were God, you’d eventually neglect
your believers, and leave them winding
around the poles that hold up
your recklessly crafted Heaven.
laying in the dirt, you told me
that I was shining too bright for my own good-
meanwhile, the stems of my arms wrapped around
my brittle ribcage.
the buzzing of your words, still writhing on my skin
I curl my body around them. my face turned toward your mouth.
“don’t dull away,” you warned me,
a wild animal pacing behind your eyes
if you were God, I wonder,
if you could stop yourself from spinning
or clear the gin away from your clean tongue
thick with spit and alcohol.
our eyes lock
for two seconds, and it’s too much-
too honest, or too much for words anyway.
i am the observer, gently sustaining the
d flats of thought that uncoil in my head
and slither toward my mouth, but fall short.
i want to warn the flower before it’s too late,
but am captured by the innocence
glowing strong in the wake of telephone conversations
and television shows we use to fill the room
with sound. to drown out our own voices
until we have no voice to speak of.