Finally Defeated My Months-long Writers Block With This Poem - Tumblr Posts

I fell in love with you in the summer. 

It was hot and dry and my lips cracked and bled every time I smiled. You made me smile a lot. I like to think it was a metaphor. You made me taste death every time I laughed. Or maybe life. I could never distinguish the two with you. 

Anyway. I dreamed of you, sometimes. You made me laugh and my lips would crack and bleed and you would lean over and kiss me. My friend said it means I desired intimacy but that the blood meant I was scared. She was into Freudian dream analysis. I never liked him, anyway. 

I guess she wasn’t wrong though. I dreamed about you more than I’d like to admit. In my dreams, you were poetry. In my poetry, you were the dream of you. I laughed and my lips bled and you kissed me and I tasted death. Sometimes you wouldn’t stop at kissing me. Sometimes you would keep kissing me, keep swallowing me, keep consuming me until you’d devoured me entirely. 

“Cannibalism as a metaphor for love,” I’d once said. “What do you think?” 

You’d made a face. “I think it’s gruesome. Romanticizes weird things, you know? Like those people who defend the serial killers ‘cause they think they’re hot.” 

I didn’t tell you that sometimes, I dreamed that I bared my neck for you, and that you’d torn it apart, my heart between your teeth. A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism. 

Anyway. It was summer and school was over and everything was golden. When the light hit your eyes right they looked golden. Sometimes they were dark, a soft brown like the piano I tried to teach you to play on and the damp earth after the summer storm. Sometimes they were blue like the sky or the sea and I was suffocating, drowning. When they were gold, they were like amber, sweet-sticky-thick, trapping me. Everything looked golden when you looked at me like that. I didn’t protest so long as you kept looking at me like that. 

It was your birthday yesterday. I wish I didn’t remember. I wish I didn’t text you even though you hadn’t talked to me in months. “Hey. Happy birthday.” It’s dinner time and my mom yells at me because I keep checking my phone. You text me the next day. “Thanks.” I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved or angry. I bite my lip. It’s bleeding again. “No problem.” 

You don’t reply. 

Anyway. I quit piano. I look into my father’s eyes and see you. Blue eyes that make me feel like I’m dying. “Oedipus complex,” my friend says knowingly. “You go after the familiar.” Sometimes I wish I didn’t remember your birthday. You didn’t remember mine. My father didn’t remember my mother’s, but he bought a girl a multi-hundred dollar gift for her birthday. She was closer to my age than his. You sent me a picture of yourself shirtless. My father sent a nude to her. I dated a boy just to see what it was like to be wanted. Maybe that’s why my father cheated. Maybe that’s why you kept talking to me like you could love me. It was summer and everything looked golden and I let you keep using me so long you looked at me like you loved me. I don’t know if I am more like my mother or my father. They are both unhappy. It scares me. Who am I?

Anyway. Sometimes I dream that you kiss me and I taste my own blood on your lips. Sorry about that. Sorry about the mess. Sorry that I bleed every time you speak. Sorry that I gave you my mess of a heart. Sorry that I loved you. I’ll keep bleeding for you. Just keep looking at me like that. Just keep telling me you love me. 

I fell in love with you in the summer. My lips cracked and bled every time you made me smile. I like to think it’s a metaphor. Maybe this summer I won’t remember your birthday. Maybe.