#poetry and poems
How do you expect me to feel
when you put the entire
universe inside my heart?
And then one day you decided to
burn everything we nurtured?
The sun died and the clouds
weren’t even crying.
The flowers stood still,
and I cut off the thorns
on all of the roses you gave me
because what was the point of
trying to save them from the wild?
My chest felt like a love struck
battleground, and I was just sitting
next to the armor. Now everyone can
see that I’m not the same person
who once had the entire universe beating
inside the heart that once lived.
-Alexa Evangelista, the book I’ll never finish writing
i want to live in odd numbers of
1 day at a time
because a series of years
looks like a barrage of bullets,
breaths:
1, 2, 3
1, 2, 3
when i am gasping
in desperate search of gravity,
5 things i can see
that make a brittle girl
feel unbreakable
and a crooked world
look steady.
- “odd numbers”
when you feel reduced
to just a human
to just a speck,
to just a stack of atoms,
i will magnify
your every moment,
your every word,
your everything
you think departs
once it occurs.
i will recognize a monument
when you swear
you’re just a shack,
i will behold a sun to orbit,
when you think
you’re the blade of grass.
i will be the microscope
that always finds what matters
amidst your mass.
- “what matters”
you tossed me lifejackets when i drowned in days that turned hours into thrashing waves.
you douse me with extinguishers when i burn down like a house
because i can’t make my body feel like a home.
you put strength in my bones like it’s a gift of love,
but when you feel most forlorn and the universe looks pointless,
i will slip power back into your pockets like it’s something borrowed,
because we are not ever truly alone and you have always been the point.
- “something borrowed”
misery afflicts me like a disease,
but hope makes an addled physician out of me,
as i devour paintings and poetry, love and lyrics
and everything in between as medicine,
in hopes that the Polaris
or a forget-me-not
or anything,
anything,
anything could be
the remedy.
- “remedy”
i am a fighter even if my fight looks like
cowering in a black room because bleak thoughts
make the world spin, when i yearn to be motionless, anchored to ceramic tile—anchored to something.
i am a fighter even if my fight looks like
cradling my quivering body when the world says
i should wield it like machinery,
as if these soft hands could ever tear down anything besides myself.
i am a fighter even if my fight looks like
seeping blood, sweat and tears as i mourn the wounds instead of stitching them up.
i am a fighter even if my fight looks like
longing to surrender, but lingering for hope to trickle in like light through a cracked door.
- “another kind of fighter”
