Olivia Dodge
Bio
22 | Chicago
ig: l1vyzzzz & lntlmate
Stories (57/0)
Anger / I Want To Go Home
I sit in the ice box and feel my stomach scream into nothing. I want to go home. My mother tells me I do not seem angry. That my father’s anger has not been passed unto myself like it has my brother. I want to lie on the floor and close my eyes and let rivers flow within me. I shake in the emptiness. I think of the things which make me feel anger— it is peculiar how I cannot pinpoint them at first. I should let the heat build within the furnace and touch the metal with my fingers to feel dysphoria. This is not anger— this is longing. My lips are cracked and bleeding and my heart feels unsteady. I want to go home but I know it will not make me better. It will not fix me. I tell my mother I express anger differently. I tell her my anger never remains angry. Dysphoria holds many feelings within its cloud. I think of Travels with Charlie and how I do not want to be Any Here. Here is cold. Here is empty and I am empty too. Anger turns to discomfort. Discomfort to sorrow. It does not matter what I feel. My mother believes I am not angry. I am so full. I want to go home. My organs are screaming and screaming and screaming and scre— I am not moving. To have various diagnoses may have caused smeared tracks in my path to emotion. How’s your day going? [Bad] I’m just tired. I know the feeling. How could you? You are not me. You cannot see inside my head. I want to go somewhere. Anywhere. Not here. Everything is so full. I need empty space to think. A view with negative contrasts. One color. The furnace did not burn my fingers as I had hoped and my cloud of dysphoria never watered the grass. Anger has overgrown the roads but the grass looks like dysphoria. I need water. My tongue screams. Teeth chatter and legs shake. If I were alive I would feel my skeleton shatter within me. I think of Torrin A Greathouse and the need to Find Poetry within my words. My stolen notepad and borrowed pen quench my thirst for now. My mother was right— I do not seem angry. I cannot find my anger.
By Olivia Dodge2 years ago in Poets
In A Past Life I Was
I hold my past in my droughted palms. Tornado sirens ringing outside my windows, white framed— signaling to keep us safe. In this life I was a girl. Blonde haired and blue eyed. A bull trapped within a confined pen. Red flags blinding me look like silhouettes of twisters— Dorothy would’ve loved this. Matches with complementary colors shine beneath my stairs. Childhood shrinks in the divots of my personal desert. Whispers warn me— close your eyes as we shift within your skin. In this life I was afraid of my body. My mind. Twisters as sparse as a cheeky grin. Eyes refusing to shine at the sight of red— this is pain I have decided. My windows, white framed, located ten miles south now. I watch from afar as my pen expands. A bull— though I am starving for a flag which I refuse to set my sights upon. Blowing warmth into my palms to keep this child safe. They do not know my skin will heal in time. Dirt turns to droplets— watching them deliquesce— I look this time— she did not warn me. No more twisters. No more flags. In this life I am searching. My windows are light-stained wood and they do not shine unto my pillows. A missing silhouette, two now, one comes back. We are unhappy in our crowded pen. Our minds brawl like a drunken pair of men below my balcony. I tell Dorothy I would summon her favorite disaster to watch her teeth glare upon my eyes. She tells me my palms will soon be a rainforest. Reminding me to water my plants— they are green— I know what red means to you. In this life I am centimeters away from freedom. I can smell the plains. Pond water and rainbow fish— my windows are black now. The sun wakes me each morning and I have not heard the sirens in years. One silhouette joins me down the street now. I look to my palms and watch as my matches dwindle— ink on wood cannot keep my mind at ease much longer. In my next life I will grow accustomed to solitude. Red will not cause fear and my pen will be small but it will feel like home. I will hold my past in my pond-watered palms.
By Olivia Dodge2 years ago in Poets
I Long To Swim (Lake Michigan)
We have learned that suffering is never poetic. That you cannot turn blood into paint. You cannot sweep the streets with desperation. October has been proof of this. The streets remain full as I beg for a hand to hold mine own— begging for friendship. We have learned that feelings are not tangible. That friendship cannot reach through the screen of my window and cradle me. You cannot speak to longing. Longing cannot speak. We have not yet learned to swim. Climbing from the well inside my heart— the same muscles, perhaps. Legs and arms. I long to swim. But to swim— swim— I cannot swim. It is too late in October. We miss the water. It cannot be poetic to suffer and suffering cannot touch you in the cold Windy City. 2 blocks away I could learn to swim. I could also learn to drown. I long for something deeper than Lake Michigan— something poetic in the waves but it will not show itself to me. Drowning could be beautiful. Death is not tangible in the tides. I long to swim. Friendship cannot blossom in Fall for blossoming belongs in Spring. Feelings should speak— all year— all night— say something. I need you to say something. I beg October to have mercy on me as Lake Michigan darkens in the night. To suffer cannot be longing. Longing lives within me, surely. You cannot pull me beneath the current, Longing. You have tried. Your waters could not compete with the well inside my heart— far too deep to climb. Suffering could be poetic. Death could be tangible. I could learn to swim. Lake Michigan, grant these true. 2 blocks away. The Windy City mocks my request. Go to sleep, child. She cannot feel my suffering but she can hold it for me while I sleep. Good night, Lake Michigan.
By Olivia Dodge2 years ago in Poets
I never liked February
I never liked February. There is a looming negativity in my sheets tonight. I don’t mind the cold. In fact I prefer it. The coolness of winter is not as isolating as you may think. I find the warmth of summer to be less comforting than my wool gloves with the missing thread. Sporadic tears with the names of my deceased pets. Incessant shaking to the rhythm of the song my mother chose for her funeral. You once told me warmth is comfort. Your warmth never stayed long enough for me to find out. February is right around the corner. Up the block and through the alley. The threads have chosen one event each. Inhale.
By Olivia Dodge2 years ago in Fiction
December and January blend together
It seems I do not have purpose if it is not to love. The Gods attempt to confide in me— they say to love can mean more than you believe. Change the woman’s sheets so her slumber is no longer subpar. There is a battle between focus and disappearance. Love is many things. She tells me she does not understand how to play this game. The moon writes letters to me— says she wants to absorb my melancholy in her craters. I wonder if my purpose is to guide the woman in this moment. The Gods have not guided her to the meal in the next room nor have they presented a matching pair of shoes. A mother and two boys sat no more than five feet from me on the bus. I could not hear what they were saying. My music was up as loud as it could go. They seemed happy. She took a picture of the boys. My fingertips were not my own as they caressed the skin of my palm. The woman with the sheets returns shortly after my empty space of matter. I ask the Gods if they had shown her the matching shoe. The moon tells me she has tried. We all have. My mind is made of static. Radio silence cannot have concrete purpose. There are three pairs of matching shoes on my floor. My sheets are newly washed. Without the moon and the Gods I am a knife in my skull. If the mother on the bus had not exited at my stop I fear I would have drowned in Lake Michigan. A fool has written prior– I may taste what is mine but not what is given. I am the opposite of myself. I am the young boy who holds back laughter on the corner of Diversey and Sheridan. I am the woman with mismatching shoes. I am the moon and the Gods. I am nothing.
By Olivia Dodge2 years ago in Poets
Suffering
I wish my suffering was more poetic— that I could describe it with teardrops and bloodstains and you could still see the light through the blinds. Suffering is dark and cold. You told me to use my blood as paint but it stained the floor. I tried but my tears could not wash them away. I clawed at the walls and begged for answers because you’d never be there for me now. The light switches no longer work and your walls are covered in scuff-marks. It was dark and you were gone and it was so beautiful. A man walked his dog and the dog barked and I shivered because you turned off the heater and the windows were broken. Insects eat at the corners. I wish it was more beautiful. Snow gathered on the ledges and I wished I could see the beauty. My blood painted the walls the most beautiful shade of red and my tears gathered into a puddle. Suffering is never poetic. It is ugly and cold and you abandoned me. There was no blood. There were tears but they did not stain. You’ve left no physical mark on my earth. It could have been beautiful. My earth could have been yours. A planet composed of teeth and knives has more appeal than dirt and despair. I heard the man talk to his dog outside my broken windows and the breeze made my teeth cold. I wondered whether he would abandon his dog if given the chance. The snow grew thicker just as my blood. I wished I could shovel my tears and clear the sidewalks with my suffering. I wished I could write this and it could mean something.
By Olivia Dodge2 years ago in Poets
Poverty
They say the greatest writers die unknown: in poverty, depressed, starving. Men and women starve with hunger for attention. I feel their hunger within me. My hunger grows as the piano erupts into anathema. I cannot play with my fingers but with my ears. I starve for the chorus as a writer starves-- shaking. Velleity is cruel. I wish upon daily attributes and they mock me. A writer wishes. A woman wishes. We die unknown, starving. My fingers tap the keys and I wish it were a piano. The music is parnassian. I do not wish to die.
By Olivia Dodge2 years ago in Poets
The Good Things
I want so badly to be inspired by the good things. Pain is universal. I must find the balance in obsession and reduction. Good things cannot always be coated in limerence. To reduce one’s emotions only opens the muscle to pain— I wonder how much longer my wound will bring inspiration. There are only so many depictions. A wound, a skeleton, a burning forest. They are given life through the reduction of limerence— an ache in my body to give affection and the ignorance on how to execute it. It is universal to want to love— an obsessive love that eats away at your bones until you are only ashes and your pain has burned with the forest. Depiction of fire. Where is the good in this? I want so badly to be inspired by the obsession, not the reduction. I want so badly to feel my emotions as they come without the robotic placement of pain. Inspiration may pour from my open muscle but I wish someone would hold it for me— apply affection instead of pressure. Depiction of pain. I wish not to depict my emotions in metaphor much longer. Instead to describe them as they are— the good things.
By Olivia Dodge2 years ago in Poets
Early October
The bees are aggressive in early October and I wonder if I will ever belong. They say this happens every Fall but I cannot remember the sting. October is colder than usual. Classical music guides the wind south. My bones never felt so heavy since the bees carried their pollen. They were angry for my longing. It is sunny but it does not feel sunny enough. Leaves crack beneath my feet and I flinch for their bones could just as easily be mine. There is a man across the street and the sun cascades on his skin but he does not smile. I wonder if he is writing prose as well. October should be less cloudy. Classical music evaporates into thin air as does the man across the street. The wind comes from the north and the windows are empty. Brick on brick. He will never know of his inspiration however minuscule it may have been. It is 9:36am and I wonder if he is brewing another cup of coffee. Does he feel like he belongs here— I wonder— with the bees and the classical music and the crushed leaves. Perhaps he has learned over the years that it does not matter where one belongs for there are bees everywhere I go. I may never belong in early October.
By Olivia Dodge2 years ago in Poets