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Morning Menthol in Five Hymns

a little dizzy and a little pretty

By Kiernan NormanPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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Morning Menthol in Five Hymns
Photo by shahin khalaji on Unsplash

I

Your friends here think you have it all:

and on a secret-sometimes

(mornings when the wind is

blowing the perfect amount

of sea-spun and menthol crush-)

you might agree.

You’re smart; if domineering,

and funny; if a bit cruel.

You throw your body against doors,

announcing yourself to whole

buildings with small heaves and breathy hellos;

always dumbly surprised by the hollowed out fiber

of your upper arms but refusing to acknowledge

the irony that in the months since your muscles

quit feasting on themselves

you have only grown weaker.

These friends let you talk.

You talk and talk.

They marvel at the stampede of your

stories; unnerved by the way your voice digs

into the room like a charging foal and

spins dust rising across the tabletop.

With struck lids and no warning

they blink stinging eyes clean

while stacking your bolting, blocky words

straight to the ceiling,

a reverse game of jenga.

You don’t make sense,

Alone you built a tower of babble.

II

In class you learn to speak like it’s the first time;

you chew on diphthongs and expel plosive consonants.

You pitch crude phrases high across the room

and discover the implications of each single breath.

In trucks and diners you learn to love like it’s the first time;

you kiss with your eyes closed and let fingers wander.

Your hands have a habit of tangling into his and you throw

your head back when you laugh,

(your palms are sweating

but you’re dauntless in this twilight-

go ahead; bare your throat.)

When he suddenly; fiercely,

lifts your body off the ground and into his

you no longer apologize for the weight of it.

You’re pretending to have made peace with gravity.

III

You’re the girl who seems to exist as an anecdote.

You are bits and pieces of a weird,

rambling journey assembled into a crinkle-boned

Raggedy-anne body who has giggled in a thousand accents

and crushed a million cigarettes butts

into the earth between a handful of

state lines and boot soles.

You’ve become an idea that people like;

a girl who is endlessly creating and curetting,

exploring and groping bits of everything across

years and maps and daydreams.

Her resume impresses-

she has no roots.

And you too like the idea of her-

She walks lightly and smiles.

She marvels and hums,

she is quick downplay

her own electricity.

She’s all short dresses and motorcycle boots.

She tumbles into splits down the hallway,

she’s long hair flowing behind a gush of

dark humor and kind words.

She feels it all and deeply

but the way she lays with hurt

isn’t sticky or scalding,

She simmers quietly. She sucks in her cheeks

and gnaws at her fingernails; grinning.

IV

She is an enigma;

the salty girl, eyes raw, with the pocketful of poems.

She's the girl who takes her dark days and catalogues

them into sepia stanzas. She soaks them in

hindsight and hangs them up to dry

along a string of Christmas-light-twinkling

words and confessions. She watches closely

as they develop into something she can begin

to understand. She waits expectantly

as they bloom into a blurry portrait

of who she might really be.

Because the girl you’re left with when the

people who like you so much have gone home

and your poetry has receded from the homepage

of publications to dusty archives-

this girl isn’t so definite.

V

You vaguely know her.

You have walked together. You sometimes nap inside her.

She likes to wear your face.

You’re working up the courage to introduce yourself.

You don’t mind knowing this girl, she’s fine. She’s trying.

and maybe one day you’ll start to let other people know her too.

I mean, we’re all just trying.

sad poetry
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About the Creator

Kiernan Norman

Writer, Actor, Dog-Walker

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