Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 Oct 2019 Tori Schall
J J
One day the moon will stop.
    Settling it's last motion unto eternal stillnes;
   And the ground will quake, craters will rattle

And we'll lift like lanterns, light as lit matchsticks
  As we rise to the final night sky.
   Joining the ranks of stars forever stillborn.

The oceans will quiver along one last circlet
  In ode to their past life and the lives they lived through,
   And we will look down at our old skin...

         Never feeling ready enough to properly reincarnate;
 Oct 2019 Tori Schall
J J
A crow kissing skeleton skull
   And pecking dirt in the process.

Lace my ashes with flower seeds
   So that I may live a little longer.

I'd love to feel the rain
  Drip down my veins once again,
And make-believe the strid formed
    Will never dissapear. But

The dead don't get to decide that much
   Ahead.
Crow bleeding sunny black eyes, sing a song
As we

         Cross into morning. Crow, that maps my skin
          In sanskrit, please go a little softer. It's not
          That I never expected to die, it's just that I
           Never pictured it so sudden; and it's still

So long to go until I'm found...
Crow, would you be so kind as
To keep me company until then?
 Oct 2019 Tori Schall
Erian Rose
The moon danced on our fingertips
Clenched in our fists
If it wasn’t for this
I’d be hypnotized by your kiss
 Oct 2019 Tori Schall
Colm
The rain unsettling shakes more than me
It shakes the summer out of the pensive trees
The quiet out of the evening still
The confidence out of the newfound skill
And more so than the colored leaves
Which newly rest on dampened ground
As the sorting of the rain gives way
Resulting in a plethora of familiar sounds
All merging beneath and moving fast
Like a symphony of cicadas in the summers past
Known only to one in time as the same  
As the parting whisper of the trees in rain
Written on a whim tonight, when I first heard the rain greet the evening trees and their fading leaves. True story, the idea behind this is that the trees part ways with their leaves, just as we human beings will one day have to part ways with our children. Slowly, steadily and with a whisper.

Hi SVK!
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
 Oct 2019 Tori Schall
Traci Sims
"Love is nothing but a biological transaction," you yelled at me and we fought anew over the perfidies of the male ***.
Initially dismayed, I soon understood that
As a girl, you saw your father break your mother,
Her will over the years fusing with his own
As she became shadow,
And then sickly ghost,
Her lucky marriage effectively erasing the stain of her Jewish birth--
As oh so Catholic Daddy
proudly told his friends and relatives.
And even though you tried to fight Daddy's self-importance,
He was always there behind you, squeezing you between his fists,
molding you, as he imitated his god creating Eve,
Casting you into his own perfect image of chaste and chastened womanhood.
And when your mother decided to permanently leave,
Daddy forbade you to miss her,
Celebrating, instead, his own resurrection with a new project and a new wife.
Twice.
You thought you could resist,
But Daddy's benevolent advice
about your plain face and lumpy body wormed into your fragile psyche and
cracked you in two, leaving you raving and disjointed.
Daddy eventually joined his sky-Father
And you wept, vowing to forget and remember his legacy.
And now you live, addled and alone,
A basket of pills on your dresser,
Fanatically frustrated yet terrified of a man's  touch,
Angry yet wishing Daddy was here to save you.
And as the years passed and your friends married and divorced, you
convinced yourself that you had
escaped a woman's fate , not
realizing that you had offered up your own heart and soul  years ago as a suitable offering to His eternal memory.

Yes, Daddy made ****** sure there would be no following act.
This is the story of a real person. Everything I wrote about her father is something she told me actually happened to her and her family. It is a modern American horror story.
Today I reached for you
With a kind of virtue
And sincerity pressed behind
the design on my lips
Little realizing I was still reviling
Within my current remiss

I went and sinned again darlin'

There's little to do for recompense,
and so cordially I professed to you
all of my candid truths
With every intent
To avoid becoming uncouth
and elusive

Because... I do miss you
And I suppose I well knew...
You don't feel the same
I could feel it the instant you responded
Not the least bit concerned
Which was well deserved
Leaving me completely despondent

I need you to remind me
Just how lost my heart has become
And what that has cost anyone
Trying to reach for me
When I become undone

Somewhere in between
the real desire to reignite whatever fire
had transpired between us
With a new flame
Lay my hidden ulterior motive

Even I believed we would achieve
Something constructive
Yet my devious mind
Deceived even myself
To harness this abject,
self-destructive desire

Call me by my real names:
Heartless.
Narcissist.
Liar.
Coward.
Creep.
Thi­ef of catharsis.

Remind me of the same feeling
Delivered in your own unique way
Because I can't stand
To let myself ever forget again
This pain in my chest
Is everything to remain
It's all I have left
Remind me.
 Aug 2018 Tori Schall
egghead
We cannot write silence.
The beats.
The pause.
The breath.
The way it aches
and persists

and begs that,

if only for a moment,

our consciousness is only a whisper.
our bodies,
our lips,
the air that passes through falling chests
and stillness.

A melody of emotion.
Sleeping in the quiet of a heartbeat skipped
a word lost to the wind.

The wickedness of reticence
Encapsulated in air and time.

The moment stretched too long.
Hesitation perpetuated in the grip of fingernails
pressed into palms.

We cannot write silence,
but we can try.

to find a way to immortalize emotion
to create space
in the ceaseless drone of words that speak and spin.

I cannot write silence. But I can write
tears and years
and the burn of long-stretched lies.

I can write goodbyes and hellos
And dozen ways to say
I love to hate you
Or
I hate to love you
and sometimes
I cannot tell the difference.
Silence.
The space I have upheld for myself.

I love to hate you
Heart.

I hate to love you too.

I cannot write silence.
But I know it.
and I have held it in my hand.
Inspired by the Vanity Fair article of André Aciman's reaction to his book *Call Me By Your Name* being made into a movie. Specifically the quote, "I couldn't write silence."
 Aug 2018 Tori Schall
Xyns
toxicity
 Aug 2018 Tori Schall
Xyns
Those words are like a switchblade
With a steel knife

You stuck in my jugular
And ripped straight through my windpipe
Next page