Marlene Bailey

Marlene Bailey Jul 6

How can one be that obsessed with someone?
How could anyone in the whole world wake up one day
With the eagerness to see just one face for the rest of their life?
How could anyone grab oranges and not even think of eating them as soon as they touch their hands
Because they can’t think of anything else but getting home to share them with someone?
How, how, how?

Why do I feel like the sun is not bright enough if I don’t get to see your smile?
Why does chocolate taste like charcoal when I’m not eating it with you?
And why do I go out of my way to have the pillow always ready for your head,
Because I’m scared your thoughts might drift away and lie to your face about how beautiful you are?
Why, why, why?

What is it that makes me want to write you poems,
Even when the alphabet of my life is missing the letters y, o, and u?
What is it that screams at me to wash your shoes,
When mine look like dirt was made for them?
What is it that runs through my veins every time the stars you call eyes
Look through the cloth I call soul?
And I know it’s more than blood, and I know it’s more than love.

My love, how can someone beg for you
In the middle of the night, between the sheets of a broken work of art?
My Lord, how can someone love with such clouds and lilies in the park,
And chamomile tea in the morning, while you fill up my heart?

Sometimes I think I just write everything I wish someone would say to me

#lilies #world #love #oranges #tea #clouds #park #beg

Marlene Bailey Jul 6

In your waterfall you heard me

Like cold water that makes your skin tingle,
And the shining rocks that hold it,
Like the strength of tiny waves that drag you to dream (to live),
In your waterfall, you heard me.

And your sweet touch on my burns set me aflame,
And your hands awakened in me what I thought was dead.
And my tongue grew again, after years of having cut it with torment,
And you showed me the sky, you showed me the uncertain.

And I began to speak.
And I spoke and spoke so much that my heart grew tired and my words ran out,
Yet still, you listened.
And you were so bold, so harsh, so kind,
So difficult, so sad, so tender,
So cold, so fresh, so you—
That I created a dictionary just to compose words in your name,
And I started with the word “waterfall,”
And I sank into you.

I like how you listen.

I don't remember why I wrote this one but I love it (wrote it in Spanish first)

#waterfall #love #listen #torment #aflame #burns #skin #dream #life

Marlene Bailey Jul 6

Six-year-old me

I can't even remember six-year-old me.
I don't know if she liked yellow like I do now.
I don't know if she hated spaghetti the way I do.
I don't know if she loved the sky and the clouds and the stars and the moon the way my big self does.

And I always wonder...
What would she think of me?
Are we following the dreams we had at that age?
Are we facing life with the same joy I think we would’ve had at six?
Would she ask me why I like yellow so much if she used to love pink?
What if she loved spaghetti and wanted to eat it every day?
I think maybe she did like the sky like I do.

(What’s not to like?)

soft and tender little poem of me trying to remember the sweet kid I once was

#soft #six #yellow #moon #sky #reminiscing #wonder #tender

Marlene Bailey Jul 6

Sometimes I feel alone

Sometimes... I feel alone.

And sometimes it bothers me, but sometimes it doesn’t.
And sometimes it feels nice, but sometimes it doesn’t.
And I find myself asking if there’s something wrong—
Something wrong with me, something wrong with my soul.
But there are no answers... maybe because there are no real questions.
Because I know there’s something wrong.
I just don’t want to believe it.
So I just say:

Sometimes... I feel alone.

Wrote this little one on August 2021 and found it today looking through my notes

#alone #bother #soul #wrong #questions

Marlene Bailey Jul 6

Between wings and tears

What is this feeling in my stomach?
The butterflies flutter nonstop—I can hear their wings beating beneath my skin.
I feel them shift from side to side,
Claiming what little remains of me.

What is it?
What is this bitter taste rising through my throat, resting on my tongue?
Why can’t I hear the butterflies anymore?
Why do I still feel this?

My mouth opens, and all I spit is blood and glass.
The sour bile of what the butterflies once were grows thick—and I can do nothing.
“Spit them out, regurgitate them, let them go!”
I can’t.

I press my chest, and slowly my arms bind themselves around my belly,
Cradle of cutting kisses—kisses that now hurt,
And no longer heal the way they used to.

I rise from mourning, only to fall again, and the butterflies begin to flutter once more,
But they no longer beat like drums or echo like thunder.
They don’t crash against my walls or hide in my corners…
They are there, but not alive.

They try to climb.
I feel them fighting each other, pushing for space up my esophagus—
Once a path for all things good,
Now a tunnel for all things painful.
I hear them scream; their tiny voices pierce my eardrums and shake my bones.

They want out.

And I understand them well:
What good is a body that dances among broken hearts?
What use are shards beneath my feet,
Reminding me how little I’ve felt?
What comfort is the weeping of a soul grown weary?
What joy lies in the bottomless hollow of a body fed by illusions?
They were made for the sun—for joy, for love—
And all I can offer is an umbrella
For the relentless rain storming inside me.
Cold, decaying rain that stains the walls and soils my shoes, instead of washing them clean.

They’re almost free—
About to escape.
But I swallow them down once more,
Just as I’ve swallowed the bile of melancholy,
Just as I’ve swallowed the tears that swore, they would soften the blades of my sharp-edged heart.

I feel them sink slowly,
Their wings now still—they’ve accepted their fate.
I don’t want to let them go,
Because they’re all I have left.
They’re all I have of what once was pain.
They’re all I have of what once was passion…

They’re all I have of what once was love.

I'm going through another heartbreak and I'm starting to believe I'm bound to always pick up the pieces of my heart until my days come to an end.

#butterflies #brokenheart #wings #tears #bile #kisses #thunder #echo

Marlene Bailey Jun 22

Petite chanson d’un cœur brisé

Let me paint you a picture.

Red glasses filled with empty words.
Mirrors that don’t catch your reflection.
Blue and white lilies covering the floor—a floor I once knew.
It is the same floor I spend half of my days crying on.

There’s music.
Music filling the voids of an empty space where my heart was supposed to be.
It resonates through every cavity, through every bone, but my dead soul cannot hear it.
The blood is no longer running through my veins,
And my lips—once filled with love and affection—are as dark as the moment.
How easy is it to die of a broken heart?
Is it really broken? Or am I going crazy while I watch it fall and shatter around my lily-covered floor?

I crawl to pick up the pieces,
And I cut myself on every little bit,
But there’s nothing coming out of my fingers—just the sorrow of a few tears.

Empty.
Empty body, empty eyes, empty mind, empty soul of mine.
Should I remake my heart? Should I get the glue and put it all together again?
Or should I just keep cutting myself with the pieces?

Maybe I should let it be as it is.
There’s beauty in a broken heart.

I wrote this up in the bus on my way to work after hearing “Comptine d’un autre été, l’après-midi”

#red #glass #dead #soul #music #veins #blood #affection #lilies #tears

Marlene Bailey Jun 22

The black woman in I II

There’s something about the black woman in I.

There’s something about the Black woman in I that I can’t figure out.
And there was a time where I spent my days basking in this not knowing situation.
A time when I blamed the men and women around me—
The people who couldn’t see what I wanted them to see but…
How would they see what I can’t?

I kept crying about how disrespectful ****** were to me,
How the women around me didn’t understand the feeling of not feeling enough,
How I blamed myself for everything that was happening because of me.
And yes,
If it was because of me,
Then I am at fault
And should blame myself for it.
But the picture is bigger than that.
It’s tougher than that.
It’s darker than that.

A few years later,
There’s still something about the Black woman in I that I can’t figure out.

Always complacent.
Always trying to be soft after a life of being the hardest rock.
Always trying to be mellow jazz when I was the heaviest metal.
Always trying to be touched like a piano,
But I kept on being the drums.

I’m still my own weakness, you know?
Now I’m not lying to anyone—
I’m just lying to myself.
I walk in this made-up power that I’m supposed to have,
And I built a whole bridge out of it… but it always trembles.

    “You’re so beautiful for being a Black woman.”
    It trembles.
    “Oh, you’re so well-spoken for coming from the hood!”
    It trembles.
    “Are you sure you didn’t have any help making this?”
    It trembles.
    “You’ll never be like her.”
    And it trembles.

Still, I keep walking over that bridge because—
I need to fake it until I make it, right?
I’m so tired of faking it.
I’m so tired of feeling this way.
I’m tired of being policed over my blackness,
Over my hair and my body,
Over my womanhood and my mind,
Over my sad little soul.
Still, I keep going through it,
In the hopes that I find what I want to find in the end.

    “Oh, what do you want to find?”

…

Oh, dear heart.
We were supposed to walk on lilies and green grass.
I’m sorry that we can’t.

Eight years later,
There’s something about the black woman in I that I still can’t figure out.
And just like before…

I never will.

It’s so funny how you spend enough time forgetting something that once broke your heart in a thousand pieces

#blackwoman #black #lilies #darkskin #feeling #notenough #heart