Mikaila

Mikaila Nov 2014

Galaxies II: "Your hands look the way I wish my hands looked." "Take them."

That word you wrote on my hand
Next to the scar from the day my heart was last broken
Right after you said my hands were beautiful,
Right after you said,
"Your hands look the way I wish my hands looked."
And I said
"Take them."
And slid them across the table to yours,
That word,
Galaxies,
I wonder what it means to you.
I only know
What it means to me.
It means
The first time someone I loved
Truly made me feel loved.
Touched me with tenderness.
Tucked my hair behind my ear.
That word...
I have a confession to make.
I waited, I did,
I actually think I waited until
You backed away from me-
Just to be sure it wasn't your proximity, your continued kindness,
That made me want to do it-
But the day you said you couldn't handle being loved that much right now,
I walked to the center of town
And I told the tattoo artist I needed an exact copy.
It's on my ribs,
Just under my right breast:
Galaxies.
It reminds me
Of how I deserve to be touched-
Gently. Kindly. Tenderly.
I didn't let the ink fade from my hands
Until I knew I'd have a copy of it forever in your handwriting.
I am afraid you will come back
And sink me to the bed beneath you again
And press your skin against mine
And see the evidence that I meant everything I ever said to you.
And I'm even more afraid
You won't.
I don't know what I'll say to you
If it ever comes to that,
If you ever discover it.
I know you'll know instantly.
I know you'll be afraid.
But it doesn't just mean you, to me.
That word, that wound,
Means that even when I'm old and life has done its worst
(And with any luck, its best as well)
I will never, ever forget
The first time someone I loved
Treated me the way I deserve to be treated
(If only
For a moment.)

#love #fear #hope

Mikaila Nov 2014

-

I never had a sister.
I never even really
Had a best friend.
I fell in love
And I got hurt
And I
Was there for others,
But I never let anybody near me.
Not unless they forced their way into my heart
Brutally.
I hardly even had friends
(Real friends)
So distrustful of the world was I.
And I certainly didn't have family.
Not family in the truest sense-
In the
There-is-nothing-you-could-do-to-make-me-hate-you sense.
I was loved, and I loved,
But there was trust on... neither end, really.
I never had a sister.

But

If I did

I'd want her to be you.

#friendship

Mikaila Nov 2014

A Face To Meet The Faces That You Meet

(I ration you
Like an addict
And I sneak hits
At one in the morning
When my resolve falters-
Allow myself
A glimpse of your picture,
Just little moments of you.
I must confess,
It is enough to throw me
Off the wagon
And so I quickly look away,
Blinded.)

Title is a quote from The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot.

#love #longing

Mikaila Nov 2014

Raised By Wolves

I am logical and rational because one needs a knowledge of that in order to reverse it.
I have spent most of my life toe to toe
With people who do not live on that plane.
I've had to learn it so that I can learn to fight in worlds of others' creations,
Where neither facts nor emotions have any substance,
Where the only way to stay alive is to convince your opponent that they thought of your solution themselves.

People wonder why I think defensively.
It is because I have been forced to my knees by people so cunning they fool themselves,
So incredibly sure of their goodness
That they could slap you and make you apologize for hurting their hand.
And you'd believe it: you'd cry real tears.
You'd punish yourself for them.

I was raised by people like this.

I was molded to apologize when hurt.
And it has left me... Bitterly unprepared for the world.
But it has left me with an eye for mazes of the mind:
One needs to tread upon the ground of insanity to hope to hold one's own against gods-
For that is what people like this are in their lives: gods.
They make the rules.
And if you don't say yes to them you will never reach your goal.
For these people,
There is no possibility of "wrong",
There is no way to convince them to see a different perspective,
There is no flexibility whatsoever.
As illusions go, their worlds are rigid ones-
Rigid because one discrepancy could send everything tumbling
Like a failed house of cards.

And so if ever you need something from one of these people...
First of all, I pity you.
Second of all, you must navigate their fun house mirror maze full of trip wires.
You must simply survive their attacks.
The goal has to be to live to fight another day.
It has to be to shout truth over and over into the wind and weather the punishment for having thought it,
So that you may return another time and shout again.
The goal has to be to be so loud that they might remember your words.
Not today, not tomorrow, but maybe someday, if you scream and rave and
Fight hard enough,
Maybe one important, true sentence will break through and reach them.
And maybe they will allow it to exist.
Allow you to exist.
That can really be your only goal
With people like this.

Mikaila Nov 2014

Going On

Desire is a dangerous thing. Almost as dangerous as hope.
The moment you feel a hunger in your soul for something, it can own you.
I do not enjoy being owned, but I am bent.
A longing bows me towards the life I want, the girl I want, the peace I want,
But I resist it
Simply because I know that I could not withstand the hope that I might have it.
It is a delicate balance to be struck, though, because without any desire,
Without any tightening of your chest to guide you through life, you are.... cut adrift.
This can be scarier than being tractor-beam pulled toward a situation you can see ending badly, because then you are pulled toward nothing.
Nothing has gravity,
Nothing has weight, and it dismays you to find that although you no longer have to run
From your secret, devastating wishes
By drowning out the silence when the sun sets,
You must still run in the same way, but this time from the knowledge that you don't know what to wish for.
Desire is a dangerous thing.
Dangerous in presence and dangerous in lack.
Do you understand how fragile it is that we are human? How vulnerable? How shaky and unsure?
This skin that barely holds us in imprisons us well, because we are just a little bit more afraid to leave it
Than we are terrified to stay.
It is a dangerous, dangerous thing to be a person.
To want anything.
To want nothing.
There is no safety. It is a truth that will always rub me like a rock in my shoe that I can't dislodge.

Mikaila Nov 2014

Remembering: Epitaph 1

Your message has been received, darling.
Your pain has been felt.
But you can retaliate all you want
And all it will prove
Is that you loved me.

Mikaila Nov 2014

Unforgettable

I wonder if you threw away
That giant Mickey Mouse doll I bought you in Times Square,
Or the art I made for you-
That little wooden chair that I burned designs into, describing you
As a goddess.
I wonder if you sifted through your colorful room
And exorcised my presence, gathered every piece of jewelry and thoughtful little gift
I ever gave you.
I wonder if you tore up my poems.
But the thing is
If you did, it means that I mean something
And if you didn't
It means that I mean something.
If you erased me, I know that, just like you will never find and destroy EVERY gift I gave you over 3 years
You will never erase me from your soul.
And if you didn't, I know that part of you can't let go
Of being loved so deeply and so purely.
I planned for this, my lost love.
I planned for years.
I never really thought you'd stay.
I only thought to make myself
Unforgettable
And
I know I did.

#love #lost #forgiveness #cruelty #revenge #irony