Lydia

Lydia Sep 2018

Things were supposed to be different and that’s an understatement
At first, it was like you were guiding me across the galaxy
All I had was a backpack but you were gonna keep me safe
You held my chin up
You promised

Now,
Now that my heart hurts
Now that I’m tired
I keep forgetting to look up at you
And suddenly, even with your knees resting on my bed you are so far away
I must have been looking down at my feet
And now, you’ve run off

I promise, after this one thing, you can go back to bed

Please comment :)

Lydia Sep 2018

Your Love Story

Your body is a promise that I can’t keep
But let me in anyway
We’ll become whole again in showers of confetti
We’ll fit together like branches instead of puzzle pieces
I will not trap you in my arms, but you can rest here

My body is a book in a foreign language
Sweetie, you have so much to learn
But I am bilingual, so we’ll take it one page at a time

Here, it’s like there’s too much gravity
We’re going to condense into the black hole of each other, entirely by accident
But you can’t hold me down
In space, there is no direction and this could be endless

It was strange and sickly sweet to feel infinite
But there you were, standing between two mirrors, stretching on forever
I tried to understand, but we moved in slow motion
The walls collapsed inward, and we didn’t even notice

So deconstruct my body, just to make it whole again
Be a sculptor, mind like a palace
Heart unbuttoning
Fall like clothing to the shower floor

You have been singing for your entire life
So teach me to listen
Teach me fo fall apart in perfect harmony

I keep hearing that God is a woman
They say it like an argument, as if I need to be convinced that I can transcend my body
As if I had been taught that I was confined by long hair and barbie dolls
As if I ran away from boys on the playground
They tried, and they failed

This time, I’m going to save you
Because she took the boots off of her chest and put them on
She took his hands out of her hair and cast them off
And she is like an atom bomb
But you, are sacred

If I hadn’t fallen in love with you,
I would have been the first girl to kiss a boy in kindergarten

My hair was like a river draped over your shoulder
You kissed me so that I wouldn’t drown in it
But I sank deeper
Because love fell halfheartedly like a dress ruined in a rainstorm

If you wanted this to be a love story, I’m sorry, but you’ve started at the end

I performed this quite poorly last night but that’s okay because next time it will be better.

Please comment :)

Lydia Sep 2018

What Matters

John Green told us that “it hurt because it mattered.”
By this, I think he meant to alleviate the pain that comes when nobody licks your scratches
I’m just going to warn you-
It doesn’t

2.
I used to fall asleep to the sound of my father turning on the shower at night
Something about the sound of the water through the plumbing Reminded me that my mother was across the hall watching TV
And my little sister was drawing in the basement
I felt my dog breathe in and out to the sound of the water, curled up behind my legs
And this all added up to family

3.
I told my therapist, “I think that’s when my heart fell through the storm drain,”
He kissed my forehead,
Made everything all better,
And then I woke up

4.
Someone went around lighting tiny fires
And suddenly, our college campus turned into California
She tried to put it out with ethanol
Nobody went to the funeral
I heard some people asking if anybody knew her, and
Nobody did

5.
Last night, it mattered.

6.
You are never supposed to reach your last resort
You are supposed to leave it on the top shelf of the top floor of a building on Mars
And I am telling you, you haven’t
You don’t even have the key to get in

7.
Your life was never supposed to fall apart
As though all of the little bits and pieces were never meant to fit together in the first place

8.
If you wanted this to be a love story,
I’m sorry, but you’ve started at the end

9.
I’m gonna save you...
God, I am so sorry!

10.
I couldn’t live with the idea that growing up took longer than move-in day
But it wasn’t just Neil Armstrong who walked on the moon
There were engineers and politicians and mothers and chemists
There were miners that dug metal out of the ground and handed us a space ship and I really do mean US
Because there were children watching that day, and it took them longer to grow up
It hurt some of the time but it mattered and some of them became astronauts
Most of them didn’t, but they did become humans

11.
If this is my last resort, why are you still opening so many doors?
Your body is a promise that I can’t keep
I can’t let go
I can’t-

12.
There were days when he crawled into bed like it was a coffin he would never escape from
I remember his voice shaking when he called me
But he was still something out of a fairytale, so his story couldn’t end here
Unfortunately, people decided to scribble all over the book
And the resale value fell through the floor

13.
When we kissed, I went home and cried
I just wanted to be part of the atmosphere
But he was a lead balloon and I couldn’t take off

14.
I have learned the very hard way that I will never take my own advice

Please comment :)

Lydia Sep 2018

Untitled

Let's keep this short
This is my body
My legs and arms, and my hair
That one is yours
This is not some Neapolitan ice cream, where you may not like strawberry, but you’re going to get a little strawberry
We are different candies made in different factories
And it is our choice to take off the wrappers

Please comment :)

Lydia Sep 2018

Eden

Welcome to Eden...
When you said that's where you were going, I didn't have high hopes
It was almost like pretending to be thrilled for your sister moving to Brooklyn,
Like writing in subtext, "That apartment you got a great deal on DEFINITELY has rats..."
Only a little different
You weren't shining
You weren't cheering or brandishing an acceptance letter to Columbia or trying to catch your big break
You just had to go

So that first letter didn't surprise me
The one where you told me that the trees were mulched with cigarette butts
And all you could hear at night were ambulance sirens
The one where you started seeing a therapist
I wrote back and sent you pictures of our hometown and asked you why you stayed
You told me that you can't fix anything that isn't broken
A month later, you had a job in a free clinic, you paid money for a stamp, an envelope, ink and paper for four words
"I'm doing good here."

I was never going to find Eden in a city
I was pretty sure it wasn't even a place
I was hoping to find it in a person or maybe even school work
I've met people who have found it just by being alive
Like they were born into heaven and paradise
And I was sitting in some ***** town in the middle of nowhere
You decided one day that you must be there, that this was it, and so it was
And I blamed you for so long for leaving me behind
But I just had to work for Eden
Eden was buried in long nights and regrets
Eden is rare and sour and fleeting

Please forgive me for not having the strength to persevere, and grant me the courage to leave the past behind.

Lydia Aug 2018

The City

I haven’t given up much
They kept telling me that my job was to be a student
I turned 16 and I worked in the local daycare
I brought my homework with me
I got 8 hours a week, if I was lucky

I am this old road that needs to be rebuilt
So I’m leaving behind the walls that I painted
I’m getting replaced with mechanical and systematic
They kept telling me to move to the city where I could get a real job

Please Comment :)

Lydia Jul 2018

Powering Down

We grew up assuming we couldn’t sleep
We had this aching, this burning passionate desire to be different and that made us just like everybody else
So now it’s 11 at night and we’re all doing the same exact thing

Screens bright,
“Hey, are you up?”
“How have things been?”
“Do you ever feel like you’re missing something?”

We never bothered to try laying down and closing our eyes
In a world full of shining stars and special snowflakes, we couldn’t stand being the one house with the lights out

Please comment :)