pain
-
I never understood why the world ached so badly for romantic love. Swooning and gushing and cooing over your partner, drowning yourselves in sickly-sweet nothings seemed like a tacky endeavour. Allowing yourself to be known and needed by another was a risk I didn’t want to see the fruits from, no matter the fulfillment it
-
What are you most proud of? That I don’t see life as a miserable, gruelling concept. That I don’t see life as something forced onto me. That I still manage to find the light, the crack in the sidewalk to sprout from. How, even through convoluted grief and anger at years lost to trauma and heartbreaks of
-
do you so dareto suck on contempt like a sour cherry,the tannins taut on your teeth,saliva building in your gums, pulling out every last ounce of bitterness? do you so dare to strangle grief with your bare hands,to wring dry your nerves, to feel flesh bulge between your digits, releasing the life from it? do you so dare to watch
-
I could cry days for you,weeks,years.I could cry you a new calendar,a new generation,a new slice of time in the sky,salty enough,to compensate your sweetness,a place where’d you’d be the revered sovereignty,and would ban my tears for eternity,because you never cease to exist for me,as long as I can cry for you.
-
The ideaof men,of manhood,the way it tasted in my mouth,gaggingon my pitiful fortuned future,one where a manwith a hairy chest and no room in it for me,was what to desire,so I learned to choke back my own,believing a life without love,a throat full of thirst,was my white flag. So don’t tell me you always knew,because
-
The way grief pours into you,thick and rich like molasses,sealing the loss with sticky solemnity.
-
I wish you had hurt me more. Or, in a more obvious way.
-
I gave up all my childhood relics too early. I refused my dolls, my stuffed animals, my notebooks full of novel ideas, to swallow maturity instead. I was sooner than ready ushered into adulthood, to wear the mark of maturity ripe on my flat chest. Every “you’re so mature” proclaimed from an adult singed it deeper into my flesh. The
-
If not for your sweet curves and sugar lips, how would I know bitterness?If not for your striking grit, how would I know timidity? If not for your heavy and boundless laughs, how would I know silence?
-
I’m a child of the hot July sun. I couldn’t wait to peel a wet bathing suit off my taut skin after a swim. I wanted that first feeling of realizing the sun was still out at 9pm, knowing the season had just begun and anything was possible. I wanted blackened feet from being barefoot
Lashanda Forsberg 