Cutting and gathering the flowers, bringing them in. Tamed, arranging them in bottles, one blue one green. Rethink the lines of maybe poetry the run brought me. Find them too sentimental. The process is daunting.

Kissing the old fears on the cheek. Just to be safe.

“Oh N-, I want thicker skin. Even if it makes me rough as an alligator. Scratch that. I want skin like the voice of Tom Waits. No one would ever hurt me again, except whiskey.”

Excerpt from a correspondence, May 9th 2012

sierrademulder:

it is as familiar as a sister. She fills the bathtub, unravels my clothing into a heap on the floor. She sits on the toilet, painting her toenails, singing my favorite songs, while I soak. She has the most beautiful voice. The phone rings and rings and I let it just lay there screaming for help. Or it doesn’t and I watch it sit silent as the dead on my dresser. She doesn’t want to go out tonight. I beg her, tell her she can wear anything in my closet. She tells me no baby girl, no, not tonight, maybe tomorrow. There is a refrigerator full of food. I want none of it.

- Sierra DeMulder

after Anaïs Nin

I read once that every poem is a grave.

Each time I set out with my gravedigger’s song,
I find a failed shovel.

You were the first person for whom I did not make myself easier to love.
Did not
think smaller,
want less,
so that I could be folded up.
I had made myself a travel sized love
a paper crane love
For you I
unfolded.

I think of you as a crawlspace
like a place I could get into
if I
just got down on my knees.

Children in their hiding places
do not realize one day
they will outgrow the door.

Every poem is a grave.

I saw a faith healer to get rid of you.
And still
I drag home your invisible bones,
find graveyard dirt under my fingernails
you undying dead
you stillborn love
you first I did not make myself less
first I could not finish what I started
first I think of you every time I hear
it is what it is

what cannot be buried
what graveyard dirt left on your fingers


If you were a city
I’d have moved.

To the dudebro who interrupted me while I was telling him about our Viognier and why it’s my favorite right now to say: “Typical woman. You just like it ‘cause it’s the most expensive one.”

The price range on his flight of whites? $20.99-$24.99

I like it because it’s lemony, light, appeals to a wide range of palettes, and easier to pair with than anything else on that list. Now GTFO the vineyard. 

So I said yes to a 30 minute feature of me reading my own poetic works on the 20th when I was already freaked out about my 20 minute featured reading in March. Gulp. The universe conspires in my favor. Whether I want her to or not.

10 Things That Will NOT Be Going on My Resume

1. I think about stealing a lot
more than I actually do it. I have imagined my own heist montage.
The careful planning, the nights spent creating false footage to feed the security cameras. In it I am all things,
the hacker,
the contortionist,
the ballistics expert. 
And I get away with it every time.

2. Every boss I’ve ever had has quit, retired, or been fired shortly after I left.

3. Correlation ≠ causation.

4. When I tell people my parents are nudists and also Evangelical Christians, 
I follow it up with, 
“I know. Explains a lot doesn’t it?” 
but I’m not special. 
Modern American culture is a hybrid clash 
of hyper-sexualization and the vestigial tail of Puritanism. 
We were all raised by Evangelical nudists.

5. Sacrilege is the only form of worship left to the hedonist.

6. Tom Waits told me people don’t care if you tell them a lie or the truth as long as it makes a good story and I believed him.

7. I have lied by pretending to be lying while telling the truth. I have told the truth 
then lied about it, then lied again then tried to tell the truth but couldn’t remember the difference.

8. When I was four I brought a duckling to my uncle to see if he could fix its broken foot.  He looked it over then snapped its neck against his desk.
“Yup, it’s broken,” 
he said as he tossed the body in the trash. 
Its webbed foot looked like a tulip, half-bloomed.

9. I am studying HTML, I have google searched contortionism for beginners. And last week I shot a gun for the first time.

10. We are all as dangerous as we want to be.

Dear Google Ad generator,

We’ve had some rough times in the past but now that you’re offering me more information on “Cheap Bullet-Proof Vest: Stay Classy and Save Money with These Cute Bullet-Proof Vest” I think we’re back on track. 

Regards,

LJ 

There is a poem I refuse to write about all the quiet things I told myself when I thought getting over someone was a decision I hadn’t made yet. I work on it when I run, try to recall the arrangements I like best, dissect it for the truth. Don’t do this to yourself. This is not a way to write or run.

It is too easy to believe while you are breathing heavy, hurt, and yet enduring, that love is just a habit to be broken, like a best-time.

chrisrubeo:

Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.

Your love

Should never be offered to the mouth of a stranger,

Only to someone who has the valor and daring

To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife

Then weave them into a blanket

To protect you.

Stay close to any sounds that make you glad you are alive.

Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.

I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in the darkness, the astonishing light of your own being.

There are different wells within your heart.

Some fill with each good rain,

Others are far too deep for that

Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions.

-Hafiz

I asked R to read my palm because I felt like having someone touch my hands. He took the left and laid it in his right, turning it to catch the light falling over his shoulder. “You don’t have a dropped pinky, that’s very good, it means you can focus on things, you don’t get distracted too easily.” He tugs on my thumb. He pinches the mounded flesh at the base of each finger. “You’re flexible which means you’re open-minded but not so open-minded that you’re gullible. You’re interested in communication, expression.” He traces a finger across the lines. “You have a writer’s fork.”

“You’re making that up.”

“No, really. It’s right there. But here,” he pushes the flesh at the base of my palm, “that’s what you’ve been doing with it. It feels like a muscle that used to be strong but has gotten lazy.”

“Are you saying that because you know me or because you’re reading that?”

“It’s there. I mean, I know that, but it is there.” He measures the shape of my palm with his thumb and his third finger. “You want to understand people. Understanding is a driving force for you…which is interesting because,” he squeezes between the lines on my forefinger, “you have trouble with true empathy. You don’t feel like your thoughts and desires line up with other peoples’. You sometimes feel like you’re from a different world.”

He says nothing of love. I don’t ask.