in a bed that barely Fits
Emma Hannan
In a Bed That Barely Fits
Emma Hannan
Chipped Tooth Press 2014
Untitled each night we curl ourselves into shapes that humor a bed that is too small for two, and i can’t tell if i hate the way my neck feels at 9 am or if i love the way we are always touching, always exchanging heat, always laying together like we will never have the chance to again. soon enough we will share the first bed we ever laid in together. they call it a full, and i never understood why it held such a name until the night i gave all of myself to you within it, or touched my ear to your chest and heard my name in your heartbeat. four years later and we are starting a life together that i cannot run from, will not ever want to run from, and it makes me feel more full than any mattress or tongue ever will.
old words etched in new ink (no longer waiting) i am waiting for the day that i know what to do. waiting for the moment that you crawl under my skin and teach me what home feels like. waiting for the day that I buckle at the knees and kneel at the foot of god and say “thank you.�
another reason he was able to fuck me as hard as i hate myself, bodies held together like the earth’s plates and rumbling like earthquakes. he kissed me quiet, but his fingers along my skin were like conversations being held atop Olympus, so exciting and so very loud. he kissed me quiet, but his voice was like rain in june, thick, and warm, and heavy. oh, he kissed me quiet.
do i wanna know? i know that if i let myself, i would run myself right into you like a bull, like a storm, like a dive off a mountain into mid-february water. there are so many questions i want to ask you, but i don’t want them to be traced. i don’t want you to ever remember them leaving my mouth. (maybe i’ll feed you whiskey shots until i get your answers. maybe you’ll forget ever wanting mine.) you’ve turned me into flowers, into lace, into something delicate. i need to be powerful, intimidating. turn me into a hurricane, make me a tornado. (maybe then you won’t want me. maybe then you’ll be too afraid.)
7.6.2014 i regret every mouth i’ve ever kissed that was not yours, every boy i’ve ever let feel anything for me. their teeth were broken glass along my neck, their hands grenades, weapons in combat, allies in a war against myself that they knew nothing about. i think about my nights beneath their bodies and it makes me want to burn. i hide beneath my desk at work, lungs filled with smoke, throat scarred, a tornado happening within me. and for a moment it is dark and silent, like a womb. i leave this position in hopes it would be like being born again. (it isn’t; set me on fire. set me on fire. set me on fire.)
“love is full of your regrets / and i should be one.� with closed eyes you should think of my body alone in a bed too big for just me, and your hand warm and uncalloused within fingers not belonging to me. mine were too rough anyway, scraping away the surface layers of your skin, slowly, to the raw. you never hated me, you never wanted to, but still you tried and never forgot about the sound of my laugh, the way my lip curled higher on one side when you made a joke only my face admitted was funny. you never forgot the way words you loved to hear were able to cut and heal all at the same time.
i wanted you to hope my heart broke each time the sun rose because it did. it shattered like sea glass and it still does each time the tide breaks, because you still stare at me lying in a bed that barely fits two like you don’t regret a thing. not even me.
inspection i. it’s true that i am afraid for you to love me, that i can’t write poems with you around, with “it’s okay. it’s okay. we’re okay,” leaking from your mouth like sap, sticky and sweet and vital. the foundations i had laid for myself are old, are cracked, dangerous. floorboards in a second story where termites have made a home. you have fallen through me before. ii. it’s true that i am a house you have built again, that my trying it alone was not nearly good enough. you have reconstructed shattered glass and shattered frames and shattered hearts; an architect with not only an eye for potential, but a hunger for it. you sank your teeth into mine recklessly.
iii. it’s true that you have made a home from me, within me, a place welcome and warm and full of light. my heart is a bay window that looks on to only you and a world that we will conquer together. it took loving you to realize that i was not a one-man job, that i was not a project, that i was a story needing reviving. i allowed you to fill the cracks beneath me and it was much more beautiful than me trying to lift myself and crumbling.
We Started In The Fall i have watched the leaves change from a different window every year since 2009 i have shed a different layer of skin each time, peeling away the remnants of apartments, of beds, of hospital rooms every autumn i breathe in a new beginning and the scent of you is mixed in like rain before it falls this is how it will stay until there is nothing left for me to breathe in
on: bullets and battle. i have lived my life as a series of pauses and sprints. go. dash. brake. break. these past three years have been a multitude of wars: emma vs. self-loathing. emma vs. resentment. emma vs. loss. self-loathing again, coming in like a grenade. emma vs. eyes, vs. lips, vs. hands, vs. claws. i am ready to win each and every battle. i am ready to call it.
sylvia says Sylvia once said that she either likes people too much or not at all. That in order to know people, she must fall into them. Well that’s all too relevant, and I’ve learned the depths of a heart the way a penny has learned the bottom of a wishing well full of wishes that stretch too far. I’ve learned the way a surface feels and how it stings like a shot of Novocaine when you hit without warning. I’ve floated on the surface until my skin turned green, until my copper wishes disappeared like the sting of water’s broken surface after you’ve been submerged long enough. sometimes I feel as though my well attracts too many coins, as though my heart holds too many people, wrapping its ropes around a barrel not intending to be let down. I was never graceful enough to grant everyone’s wishes. I was never full enough to keep them out. And now I’m stuck with all these aging metals reminding me that I let too
many in, made too many promises, left behind too many answers. I wait for pennies like April waits for rain: hungrily, impatiently. No one could catch the love I pour out, though; no upside down umbrella or May flower can capture the love I feel for everything. There are not enough wells in me to catch the coins I feed on, not enough wishes for me to grant to prove my love to everyone around me or not at all. Sometimes I find myself sinking to the bottom under the weight of all the hearts I hear beating. I want to keep them in my pockets, keep them in my hands, keep them in any crevice they could fit in so they know that they’re protected, but I sway too quickly. I carry too much pocket change, prepared for a well but only being one myself.
Emma Hannan
began writing in 2009 and became a contributor and editor of her high school’s literary magazine, Scriptura. Postgraduation, she has dabbled in everything from short story to journalism, but her heart will always beat in poetry. Her goal is to inspire art, create art, and to ultimately become art. As charming as she is talented, Emma digs her way into your heart and mind with her unapologetic imagery and stanzas that always sound vaguely like bare feet slapping hot asphalt. You can read more of Emma’s work on her tumblr: hymnist.tumblr.com
Chipped Tooth Press 2014