August 12; August 19; Since then by Taylor Rose Elliott
In the landscape of these gray days, the overbearing darkness hangs heavy-A darkness with no yields. Darkness must have yields I think about it every day. Weighed down with invisible thoughts that are never penned on any page Rehearsed speeches I’ll never actually make, And, with my calloused hands, I crush everything I’ve made: My legacy, intertwined with a history I’ve earned; My songs, my voice cracks, my poems, Time has won Weighing me down with cups of coffee and books in a foreign language. In the cities inside my mind I stand on the highest, brightest ledge, My shoes abandoned in that café, where we learned to stare. Feet, cut and bleeding, I may be stumbling but I’m not scared anymore. My painted, dirty hands, lifted high, calluses exposed in the sun. Your eyes, the mud green of the ground and the water in the sky, Burned unto the back of my hand and the heart of my mind, Lifted into the emptiness of your favorite rainy days, The swings where I used to mess up your hair, We took it day by day, the rain and the sun layered like sweaters and tee shirts, But it’s only August, and the sun leaves for days.
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Now I buy my coffee, and I never make it at home. I wear my shirts as loose as your noose; I want to get lost inside, by myself. I lace my boots as tight as my collarbones As tight as we laced our fingers, then. Now, my chest heaving like an opera singer Expel the passion into breath, never to run out. Like her, just know that I I live my life to remember outgrown love and worn out songs, And it would take my whole life to destroy all of our art you left And you won’t even take it back. But still, I rise and rise, but Somehow you skipped all the stairs without falling. But me, In all my car wrecks and failed skateboard tricks And theatre stunts and vocal runs gone wrong. Stumbling haunts me as I keep climbing, my young stiffened bones Creaking in August’s sweating cold. For me, Cold-blooded and tired, there’s so much more winter to weather, Whether it’s at your house on the hill, or our house far from home, Or a twin bed with two comforters, all alone.
