Tabitha Vohn's Blog - Posts Tagged "haunted"

This isn't for the boy who's gonna make it

Although I write about him too often

To fill that empty heart space with daffodil-scented air

when he's gone This is for the one I forgot

A passing point of refracted light

in the peripheral

I read a poem today about a boy who stole things

and I remembered that night you called me and

offered to lift from Kmart anything I wanted.

Watches perfume...you laundry listed all the things

you'd liberated

Proud

Like a child with Crayola murals on the white living

room walls you wanted so badly to impress me

You showed up at the family reunion I hated to go to

the one where I felt as out of place as you cause why

acknowledge the moonshiners and molesters their

cans of cheap American beer and dirty mesh trucker

caps who threw your Pap away like graying meat? By

the creek you picked me up wedding threshold style

like I weighed nothing despite that you were slimmer

than me the energy beneath your skin like fire

brimming in iron chambers with no chimney raging to

get out

And I was snow white fifteen. And I was afraid of you.

I couldn't get you off the phone and wrote my dad a

note for once relishing those harsh tones reserved to

make me quake

I said "say I have to go. Now!" It was the only cruelty I

knew more subtle than honesty Of why--at fifteen--

animal wound open

I couldn't save myself let alone you

I was glad

when you stopped calling.

I feel like years later my mom said you'd been arrested

for drugs or assault or something of the like

the devil in me whispered to the angel in me

"see: I told you so"

the devil in me said "you could never have saved him.

He would've eaten your fear like sweet plum colored

candy."

"Like you," the light in me asks?

Maybe it wasn't the trembling or the cowering he

wanted.

Maybe it was the snow white girl who took walks by

the creek

and kissed all her stuffed animals at night

In a pink bedroom with clean sheets

and a mother who didn't drink or scream

and a father not as badly broken beyond repair

in the picket fence house with non shuttered windows

That he found sweet.

“Poetry is what happens when I can’t say what I want to someone I love.”—Nicole Blackman, NYC 1968.

I have dreams
I don’t wanna tell you about
easier to text you in the night
say “Love, are you alright?”
than to creak across truth
boards I’m afraid will wake
nightmare realities I can’t
put to rest, can’t put an end to
the past with no key
no answers
that make sense
no closure
except to accept that
I have you back
and I’m not sure
how I lost you
in the first place.

When I argued with you
in a dream
You said, “If you only knew what
I’m being put through
just to be able to talk to you
right now,
you wouldn’t be giving me all this shit”

Your words were a fist and I
jolted in bed
shaken
since then
Each button I press
becomes a Gravity
wondering
Will today be the day he stops
speaking to me?
Again.

My fingers tread landmines
same as my mind when I
try and come up with new
and inventive ways to say
three syllables
devolved into
charged sky danger
“and shit”
or even to ask about your day
I factor dates and times
spaces in between replies
the past is a sour note I’m
not looking to repeat

I wish I understood
my part in all that happened
I don’t know how not
to remake mistakes I’m
not even sure were mistakes
--to you--
to begin with
I wish
I could still my heart
with the same “easier said than done”
lullabies I used to sell you
about how dreams are not prophesies

--But you’re in my heartbeats--
and I don’t know which is worse, Love:
living without you or waiting to live
without you again
This tiptoe traipse
This high wire I’m trying to find
my balance on
Trying to keep the peace with
especially my own

I hope someday there’ll be a place
a time to confess all this to you
In the meantime
I also had a very sweet dream:
It was a crowded cafeteria
and I was coming to find you
because we had been there with
our families and I started to leave
without saying goodbye.

You’d morphed into ten years old!
Gold hair tucked under a baseball cap
that was almost too big for your head
white tee shirt
You were sitting hunched over some
homework
Your face was lit up angel glow when
you saw me
I held you and you said “I love you”
You went back to your homework and
I left so happy
that you had said it first.