Every poem
has a double-hung window inside it,
the kind that allows you to let in
a little more air when you feel as if you
can’t breathe. Sometimes, seeing through it
helps you find a new way to frame the world.
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Does everyone know what this term ‘resting bitch face’ is? It’s a term coined by someone who is just generally unhappy with the fact that women aren’t smiling literally all the time. You’re like sleeping and he’s like “You have a bitch face.” And you’re like “I mean I’m literally taking a nap. So, I’m sorry. I don’t know? ” I’ve been doing this thing lately where I write odes to things I think I’m supposed to be ashamed of, which is largely how shame works. We think we’re supposed to feel it. We’re told we’re supposed to feel it. About the way we live and act and walk and speak and dress and are. We feel it because someone told us to. It’s not an organic feeling. I’ve been writing odes to things like that to counteract that feeling.
This is an ode to my bitch face.
You pink armour lipstick rebel steel cheek slit mouth head to the ground mean girl. You headphones in but no music. You house key turned blade. You quick step between street lights, strainer of pricks and chest beaters, laughter is a foreign language to your dry ice tongue.
There is something I don’t know
that I am supposed to know.
I don’t know what it is I don’t know,
and yet am supposed to know,
and I feel I look stupid
if I seem not to know
and not to know what it is I don’t know.
May you walk the path of beauty.
Know the direction of home is always within you.
Feel the daily benediction of
earth and wind
sun and water.
if you can still cry
it means you can still breathe
and if you can still breathe
it means you are still alive
and if you are still alive
it means you still have some work to do
A Rose blooms when she is ready
When She is ready
When She is ready
and not a moment too soon.
no
is a necessary magic
no
draws a circle around you
with chalk
and says
I have given enough
McKayla Robbin
Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to all the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.
Louise Erdrich
From The Painted Drum: A Novel
I’m not okay today.
So, in the absence of okay,
what else can I be?
LET IT BE KNOWN
I worship the Goddess.
The one with tangled hair
where insects nest.
The one with blood-soaked thighs.
The one who crushes my concepts
with her razor teeth
and spits my mind into the wind.