‘What makes you think I’m enjoying being led to the flood?
After The National
i have a tendency to write things from the grave
up / my babasan’s eyes
looked like the rims of wine glasses
echoing
into themselves
her wrists too thin to pull
her from the coma / the day of her stroke
she was packing to move to los angeles
boxes
and boxes
of bones / the difference between life and death
is the amount of dust collected on a windowsill
when everyone who loved
left / at babasan’s funeral
we pulled pomegranates from the tree
out back / we stain our hands red
because it’s the closest thing we have
to fathoming death
sestina for psyche self-harm
i do not want to write a poem on how numb i feel
just to make up healing
i do not write of the dying plants on my windowsill,
skeletons skydiving their fingernails into brine-ocean sky
i do not write of how wide my grin will be when the sun tugs at its corners
i only know myself as flesh
haven’t washed my hair in a week growling flesh
i tell myself it’s okay to be as hopeless as i feel
maybe my hair is a rolling forest of tightly woven trees tying me to my pillowcase’s corners
for days on end; i’m lost in the foliage but i promise myself: if i break through it healing
will be on the other side, in the center of a bright blue sky
as hard as i try, when the nights seem too long i latch myself to my windowsill
the whole city breathes through my windowsill
(the same one i painted red in a bout of insomnia) i watch the city exhale its old flesh
throw the day’s dirty laundry into its starless sky
i watch the city’s reef of eyes watch me back, feel
their cold smoggy hands pull me away from the brink, but i still can’t find healing
i lost it in my body’s most tired corners
i learned so long ago to shelter myself in those corners
my eyes are the windowsill
to a body made menagerie of the things i refuse to remember; a survival tactic masked as healing
a band-aid existence instead of stitched-up flesh
i un-taught myself the way to feel
un-remembered the first 12 years of my life so i wouldn’t have to see the scars; built sky
laced of brain synapses; sheathed trauma sky
i think i talked myself not knowing; into hiding in the corners
so i don’t have to see the carnage and still figure out how to feel
i dropped my brain stem from the windowsill
built myself impermanent castle of flesh
convinced myself i wasn’t worth healing
that i’d rather fashion disaster of self than practice healing
it’s easier if you pretend you don’t need it; become ash floating towards sky
permanent to your ecosystem but not your flesh
two years ago i wrapped myself in a pitch black psyche’s corners
taught myself to ignore how little i see of myself now; now that i am a windowsill
inwards instead of a home for myself; barrier from shards pointing inwards that i refuse to feel
i will not pretend there is a resolution to this poem; i do not see more sky than sadness or feel
any more healing than i did in the thick of it; after all, i still tie down my windowsill
for fear of what my paranoia says will crawl through or may live in flesh of my body’s corners
∞
Demeter Appel-Riehle is a poet, activist, and student at Alexander Hamilton High School. They are the Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles 2019-20 and a graduate of the Iowa Young Writer’s Studio. They have competed in Brave New Voices 2018. Demeter was the captain of the winning team of the Get Lit Classic Slam in 2019. Demeter organized Trans March LA, which appeared in Out Magazine. Demeter strives to create safe spaces for silenced youth in their community and to foster love and growth wherever they go.that poetry lives in the throat and to speak it into existence is to empower others to be vulnerable with each other, creating the loving communities we are so desperate for.
Follow them on social media @snailsarenotbugs
