Melting

I feel alive when you look at me
every hair standing on end
breath trapped inside my body
Waiting for what you say next

I am chocolate melting in the face of the sun
the smallest particles of my body freed
playing on a summer's day
when we brush past one another

And with my atomic structure
There goes my head
Half the time I don't even know
where my mouth gets these words

But you, you don't even notice
That there's a brown puddle on the sidewalk
Where the girl you just waved to once stood
Languishing in the memory of your warmth

She is gone, gone, gone
Up on cloud nine
Turning around to look at your back
And smile the goofiest grin

She is almost not me at this point
Cracking jokes left and right
Practically dancing in the halls
And as you know, I don't dance

And then the next period, daydreaming in class
Concocting conversations that'll never happen
Not in a million years, I say
She nods, but simply carries on anyway

She's a little stupid, and a lot messy, I admit
After all, her brain took a hike 10 minutes ago
But she's a burst of sultry sweetness contrasting
with the bitter bastion that I tell myself to be

I feel alive when you look at me
Because for a moment
The seams the world has stitched into me loosen,
and I become someone new

amaryllis

CA

YWP Alumni

More by amaryllis

  • Forgotten altars

    You blink and look and stare
    and stare

    As if trying to find the snag in the dream
    the catch in the sweater
    the cards hidden up someone's sleeves

    The meaning of this miracle that tapped you on the elbow
  • You, Tree

    As I sit on this stump and read
    from these pages of your cousin's pulped flesh,
    I burst with the excitement of next year seeing you draped in color,

    You. master of graceful loss.

    You, vessels of wasted breaths,
  • spiraling

    Spiraling odes of love and loss,
    lost pages strewn on the desk and the floor and the eyes and the sky and my limbs,
    each one with a piece of myself I do not want to see anymore.

    what have I created?