Where were you?
In the place before birth
Where one begins their trek to existence
But remains a body unnamed.
The seconds between the Big Bang
There is nothing and yet still something
Imploding into itself.
Where dusk meets the night
In shaded trees under overgrown hedges
And soft lips coalesce into the moon.
The moment the high hits
When the physical world distorts
Into shades of blue, yellow, and red.
Where was I?
I was numb
Siblings
Like the sun and moon,
Orion and Scorpius tiptoe in tandem
Across the night sky.
Summer and winter child,
A bridge between our bodies.
But my laughter crosses over to greet your smile,
And softer games continue
Just the same.
I Know You Were Little Once
Hoarded piles of wood lie dormant
Sleep in your shed
Sheltered by mossy quilts
Like a child’s fort
Oak
Pine
Cedar
I ponder at their splintered sides
That pull apart like candy ropes,
I can only guess which one barred your door tight enough,
Corking the musky words that spit off your father’s lips
But could not quell your mother’s screams.
Dopamine
Cracked bongs and rotten edibles
Clogged aspirations of half-eaten food
Broken, yellow-tinted glasses.
I trap the hazy sun and tape it to my bathroom mirror.
I try to find myself.
"I hate you!" I scream at the fragmented girl I once knew,
Self-expectation sewed tightly on her face.
"I hate you too!" she screams back to the girl I am,
Still lying in bed with less dreams than before.
Microdosing Joy
A dip into ecstasy.
Microdosing joy.
I loiter in the act of being.
My eyes dye the room in hues of lemon.
My perception is pollinated by the humming universe.
I birth poetry into creation.
A life worth living if only it felt like this
I reach further into my own existence,
Sinking deep into its warm throat.
I find a drop of happiness, a childhood feeling I had forgotten.
I gulp it down like water in June.
I am myself again.
Demeter’s Plea
Death wanes like the moon,
Devouring the constellations on their trek
Across the Stygian sky
Into the halls of Hades.
He shall mount them on his mantelpiece
With rusty nails.
My stalks grow ever weary.
They shiver in the coming wind
At the caw of the raven,
Who elicits poetry of the foreboding winter
From the feverish vegetables,
Which cling to my robes in blood and milk.
I lie sweetly in the wheat fields.
Death comes silently as an owl.
I pray that when he feasts on my garden,
He will gaze upon my dull expression and take pity,
For grief has already slain me.
Desperate Remedies
Desperate remedies for a sleepless night.
Languid on the disheveled bed,
Whose color was painted by the bottom of a raindrop.
I have no future for myself.
I am writing poetry to forget,
Also to remember.
If I dream, I am but a hovering onlooker to abstraction.
I bleed sweat that soaks into the bedsheets,
Saturates the floor.
I seethe at the wretched stippled ceiling
Mimicking the stars
Where I search for a home I'll never know.
Let me sip my happiness down,
Drop by drop
Until the moon loves me again.
I shall sleep then.
Guitar Reflection
You sat, curved in front of my window,
Smelling of artificial strawberries and sultry summer sweat.
I gazed downward, lapping at the steady mud pond
I found you painted there.
My guitar sketched you in freshwater and fruit juice on a mahogany table,
Warped in the hollow fog of tree bark and sun rays.
You could have been smiling or scowling.
With the slight movements, I couldn’t tell.
I let the music decide.
I feel whole
I feel whole when I am empty
My mind is not unpacking boxes in a blank studio apartment
With picture frames rendering every thought I've ever owned,
And a wicker shelf of aged paperbacks
Creased with smile lines and discolored by ripe cigarette smoke
Placed in skewed rows like leaning dominoes
Publishing my grievances in short vignettes and purple prose
As quickly forgotten as a book read in grade school.
I do not hang chandeliers that wash out my insecurities in a honey glow
And burn the seashells of my memories into an amber glaze.
I coat my anxieties with thick layers
And stack them in neat piles next to my solitude,
Solemnly coated in dust
Nina Richard is a queer, POC graduate student, and a writer. Living in Knoxville, Tennessee, Nina spends nights working on her craft so in the day she can take her beloved naps. Nina has a publication in orange juice.