Sam Alexandra Rose

Tag: spilled ink

  • Natural Disaster

    I’m sorry I’m a walking disaster and
    I’m sorry that I want to show you
    all my fault lines so you know all of me.
    I’m sorry I’m cracking under the
    pressure of a natural disaster.
    I’m sorry if I ever make it sound
    like I want you to save me.
    I know you can’t.
    I’m sorry if I’m a handful.

  • I press my palms together

    I press my palms together
    and fold my thumbs
    and close my lids
    and I bow my head –

    please don’t retreat.

    please.

  • Hope

    I can feel myself coming down
    or going up, or moving in
    whichever direction is the right one.
    I don’t know how I’m doing it
    or how to keep doing it,
    but I hope I do.

  • How?

    I think I’m getting worse at hiding this.
    This is both good and terrible.
    Mostly terrible.
    Actually all terrible.

    I’m angry at the person I am now
    because I’m not the same
    as the person I used to be.
    I don’t know how to change.

    I could pick myself back up
    but I’m only one person
    and I don’t know how.

  • Layers

    How many layers of clothing does it take
    to hide these scars?

    I’m not just dealing with my feelings about it
    I’m dealing with how I feel about those feelings
    and how I feel about feeling that way about my feelings

    Feelings on top of feelings on top of feelings
    until everything’s lost all meaning.

    How much time should it take to shake this?
    I don’t know. I don’t know.

  • All The Things I Am

    Sit down and let me tell you
    all the things that I am.
    I guarantee my list will not
    match up with any assumptions
    you may have made in your head 

    and it will barely match up with
    any list I could have made five years ago.

  • Fog Lights

    This is the new normal.
    Take it and run with it because it’s all there is. 

    So what, we have to go to therapists now
    just to have someone who will listen?
    Just to have someone who understands
    or at least listens for long enough to realise
    there’s something there yearning
    to be understood? 

    Someone to shine a light in the fog:
    I’m starting to realise that’s all I’ve ever
    really wanted from anyone. 

    My door has always been wide open,
    now flung off the hinges as I sit
    muttering to myself: “This is the new normal.”

    I am still adamant that I’ve never cared
    what anyone else thinks about me. I just care about
    how I’m treated. That’s not the same thing.
    I’ll be myself even if it kills me.
    At the very least, I’ll try to understand me.

    I have never been more honest in my poetry than I am these days, and I have never loved writing more.

  • There’s nothing wrong

    There’s nothing wrong with the scars on our hands,
    we’re all just trying to understand.

  • Knowing when to stop writing

    It seems I’m still learning the art of knowing when to finish a poem.

    You know, instead of trying to cram every idea that pops into my head into that one poem I’m currently working on. Because sometimes I have ideas that sort-of-but-don’t-really fit into one neat piece, and if I try to mash them together they become something that’s not neat at all. I know I don’t edit my poems much, but I do try to give them some kind of finesse. Also someone, somewhere from inside my memory, said something like “If a poem only has three good lines, it should only be three lines long.”

    (more…)

  • English Clouds

    English Clouds

    Trying not to think about it
    is far too much like hard work.
    Believe me, I have been trying
    to kerb my thoughts, to retrain
    myself, but I don’t have the
    discipline, and it is exhausting.

    It is very much like trying
    to tell the English clouds
    not to cry about it.