14,800 by Nicole Barth [2/21/11]

You are that diary entry—

written in a frantic scrawl,

you are those tattered pages

that have been dog-eared,

twisted in every which way.

I've run my trembling finger over

the well-known lines.

The broken spine,

the lop-sided angle

you've decided to balance on. 

And every memory,

every soliloquy and

every good for nothing sketch,

all the ink that's been shed...

Every key beaten into submission.

Demanded—expected creativity.

An ocean howling

the could have beens,

the should have beens

—and murmuring my name.  

The Spiral Staircase by Nicole Barth [1/12/11]

I am the leaping embers

from the simmering coal

beneath the slats,

The curve in your spine—

the slouch in your shoulders.

I'm the lingering burn

that trickles down your throat,

into your chest cavity,

before the vodka caresses

your lungs.

I can't be the down

that floats across

your skin.

I won't be

the lullaby that whispers

in your ear.

Because the minute you've

seen the silver you are bathed in

is the minute

you won't need me

anymore.

Thought of You by Nicole Barth [12/31/10]

How do I explain it?

I wish you knew every beauty mark

on my back.

Wish you knew the muffled cadence of my breaths

on your shivering skin.

I want to memorize the angularity of your jawline

as your arresting eyes swim over me.

….your piano hands running through the satin

in my hair.

It wouldn't just be about the smudged

and faded paper figures,

between the folded pages of my sketchbook.

It'd be simple—at least I think so.

The first and last thing I'd think about.

I'd do everything that I said I'd do.

...like make the world brand new. 

Stumbling by Nicole Barth [12/10/10]

I'm swinging on this pendulum of emotions

you've placed me on, clinging to all that I thought I could control.

I'm terrified, and you're nothing but a saint cloaked in my childish dreams.

My tendons are coiled springs, flinching at the next unexpected drop.

Your flawless smile stripped me of my focus;

you've set my sanity aflame.

Rubbed raw, you've scraped the secrecy off my skin.

How can I describe it?

I want your fingers running through my hair,

I want your ribcage rising against my embrace,

I want your musings in a jar of translucency.

I surrender to every word you whisper.

THE PHONE CALL by Nicole Barth [12/8/10]

I doubt I even have to tell you...

I'd been staring at the phone for a good fifteen minutes,

biting my winter-chapped lips as my stomach folded itself into figure eights.

Pools of rich emerald and smoldering oak swam over a blank document,

scrambling for any misplaced creativity

I could use tonight.

But there's an evident echo in the caverns of my mind

as every cell in me swarmed with jolts of electricity.

Hey, Mr. Bright Eyes,

What color should I paint the sky?

I've got a fistful of silenced soliloquies hiding in my pocket

and giggles to fill the varnished armoire in the corner.

Lie under the Cherry Blossom trees with me

and watch the ripples in the nearby pond.

I'm high off the sound of your voice.

Staring Blankly by Nicole Barth [12/9/10]

Beneath the talons that scrape along my vacant skin

is the frozen feeling of numbness...

Crystallized apathy

licks the disembowelment of my gut.

El Suicidio de Dorothy Hale by Nicole Barth [12/7/10]

Fluttering fingertips traced the contours of her windowsill

as the harsh beauty of a gaunt face stared back at her.

Husband….Shadow; and all things gasping in the putrid night.  

Wailing night terrors slit a gash in her side as she was left…

 A crumpled rag doll,

Weeping in the suddenness of the suede living room chair,

Two directions of the fabric: the cruel roughness of one side,

 …And the lavishness of the other.

The gaping hole in her serenity.

Her bird-like diaphragm expanding—a human humming bird,

hovering like a trembling ghost as the sudden flashes

of torn sheet-metal, feathered shrapnel and heart murmurs

whisper over her eyes.

She’s drowning her sorrows in sparkling shoes,

but they can’t spare her from the incessant jangling in her mind. 

What did she expect?

Go home, Dorothy.

Coat your sparkling shoes in crimson blood

And plunge to your death. 

        

    ***inspired by Frida Kahlo's "Suicide of Dorothy Hale"