Tag: healing

2010s · Poetry

Smiling At Strangers

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

This is where I stop biting my nails
This is where I kick off my shoes
This is where I wear a shorter skirt
This is where I put on all the jewelry

This is where I stop answering calls
or checking my email
or returning the texts

This is where I spend the money
and show up by myself
and leave way past my bedtime

This is where I stop holding back
or saying his name
or not smiling at strangers

This is where I get off the couch
and out of the deep end
and push my toes into the mud

First published in On the Grid Zine.

2010s · Poetry

Tracheotomy

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

I said it all. Slit a line down my throat and pried it open like a dissected frog. I bent over and shook my head upside down to dump all that shit out. I don’t have time for ulcers anymore so I cut a line through my esophagus, past my heart to my stomach. I used the sharpest knife I could find and scraped them out. Word after word corroding the stomach walls.   daddy, sick, penis, bedroom, underwear   My hands covered in black-tar memories. I scrape them all out.    father, protect, shhhhh, coarse hairs, vagina   I thrust the knife in deeper until I find the last of them.    child, baby, girl, dim light, daddy    I washed them all in the sink. I scrubbed, rinsed, and dried. Then set them in the full daylight sun. Some I kept, put them on the highest shelf. Others went one-by-one, slow and deliberate into a grinding disposal. The last of them rest safely between pages of poetry.

  First published in Then & Now: Conversations with Old Friends

2000s · Healing the Heart of Ophelia · Poetry

Throat

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

I remember more than I want to admit
More than I can say out loud.
So much of it has never passed
through my vocal chords.
I can recall a picture at will.
I went so far as to type it out.
I can hold the pages in hand,
but I am afraid to see them.
Afraid to hear them read aloud.
It remains in my stomach,
where I stuffed it.
Sometimes it surges up like vomit
and I catch it in my throat.
It’s like a rope pulled tighter.
My pain sits and I can not speak.
I am voiceless.
I find other things to talk about.
It settles back down.
I move on.
I have ulcers.

First published in Healing the Heart of Ophelia (2001).

2015 · Publications

Heartbreak Anthology: Fuse

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

In October 2015, I was honored to collaborate with my friend, Larry Duncan, on a project called Heartbreak: Fuse, by Karineh Mahdessian. This project partnered male and female poets to write about heartbreak together. Larry responded to my poem, “Liquid Forget”, with a poem called “Forget Liquid”. The anthology includes work by of my poetry friends, including Raquel Reyes-Lopez, Marc Cid, Sharon Elliott, Donny Jackson, Kelly Grace Thomas, Wyatt Underwood, Sean Gunning, Angela Moore, Bill Friday, and too many more.

(Apparently this acknowledgement was missed until recently.)

2010s · Conversations with Gravel · Poetry

If Poetry Is Parked Car

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

My heart is bottom-pink
and raw, not knowing
how many beats to give
beats to exhale

All words crowd into the soft
spaces, roof of my mouth
cutting inside cheeks
rolling off lips

All quiets are questions
my voice too loud
my hands too clumsy

How do I protect you
when I’ve just been born?
When my spit edges
in the corners of your drink?

I’m dumb, backseat fumbling
legs over knees
arms over shoulders

If my skin in moonlight
is softest, how do your hands
melt into my scars?

First Published in Carnival Lit.

2010s · Conversations with Gravel · Poetry

Monkey Bars & Golden Spokes

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

Let’s go back
to when you hung
on my words like monkey bars
when you sighed the first time
you ever kissed me,
gave me lottery winning eyes
when you kissed me again

Go back before
my words hung
like bars around your cell
before you clenched
your teeth
at the sound
of my need

Go back when
you studied the curves
of my mouth
sent me to work
each morning
with a tongue
full of blessing

Go back before
every word
had to be measured
and weighed
before an honest response
could mean
I may never again see
the golden spokes
of your irises

Back to when
we were both
eager passengers
Back before
our feet were heavy
with hesitation

Back when
we knew nothing
Back before
we could not forget

First Published in Drunk Monkeys.

2010s · Poetry

When the Dam Won’t Break

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

Sometimes the dam won’t break
Sometimes the breath holding
becomes so automatic, lungs
won’t expand and the oxygen
in your pores becomes painful

Sometimes the clock won’t tick
Sometimes the unrest stops
your soul from unfolding
the heart beats without pumping
your blood, leaving fingers cold

Sometimes one listen isn’t enough
Sometimes the song mustn’t end
the music has more love to give
your ears opening to the sound
makes you weep silently

First published on Hedgerow.

2010s · Conversations with Gravel · How to Unexist · Poetry

Love Letter No. 3: To My Mending Self

Sarah ThursdayLeave a comment

You may begin to miss the grieving
the adrenaline heart thrashing in your ribcage
the coughing lungs asking permission to breathe
You may begin to hear all the quiets
humid silence scratching
each day confirming
this is it
this is all it will ever be

You may begin to miss the panic of hope
tangled in his kite strings
miss the fight, the battle, the bruise
miss kissing blood from rope-burned hands
You may begin to sleep through the night
to lack rebuttal
to forget to answer back

You may begin notice
the crevices in your wrists
the uneven scurry
of a black beetle across concrete
notice the sound of lead scraping paper
how it curls to the rub of an eraser
disappears like it was never there
to begin with

First Published in Indiana Voice Journal.

2010s · Conversations with Gravel · How to Unexist · Poetry

Girl in Flight

Sarah Thursday1 Comment

I envy the girls
with light filled wings
They fly from breeze to breeze
pouring beams from their teeth
All men audience them
eat their smiles like candy
They breathe in love—
they breathe out love
No man ever
centers their universe

I could not be that girl for you
one with laughing eyelashes
smooth cheeks glossed
for kissing and leaving
kissing and leaving

I am unwinged, gravity locked
in oceans—not sky
teeth for crushing chains
eyes fire-fed
to burn through hurricanes

My love is anchor
my love is whale song
my love is sandpaper grit
galaxies inside pearl
volcanoes under mountain

My love does not breeze—
but tunnels into mantle
burrows into core
You want a girl in flight
laughing eyelashes
but I am unwinged gravity

First published in Indiana Voice Journal.