Paperweight Poetry

Lay here with me in the quiet While we drink the warm champagne of memories  Make promises to me and promises to the stars That we will never speak again Just let our alcohol soaked tongues forget all the words Because the quiet says so much more The stars and I could never again play The symphony of how we were and how we are  For silence is its own music.  -anna sluder

I drowned  The day she learned to swim And I died  The day she chose to live.  -anna sluder

The ache  It is like a fever that will never break A haunting dream that won't wake A ghostly chill I can't seem to shake  The oil from a spill that won't leave the lakes The forced laugh I can't help but fake My bones that rattle to their own quake The one second too late reflex of hitting the brakes And the deformed cartilage of the world cringing in my hands, that I cannot seem to remake.  -anna sluder

I knew I loved her  When in my lack of stars she named me bright And in all of what I could've been, she called my darkness a light.  -anna sluder

My clanking kneecaps are the clanging church bells  Of all the Sunday's I stayed in bed My shivers, resounding sirens  Of ambulances that won't make it in time My batting eyelashes, the flicker of time Like a twitching lightbulb about to wink out  Swallowing the lumps in my throat, the swallows of dirt  Like clods of soil that they will bury my body with and pack into my mouth  My dry skin, cracks spreading out like the worms The worms that will feed upon me when I'm dead  And my raspy voice, rickety with fear Like all of my regrets.  -anna sluder 

I am the loose ends of string that are too short to tie That will always leave your fingers bleeding No matter how hard you try  I am that one hazy star that is a little too far to see So you will settle at blissing yourself into thinking That the airplane's cockpit light humming by is as beautiful as me  I am the chip in your porcelain teacup that you cannot help but set aside Believing that just because a canyon stretch marks my design That I also can't hold tea and cream as if nothing works on my inside  I am the last minute rush to the surface Gushing suicidal water out of your lips  That you will always hate but secretly thank excusing it as some kind of test  I am the slimy clam that you crack open by the sea Nothing but grime and slugs tumbling out  The failure of hope and pearls inside of me  I am the insomnia that you love and the insomnia that you hate The one that colors and darkens your night I am every reminder of your fate.  -

What if Lost is tired of being lost  And just wants to be found And Found is tired of being found And just wants to be lost?  -anna sluder

She bites her tongue  Until it bleeds And bleeds It bleeds and bleeds Like blood  But it isn't  It is formaldehyde  Dripping from her lips  Her mouth the tombstone  The tongue the coffin A coffin drowning and suffocating in formaldehyde And she is pounding her fists  No louder than the dirt thwacking the wood And she is screaming and screaming At the fools The fools That fool and fool her into the ground But don't they know that formaldehyde and coffins  Are for the dead  Not for the living -anna sluder