Paperweight Poetry

You belong among the wildflowers, among the rivers that choose not to be confined to a name You belong to the groves of trees where I dream that we'll meet For I love you I love you like nothing else and that is all but I couldn't dare confine you to something as small as my heart for even loving you like nothing else is too quiet, too polite, not enough And maybe I'll be hiking one day in the mountains and boulders and cliffs with the mother of my children a woman nothing like you and I'll see you with twigs and feathers in your hair screaming over the edge of the cliff, howling with the wildness inside of you that I could never tame Laughing at the wind, and the sun, and the earth because you still don't have a name. -anna sluder 

Sometimes it just takes the sound the clanging cry of uncertainty and a dream pulled in and out of the pocket then back in again folded, started to rip then stopped, hope-stained and wet to find that the only way it'll ever be a paper plane is if I scrape the monotony like scruff off a face with a shiv made from the toothbrush of my decay and decide to make it my everything for just because it never asked for that compliment doesn't mean it was never beautiful so in all the thought and glory I broke the bread, packed my rose colored glasses and went. -anna sluder

I can't remember the first time you asked me to dance but I cannot let the feeling go I cannot let it walk alone like a girl dawdling down the dark alley still believing wolves are just dogs It is vulnerable because it is not knowing if it was a dream or reality but then I remembered you don't dance and you said you never would, even for me And so I've come to this conclusion and this one alone: I think I've loved you in some other time or place that wasn't this one here where the sky was maroon and so were our hearts. -anna sluder

Because being hurt is like partial amnesia it didn’t have the guts to take all the memories away so you are just a puppet in a hospital bed tied to tubes like your parachute  looking at someone like a stranger looks at a stranger the un-keeping of the eyes but cocking your head at them and trying to look past their skin without having to pretend as if they were translucent like cellophane dolls  i feel like you are holding the cellophane over my mouth just with your eyes i’m sorry, i can’t remember how it used to be just please, please don’t choke me  so I’m a puppet staring at a cellophane doll throwing words out like meaning  meanings tossed into the void  I wonder, I wonder if I loved you. -anna sluder

I'm here and you are looking at me and I at you and I am tugging at the string that I had so tightly tied around your finger hoping you won't forget and I'm thinking about my body burning every freckle, place that you touched or held every inch of skin and limb and crinkle that holds memories of a smile burned tossed among the wind in a bohemian-like dance that insists I be tossed like bird food among the places that I loved when I only ever really loved you but I suppose being worm food isn't much better at the hands of grave diggers too So I'm here looking at you Hoping you'd give a penny for these thoughts because they feel worth a million since they are like dreams that when you wake up you pine to remember but they are already gone perhaps they are truly nothing but you still want to know even go mad to hear what unconsciousness tasted like the high of genius you get from snorting unreality like a drug Just tell me, was I beautiful ...