poetinside

Really.

I didn’t really want to wear that dress but
I flashed and I flirted and I flaunted
Until I was everything that you wanted
Because I felt that was what
The moment called for.

I didn’t really want to go out but
I danced and I drank and I shone
Until almost half past one
Because I felt that was what
The moment called for.

It didn’t really feel that good but
I made the right faces and sounds
Until you were done going down
Because I felt that was what
The moment called for.

I didn’t really want something casual but
I gave you plenty of space and time
Until you decided to be mine
Because I felt that was what
The moment called for.

It wasn’t really okay but
I shrugged and I nodded and I smiled
Until you thought everything was fine
Because I felt that was what
The moment called for.

I didn’t really feel like crying but
I stared at a spot on the wall
Until the tears began to fall
Because I felt that was what
The moment called for.

6 days ago -

101

When she smiled.

She sat opposite from him, warming her hands on the steaming mug in front of her. He noticed her nails were different, they seemed pointier and were painted a kind of pale peach. She wouldn’t look at him and he was beginning to regret choosing the coffee shop to do it. He had thought it would be neutral, with plenty of easy exit strategies. But it was too bright and he was starting to sweat. The metal tables seemed to be crammed in much tighter than before and his voice felt too loud over the murmurs of the other customers. He was sure everyone was listening.

Why?

It was the first thing she had said since they sat down. It was the last thing he wanted to hear.

I don’t know. I guess I just needed-

Her eyes looked up suddenly from the foam of her cappuccino and fixed on his with unnerving intensity.

Wanted. I guess I just wanted something new. Different.

Better?

No. Not better. Just a change.

But was she though? Was she better?

What do you mean?

Was. She. Better?

She spat the words out through clenched teeth, not loudly, but shrilly enough to to pierce the din of the cafe. Someone sneezed, a chair scraped. He took a breath.

I don’t know how to answer that.

Just answer the question. Was she a better fuck?

He physically recoiled from the question. He hadn’t expected this. He had expected her to cry, maybe yell or storm out. But she looked at him now with a kind of defiance, sitting straight up in her chair, her nails drumming into the side of her mug.

Jesus Christ.

Answer the fucking question.

Why are you doing this?

Because I want to know. I want to know what we were worth to you. I want you to tell me it was the best sex you’ve ever had. I want you to tell me she fucked you like you never knew you could be fucked. I want to know what you traded us in for. So tell me. Did she go down on you?

Stop it.

Did she find that spot that you like? Near your ass?

For fuck’s sake stop it.

People were definitely listening now. She didn’t care. He’d never seen her like this. She always cared what people thought. She didn’t make scenes. She wouldn’t even hold his hand in public. He stared at her now and saw a stranger. Not a hair was out of place from her ponytail and her nails still drummed a steady rhythm on her mug like a bored teenager. Her face glowed with something like triumph. Like victory. He didn’t know this person.

Did she suck your dick?

Jesus. Yes.

Did she let you fuck her from behind?

Yes.

Did she say your name?

Yes.

Did she cum?

Yes.

What did she look like when she came?

What? What the fuck kind of question is that?

Just answer me. What did she look like when she came?

I…she…she laughed.

What? What do you mean she laughed?

That’s what happened.

He pictured her, then. Laughing. Her legs up on the wall above his head, her red, floral sheets pulled up to her nose so that only her big eyes peered out at him in perfect amusement. She was crying and laughing and her whole body shook with pleasure. Pleasure he had given her. He had never felt more alive. More of a man. That was the moment he knew. That was the moment everything changed. When she smiled.

He looked up at his girlfriend’s face now. She no longer looked victorious. She had shrunk. Her eyes darted around at the faces of the other patrons. She smoothed her perfect ponytail and took a small sip of her coffee.

Well then. I guess that’s it.

I guess so.

You can come around at 8:15 to pick up your things. I won’t be home. Be gone by 9.

Okay.

Okay.

1 week ago -

I wasn't supposed to fall for the band-aid.

jasminesjunk:

But I did. Somehow the replacement became irreplaceable.

I guess what I didn’t know I needed all along was someone to help me heal. In the end I didn’t need to rebound, I needed to reflect, realize and recover. I needed to rediscover what it feels like to be wanted, all of the time, for all that I am. To remind myself what I deserve.

He was that, for me, at first. But then he became more. He challenged me to view him as more than an object, a tool. He forced me to see him as a person with a past. With desires. With his own primordial melee of pride and ambition and longing. He made me see him for who he was, not just in relation to me and my needs, but as a person. Then he made me fall in love with him.

And now he’s leaving. The first of our little circle to return to where they came from, the first to leave limbo. Because that’s what it was, being here this year, it was limbo. But what they don’t tell you is how many feelings can be crammed into one temporal and physical place. One year. One foreign city. Knowing it would have to end eventually, never planning to fall in love with him, with her, with it.

These people and places and moments. All of us swept together in the same liminal moment. A bus stop in the middle of same great expanse, all of us bound for different directions, all of us thinking about where we were headed, not realizing how good the waiting can be, when that time is passed with kindred spirits. But we can’t live in the proverbial train station forever. There comes a time to move on or go back.

So he’s leaving. And I have no illusions about it. We will not stay in touch. This is not the nature of this thing we had.

But I will miss him, nonetheless.

1 week ago -

He put the “ouch” in douchebag.

(Source: jasminesjunk)

1 week ago -

New Blog!

Ever since this tumblr spotlight madness occurred I’ve been gaining followers here at poetinside at a really rapid rate and it’s crazy cool to have so many potential readers.

The only downside is that I feel more restricted with what I post knowing that I’m being “advertised” as a poetry blog by spotlight.

It’s gotten to the point where I actually feel guilty posting anything other than original writing on my own blog! Not to mention with so many followers here at poetinside it has become impossible for me to follow everyone back. Which is sad. So to further our mutual lovings I’ve decided I need a separate space to post non-lit stuff. An unfiltered me, me, me space.

So if getting to know me a bit better is something that interests you follow me at jasminesjunk and we’ll sniff eachother’s butts without grammar constraints.

Sound good? Great.

Peace, love, respect!

Jasmine

1 week ago -

To the Anonymous tirade

I’m not going to respond to any of you individually for the sake of my followers who probably don’t want their dashes clogged up with that kind of thing. If you want to engage in a dialogue you should message me with your names so that I can respond privately.

That being said, I hear you guys. You’re in AP classes, you’ve got homework, kids are bullies, your parents pressure you, you need to do well in school in order to graduate and get good jobs: valid, valid points.

I’m still a university student technically and so I get it. I do. It’s hard.

My point was that it only gets harder. It will not get easier when you graduate. It won’t.

Also, I live in a place where kids work 12 hours a day on the streets and then go to school at night. Sometimes they have to lie to their parents in order to go. You know what they would give to go to school all day? And take AP classes? I know one little girl who dropped out of school at 8 to shine shoes so that her 5 year old brother wouldn’t have to.

Being educated is a gift. And yes, it’s stressful sometimes. And yes, some people have a harder go of it than others. But it’s still a gift.

I will not compromise on that point.

1 week ago -

School does not suck

What do you mean you hate school? It is the easiest thing you will ever do in your entire life.

Do you know what you’re responsible for in your academic career? Yourself. That’s it. If you fuck up, you suffer. You know what you’re responsible for in the world of work? Every. Single. Thing.

Let me tell you what I do for a living, I work in international development which means I help small NGOs improve their organizational capacity to better meet the needs of the beneficiary population. Specifically, right now, I work with a little center in Bolivia that provides after-school support to street kids. You know what happens if I fuck up on a deadline or do a shitty job on a report? Possibly we lose funding which means we can’t buy potatoes or toilet paper or pencils and people suffer. That is pressure.

So stop talking about pressure.

Oh my god life is so hard I had to sit in a room and learn new things today. And then those people made me remember those things and repeat them. I was educated for five whole hours. I can’t handle it.

Please, please, please, just stop.

I know I have a lot of teenage followers. And I know you guys probably don’t follow me to be bitched at about adult problems. But I’m begging you, love school, relish in it, embrace every day, treat every math equation, book report or social studies group project as a gift. You are learning something. You will know more at the end of the day than you did at the beginning. This is a beautiful thing.

So no, school does not suck. You know what sucks? The lofty demands that international donor agencies like CIDA in Canada and USAID put on local NGOs in developing countries that make it nearly impossible for them to receive assistance in a way that actually assists them (you know to like pay for electricity and salaries and toilet paper).

That sucks.

1 week ago -

January

Remember a piece I posted by my best friend Mia a few days ago? Well she awesomely permitted me to create a tumblr for her which I will manage with posts she sends me by email. I hope eventually that she’ll take it over herself but for now I’m happy to just be her “backseat blogger”.

wordsfromthebackseat:

Everything dies in winter. What blooms in spring and flourishes in summer wilts in the Fall. If it survives the Fall, it dies in the Winter.

Maybe I didn’t get that quite right, but it’s close enough. The summer was so hot. Everything was so hot. We were so hot. We embodied every cliche, with sickening familiarity. But summer must come to an end. We here in the Caribbean like to think we live in the land of the endless summer. It’s so warm and hot all year round that it’s hard not to think that warmth will radiate into every thing we touch.

So we took our warmth to the winter, thinking that we could bring the heat with us. That heavenly heat that sustains life, we hoped it would also sustain us. Like our forebears stepping off the Windrush, we rushed into the wind. The cold, freezing wind. But everything dies in the winter.

1 week ago -

He probably won’t remember me

But I’ll remember him.

I told him I will always be ugly. I don’t know how to be anything else.

We lay head to foot on my single bed; the blinds open to allow in just enough light from my neighbour’s porch lamp to illuminate the points of his chin and cheekbones and shoulders and elbows and gesturing knuckles.

He told me about Leslie and Hannah. He hadn’t fucked either of them. Hannah was seeing someone else and even though she had flown a thousand miles to visit him she couldn’t cheat. She was not a cheater. She was a virgin. A good person. I’ve always doubted people who are so quick to label themselves.

So they did not have sex. But one night of heavy petting was too much for his frail, eighteen year-old composure and so he told her he had to masturbate. And so he did. And she watched, and touched herself.

He was rambling now. It was so intimate, he kept saying. But she didn’t see it that way. She still wasn’t a cheater, a slut or a bad person.

And what about Leslie? What happened with her?

I don’t know. I tried I mean, I really tried. Sometimes I would be fingering her and she would be so wet but then she just didn’t want to do more. One time she let me, for a second, and then she started to cry and I asked her if she wanted me to stop, and she said no, but then I couldn’t you know, I couldn’t.

Did you tell her that she was beautiful? Did you tell her what you wanted? Did you tell her that she was doing everything right? Did you tell her that she turns you on? Did you tell her that? Did you tell her that you want her? That you have to have her?

No. Shouldn’t she just know that? If I’m there, and I’m present and my dick’s hard shouldn’t that be enough?

It should. But it isn’t.

You’re beautiful.

Thank you.

Do you believe me?

No.

How do you all get this way?

I laughed, then. He seemed so genuinely confused. He started kissing my neck, his bony hands cold on my stomach. I kept thinking about Leslie and Hannah. I thought about his mouth on their skin. I began to taste them on his tongue. Their self-loathing lay thick and bitter in the back of my throat.

Leslie and Hannah.

I probably wouldn’t like them, if I met them. But that doesn’t make me better. That doesn’t make me different.

Leslie and Hannah.

He probably won’t remember me.

I’m just another girl who couldn’t give him what he wanted.

1 week ago -

I’m beginning to think I have a compulsive need to please people.

(Source: thewritersaddress)

1 week ago -

Croatoan: Tiny Hauntings

travestyintechnicolour:

I visited my aunt’s house one summer in a small college town too safe for its own good. She is a family friend who has been around so long that she’s earned the lie of shared blood, and her house is characterized by beaming ceilings and fragile statuettes. She scolded me prematurely, mind racing like my every movement was an interlude to shattered glass and broomsticks, her wavery voice admonishing so often that even the last time I visited, old enough to know enough about obligation and accountability, I shied away from every shelf and eyed her like she knew that I lived at home with the contents of my hamper strewn across the floor and books and stacks of paper piled against my walls. Pleasantly enough, she assigned me the room with walls freckled with paintings of sailboats and boldly striped lighthouses, the room with a wrought-iron bed frame that moaned with welcoming when I sank into it to sweep my eyes around at the needlepoint pillows and chairs with skirts that brushed the floorboards. I always pulled the curtains shut so the cul-de-sac of pavement and concrete couldn’t pool in the windowsill.

Her bathrooms were the kind that had soaps shaped like shells and her kitchen was the kind that only conjured polite meals that never satiated your appetite, the kind whose bowls of fruit were never taken from, the kind whose open windows and stainless steel dared you to request more food for your stretching legs. The days were filled with idle conversation about deer darting through the backyard, endless small talk whenever anyone walked into the room, endless torture for twelve-year-old me when I was torn from the pages of a book that was only a little better than playing tetris again. We husked corn in the backyard and spent hours preparing for dinners and I didn’t dare suggest a simple call for pizza as impatience burned in my stomach from the structure. She liked to invite friends over who regarded me quickly before shrieking that they remember me from when I was a baby and as the sunlight poured through the window I watched the leaves overlap with each other and wondered where the fireflies went in the daytime and longed for the scuffed hardwood floor where I’d sit and daydream at night and no one would interrupt me.

I told you stories like that one two or three summers ago because I could see your heavy heart through your shoulders as they pressed against the weeds and it always helps me to hear about someone else’s nonsensical hauntings, so I tried my best to lift you. I hesitate to mention the lights below and the mountain tops messing with our perception fields because it all sounds so played out in a way that tries to call itself special. But that’s the way it was. The lights from late-night restaurants filled with lonely people were a lot prettier than the stars they were fighting and I finally saw why they call the ridges blue as the night fell down around us and we read the graffiti scratched into the cement around the pit of fire that felt achingly good but always began to burn.

Now you’re someplace else with my little ghosts and I can’t say that I’m sad anymore. But I like the way water plays with light you can’t see anywhere but its choreography on stolid surfaces after its skin has been broken by humidity and frenzied breaths whispering promises of a new summer love, a new scene, a new obsession and how it will be just as unbearable after it passes as the last one. I love the colour the mysterious reflection is as its parts of pattern jump and tumble in a serene laughter that leaves me so dazzled that I’m not sure if the strands of light disappear, fading in and out or if they are everlasting, neverending, even when there’s no blackness to kiss its hips anymore and I want someone who will be as stricken as I by it and who will try to match the movements with me and someone who will tell me when I ask them what they’re thinking that they’re wondering what would happen if the reflections didn’t stop on nearby surfaces, if the angle didn’t need precision, if it would jump every place, latticing the burned out trees resting their chlorophyll and making the roads swim in liquid headlights, fire and ice in a new river-form the owls and the soil have never seen before. I want someone who will tell me this in language that is pretty but with pauses and trips, asking then me with pleading in their eyes, like they can see it but they need to see it, bringing me closer to rub more circles on my wrists as all the water-echoes cool and settle and we would grow more accustomed but grow less patient of the peachy softness of each other’s skin, needing and seeing mixing to become the same thing, blue water on tan skin, patterns from elsewhere, and encoding sitting dazedly between heat and fire, finger and palm.

1 week ago -

Who inside?

so this is the
rumbling of sleep
pulling back the
covers from our
closed eyes.
i know now that
sound. it is healing.
and i have closed my
eyes time and time
again but i did not
know rest before i lay
with you
how often we search for
respite in the dead
of night, as if the
cooling air wouldn’t
dare extinguish our
sun marked skin.
and here now on
a bed of earth, the
slowly setting sun
graciously gives us
her leave and we put
the shadows to good use
as the wind kisses our
cheeks and whispers
sleep well, sleep well.
the rivers overflow and
speak to us from their
banks. soft mud,
and trifling insects
trade gossip like painted
lips, smack at some sort
of permanence.
peace is this. peace is
to fall asleep hand in
hand with the world and
awake by the river to find your
life lying beside you

1 week ago -

Fucked.

I let you inside me.

I let you nest in my nooks, in
The warmest crevices of me
I let you feed on my hunger, I
Built you up with my breakdown, I
Made you happy and whole by
Needing you. I let you inside
And you took, took, took
Everything I had to offer until
I became too hard and empty to
Sustain you. I let you inside me.
And you came.
But you did not stay.

I let you fuck me.

I let you copulate with parts of
Myself that I didn’t know existed
And breed doubt where before
There was only sure conscience
And hope. I let you penetrate
My carefully crafted self-worth
Until it crumbled at your touch.
I let you fuck me and you really
Fucked me. Until.
My body was no longer a home to me.

1 week ago -

This sums up how I feel about adhering to the dating game rules for the most part. Pretty much any regular John or Jane Doe holds the power to manipulate someone into being interested—making the other person believe that they’re going to change their mind about certain things or their entire lives in general…and then the chase is over, the walls fall, and the “wanted” are left feeling like fools.

fusionofinterests in response to this.

2 weeks ago -

I could make you fall in love with me in five minutes.

You could ask me my name and I could tell you that names don’t matter. That I was named after my grandmother from the moment that pink cross showed up on that white stick until my mother looked at me and somehow underneath the blood and placenta saw a Jasmine and so that is my name but would I have been any different, would we not be having this conversation right now had I been named something else?

You could tell me you think I’m beautiful. And I could tell you that I don’t want to be beautiful. That I shaved off all of my hair in my mother’s kitchen with my brother’s electric razor before getting on a plane to move to the other side of the world. I could ask you what you love most about yourself. I could ask you about vanity. And I could tell you to imagine throwing it away, that one thing, that thing that makes you beautiful.

You could try to kiss me and I could kiss you back. I could kiss you and pull your hair and bite your lips and grind my crotch into yours. I could kiss you like a woman and make you forget about all those girls who came before. I could kiss you and then disappear and leave you less, leave you empty, leave you missing something you never even knew you wanted.

You could fall in love with my tattoos that mean things and the ones that don’t. With my scars and my stories. With the strobe light dancing through the fabric of the best conversation you’ve ever had. With the way I make you feel like the most important person in the room and no one at the same time. With the way I make you think. With the way I make you think about thinking.

I could make you fall in love with me in five minutes.

But tomorrow, when you see that I’m just like the rest of them? Tomorrow when I don’t want to be mysterious anymore. Tomorrow when I am jealous and insecure and needy. Tomorrow when I love you back.

Would you love me tomorrow?

2 weeks ago -

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