NOT YOURS
I am not what once made me.
What moulded me into
this girl you breathed,
is burning itself into oblivion.
I am not an echo of your body.
There is no extension of your being
still beating inside of me.
There is no whimper of your name
drowning, on the nights where
these fire-fuelled fingertips
become extinguished.
I have grown tired of trembling
through the dirt of you, digging
to find the pieces burned in the
process of loving you.
I have grown tired of this empty,
of scarring my lips into your symphony
to leave me singing out of tune.
You can only swallow the salt
for so long, before the hunger
begins to grow.
(LOVE) POEM FOR THE 17-YEAR OLD GIRL
You’d fall for anything
that opened itself up to you.
Flowers, hands, the hearts
of those you’d meet in cafes
or cobbled streets; you’d try
to figure out their names,
only to never see them again.
And you thought it beautiful,
to live for moments caught in an hour
glass, to never claim back.
You penned poems for the lips
pursed, for the ones you loved
but never tried to kiss back.
You fell for the dirt trapped in
the city’s tongue, for the bloodlust
of headlights and the chase of bodies
that were never yours to begin with.
You yearned for this, for summers
of slow-dancing to songs spinning
fires on radio waves.
Only to burn up this love
you trapped between your teeth
to try to keep yourself warm in their memory.
FOR THE SOFT GIRLS
This poem is for the girls
with waterfall mouths;
who make open wounds of their bodies,
who apologise for all the words
they spill from the salt of their stomachs.
This poem is for the girls
who feel more stone than soft;
stoic as they try to resurface
into a life they are struggling to live.
This poem is for the girls
who spell out every syllable
of their names;
just to feel like they fit within the frames of
their own photographs / as if their bodies
are breaking with the weight of the lives they
used to live.
This poem is for the girls
whose homes are walls of trapped skin
of high tensions, of raised voices;
it is okay to want to break away,
from the prison cells they try to
contain you in.
This poem is for the girls
trying to find synonyms for love
in a world that refuses to kiss them;
know that there is someone
who recognises the holes you fill
in this earth.
This poem is for the girls
who wake up wondering why
they even opened their eyes today;
it is enough for you to wake up in a world
and know that you are beautiful to exist.
Jade Mitchell is a poet from Glasgow, Scotland. She actively writes and performs her own work around the city. Aside from her poetic endeavours, she is also a contributing editor for Words Dance Publishing, and a poetry reader for Up The Staircase Quarterly. Her work has been featured in Rising Phoenix Review, Thought Catalog, The Grind Journal and The Mira Project. Her work can also be found on her blog: vagabondly.tumblr.com.
