Two Poems – Cait Reynolds

February 14, 2018

Modern Love is a Fear of Radio Silence

 

 

My existential crisis is chronic

Dying with my doe eyes and fair skin

this insomnia is killing me

or at the very least

will make me look worn out

As a woman those two things are terrifying

and essentially the same

My pulse races uncontrollably and I don’t know

if I’m in love

if this is happiness

or a panic attack

My calm exterior is my greatest role

but the persona is finally dissipating

a crack in the mortar

a patina on far too young of a woman

Maybe an adult life of believing in

the wrong people

is perpetuating my skepticism

More than anything it’s made my constitution

far too fragile

too fragile for heartbreak

too fragile to expose love’s raw nerve

I wanted to believe in love

in romance unbound and transformative

it was not to be trusted

It’s a car crash I’ve walked away from

seemingly unscathed

But upon further inspection

my sternum is bruised

a few ribs out of place

to be touched brings excruciating pain

It left me starving, wanting more

It feels nearly parasitic

the way it feeds

I am Eve

I do not want just the apple

I want that snake to coil around me

Feed it to me

Devour me

Breathe life back into my sweaty, perfect corpse

Legs splayed open in Babylon

 

 

I Was a Ghost on Christmas

 

 

The snow was lightly falling in the yard

I had hoped that this winter

would bring me clarity

Instead it stoked the embers

of confusion

How could December

the month I was born in

the month of celebration

the month of yearly closure

be the month that everything

was falling into tiny frozen fragments

the cold nights that bled into a day

that harbored no timeline

time seemed to have no relevance

I was getting thinner

as were my nerves

perhaps due to

Letting someone touch my skin

and suck down my intellect

in the same fashion he could suck down

a drink

I was shrinking away from people

though I craved a closeness

that was ebbing away from me

At 4 a.m. all I could think of

was his breathing patterns

and California

I sobbed in the shower

hoping the hot water would

catch some of my broken

and take it down the drain

The snow was lightly falling

I, conversely, was falling

at an alarming,

unstoppable speed