Author: Danielle Shorr

His laugh, a summer carnival, spinning rides that make our stomachs do the same, cheeks kissed soft rose by blush of winter air, hands dyed permanent blue from weather, the absence of circulation, rough palms but soft touch, a red nose when seasons change, the outline of muscle pushing through skin, hair pale from the sun, and too much patience, always

My silk sewn blanket from childhood tucked into bed with me every night

The dog with a slobbering mouth and a human-like smile

The German Shepard with a grizzling bark mistaken for violent

He tells me,
“I don’t wanna love somebody else”
He says,
“I don’t know how to”

The copper guitar pick, the candle we dip wax fingers in, the Polaroid print from an angry night out, my crumpled side of the sheets

I grab the back of my neck like the hold of it will keep me grounded
I bite my lip until it bleeds for a sense of familiar pulling

In between the pages of a dust-covered book, kept quietly on a shelf,
This,
is where I hide love.

I am piling these moments like unread obituaries, unnoticed loss to someday be recovered
Maybe these deaths were never written down to begin with

Off somewhere in mountains, a place I could not pinpoint on a map, the outline is as faded as time has swallowed us whole

I still sleep wrapped up in childhood but the nightlight is missing now

A grave by a train track holds the body of the animal that grew up with me

I am no longer fearful, but understanding of creatures and the sounds they make, unknowingly

These words are lingering on a lightless street beneath the tree that holds all of our secrets, there is no place else for them to breathe open

Mementos of months without marking, I am thankful for not keeping track

When anxiety asks to speak to me,
I dig fingernails on thick skin above ink
I place a lip between teeth and
press down slightly

I tuck all of this away in a new home, miles from origin, path drawn like dots connected, it sits quietly on a shelf waiting

This is where I hide love for
If I ever go to look for it
Again

The hardest battle of all
Is the one you fight with yourself
The hardest battle to overcome
Is the one that nobody can see
But you
The worst enemy
Is the dull ache dwelling underneath a bright smile
One that has the capacity
To make millions laugh
One that succeeds
In doing so
But happiness is not always gained
In knowing the number of lives impacted by yours
Happiness is not defined
By the amount of people who love you
Crowded rooms are not saviour from drowning
And opens arms cannot always catch the falling
There is no guide
On how to wrestle your demons
And there is no clear solution
On how to win
Often times you will end up pinned to the ground
And finding the strength to pull yourself up
Can be more than just a challenge
Depression
Is the cold war
That nobody talks about
The one they forget to mention in school
We skip over it in text books and discussions
Assuming that if we forget its existence
It will vanish completely
But the only outcome of a closed mouth and stigma
Is our own disappearance
And it will never be romantic
To watch our loved ones fade
Because they couldn’t figure out
How to love themselves
Enough to stay
It will never be desirable
To turn to dust under bright lights
While the whole world watches in awe
Depression
Is not something that can just be cured
With chemicals and someone to listen
It is a constant struggle
Of living in an empty mansion
Filled with hallways of locked doors
And spending every day of your life trying to find a way out
Depression
Is living in your body
But feeling like your wearing someone elses skin
Is watching excitement happen
But being unable to touch it
To taste it
Depression
Tastes of kerosene and ethanol
And every missed step
Every small conflict
Is a lit match
Thrown into the pit of your stomach
Depression
Is unapologetic
It will take everyone you love
And turn them into monster
Will take your reflection
And turn it into ugly
Depression
Will chew with sharp teeth
Then spit you out to an unforgiving world
In crooked pieces
There is no easy way
To put yourself back together
There is no easy way
To tell who is coming apart at the seams
And even the softest of souls
Can fall victim to their sadness
Some will relent to belt and door frame
To knot and heavy wrists
But the battle does not have to end bloody
The battle does not have to end in regret
In what should have been done
In what could have been prevented
This battle
Is not going to cease
Without a fair fight
And although the one you take on with yourself
May be the hardest one ever fought
Do not give in
Do not give up
Even when your bones are purple from bruise
And your skin is ripped from sharpness
Do not yield to disaster
Do not succumb to darkness
Do not surrender
There is someone
Who will miss you
Do not forfeit
For this battle
Is not through
And your story
Is not over
Yet.

Are you mad at me?
Babe
Baby
Don’t, please
Goodnight
Goodbye
I was
I’ll call you tonight
I’m in front of your door
I’m sorry
It happens
It was sad seeing it get colder
K.
Ok sweetheart, sleep well
Ok
Okay
Okay fine
We’ll talk soon
What about you?
Where have you been
Where did you go?
Sorry
Sorry.
Sorry
Sorry, I really am
Sorry
You still up?

Just when I thought I’ve
written you out completely,
scratched your memory off the edges of my bones,
wrung the imprint of your lips from mine,
wretched out every word you ever poured into me,
tore your image from the hippocampus of my brain,
Just when I thought I had said
all there is to say about you,
about us,
about this,
Just when I think I have
finally left it all behind,
You come back to me.

In my dreams
in my late nights
in the bottle of wine I force myself to finish
in the pack of cigarettes I don’t even like smoking
in my wandering mind
in the short seconds between each day
in all of my writing,
Your name is always the first thing to be marked down.

Lover, I can’t forget
I am still spilling your tongue
from my mouth
You seep through my pores on hot days,
the freckles on my face remind me
of how you once found constellations in them,
you built galaxies in my eyelids,
lover,
the cleansing is only just beginning.

I am too full on our history
There is no empty when it comes to us
I will be forever ridding
myself of your contents
I thought the tidal wave of
still missing had passed
but here I am
drowning again.

Doggy paddling to stay afloat,
I have never been very good
at swimming. I am still
hanging on to the deflated
life raft that is your hand,
you let go of mine a long time ago,
it’s about time I do the same.

One.

It has been
Two years
Or maybe three
Since I knew you last
I can still taste the bitter
In the back of my mouth

We were in the same city
But your heart was somewhere else
With someone else
I think I knew it
To begin with
But didn’t want to believe it

Two.

Colorado was your home
I was a Midwest rental
With a twenty-four hour vacancy
A place for you to reside
Only when convenient

You came back that summer
With more baggage
Than I could hold
I tried my best to carry it for you
I couldn’t
My arms have always been
Weak
My knees weaker

Three.

I was
Desperate for affection
You gave me little of it
But it was just the right amount
To be able to stretch into lasting

I held on to your hand
Tightly
You held on to mine
Like you were hoping
To drop it
Like you wouldn’t mind
If you did

Four.

You had multiple pet rats
I said I didn’t mind them
I lied

Five.

Your dog loved me
More than you did

Six.

Your couch was uncomfortable
I slept on it anyway
I wanted to be
As close to you
As humanly possible

Seven.

We never made love
In your bed

Eight.

You didn’t know how
To say no to anyone
Especially me
Instead
You said nothing

Nine.

You were easily
Taken advantage of

Ten.

I took care of you
While you took care of
Everyone else

Eleven.

I was sixteen when I met you
I don’t remember how

Twelve.

You took
Everything I had
With greedy hands
And still managed
To call yourself selfless

I would have stripped
My skin raw
Just for you to have something
To keep you warm in the wintertime

You left
Before September even arrived

That August
Was the coldest
Of all twelve months

These are the things
I am recovering just now
Things I can only recall
At odd hours of the night
When I am laying in bed

These are the things
I don’t remember well
But I remember them
Enough to make myself ache

I remember you
Enough to feel the swelling
Of what it feels like
To give too much of yourself
Away

I remember you
I still do

I hope you remember me too.

You are not in my bed
But you are still
In my sheets
I have tried to
Wash you out
By cleaning them
Repeatedly
But it just isn’t
Working
There is not a
Laundry machine
In the world
That could rid you
From the fabric
Of where we used to lay
Together
Molded by the formation
Of our pressed bodies
Stained with sweat
Our sex,
A pathetic excuse
For intimacy
It was not love
But whatever it was
Is gone now
I have tried to
Erase you
From the pattern
Of the blanket
I sleep with
It is the only
Warmth I have left
We used to drift off
Wrapped up in
Each other’s skin
Holding to shake
The fear from
Our bones
The inevitability
Of tomorrow
We were never
Made to last
You faded
Right before
My eyes
Everything your hands
Have ever touched
Of mine
Still has your prints
On it
The material
Can’t let you go
And neither can I.

It is another one of those early mornings when hatred spews out of my body
and aims for itself,
I never miss.

I have always been good at reaching targets,
even better when I myself am bulls-eye
I shoot directly for the mirror
Into my thighs, my chest, this mountain range of a body
I send my angry in a direct path towards my folds,
my stomach, my skin, in all that is human.

I launch bombs on my own territory like it’s what I’ve been sent to do,
Like I was made to destroy what I have spent my whole life building.
I ask why it so easy
To rip apart the things I’ve put together myself
I ask why it feels so normal
To want to break down the rafters of the only shelter I will ever be able to use for protection.

I blame everything else before I blame me
I blame the girls with bodies like sunsets,
that contrast my mid-day average sky of a figure
I blame the dresses that I cannot fit into,
the way they suck the life out of me every time I can’t stretch them past my hips.
I blame genetics with absolutely no knowledge of science behind me.

I want to blame society
for the hate that has been multiplying inside of me
but at the end of the day I am still the one who does the math
It is still me who pours self-deprecation over my head
To shower in all of the things I cannot wash out
It is still me who incites hurricane
Upon every part of myself that is impossible to change by nature.

I am the one who detonates my disappointments
like the explosion will somehow change the way I look,
like the aftermath of destruction will leave me with anything but empty and wreckage.

I often forget that it is me who spoon-feeds myself memories of failure at every meal
It is me who hands over guilt every time I reach for the snooze button to fall back asleep
I even shove myself in fault to depression,
cover myself in darkness and then wonder why there is no light to be seen
I am the culprit in it all.

In the mornings when my mind is still circling
to figure out where it left off, I point it in the direction of negative
I take all of the crooked and pile it up to remind myself of the mismatch
When I take aim at my reflection, I never miss.

I direct the sniper of my mistakes, vulnerability and insecurity
directly towards my image
I have become the hit man of my own assassination
My fall into disaster is wholeheartedly my own doing
I am the best of the best when it comes to this form of damage,
I never miss.

I am trying to forget you

Really,
I am

I have been drugging my memory
Repeatedly
Every night
Drinking from bottles
Filled with liquid strong enough
For me to untaste you
I still do

It’s funny how
Nobody mentions touch
As the most important sense
Associated with memory
I still feel you everywhere

Your hands on my skin
I am trying to erase them
Your fingerprints must be
Permanent ink
They are no longer visible
But I can still see them

I tie my tongue in knots
So that when I choke
On words
It will be on my own terms
I still cough up yours

I am trying to forget you
The way your voice sounded in my ear
Breathless and humming
I can still hear the ringing

You are the melody
I cannot get out of my head
The music that I cannot stop singing

I am trying to erase
The parts of you drawn onto me

I have gotten four tattoos
In the past three months
And two of them remind me of you

I am trying to forget you
But I purposely don’t try
Hard enough

If I really wanted to
I would destroy the proclamations of passion
I once wrote to you

If I really wanted to
I would delete the pictures sent back and forth
Like ransom letters
Thinking my body could force you
To surrender your heart

I used to consider swearing
To be a holy thing
You swore on so much
That it is no longer sacred

Humans are incapable of certainty
I have bent my pinky fingers in half
Just to come close
To believing promises
But people
Always let you down
And disappointment
Is inevitable

Your salt lips
And iodine mouth
Left a burning sensation
From every cut that you made
In mine

I am trying to forget you
And the way you said my name
How you only said it
Quietly through phone calls
Directly into my ear
As if you didn’t want anyone else
To hear you say it aloud

I am trying to forget you
But it is not easy
The moving on
Is a crossword puzzle
I do not know the last answer to
There are fifteen spaces left
That I don’t know how to
Fill
With anything other than you
There is so much empty
Left over

It is much easier to hold on
To memories
And remnants
Of what could’ve been
Than it is to accept
A definite ending

Our future
May be dead
But you are still
Very much alive in me

If I really tried
I bet I could forget you
But I don’t think I want to.

It is Tuesday again and he loves a girl who isn’t me.
In 14 days I will have survived another year.
It has been about a week since he hasn’t responded.
I wonder if I’m the only one who thinks this heavily.

In 14 days I will have survived another year.
I pour my heart into an unopened bottle of wine.
I wonder if I’m the only one who thinks this heavily.
Half of my bed is on the floor, sheets included.

I pour my heart into an unopened bottle of wine.
It has been about a week since he hasn’t responded.
Half of my bed is on the floor, sheets included.
It is Tuesday again and he loves a girl who isn’t me.

When you love someone who is not there
Your mind will learn to create
Draw images of how everything should be
Erase ones that depict how it actually is
Eventually you will forget what is real
And what is make believe
You will convince yourself
That you are not forgotten
And that even though you haven’t heard from him in days
He still thinks of you
You will tell yourself
That you are still wanted
Regardless of the fact that you barely want anything to do with yourself
You will somehow believe that someone else does
He will not tell you though
You have to remind yourself that he is too busy
Too involved even for a hello
You will have to remember
That his life never intended on having you be part of it
And that you
Will probably never be a part of it
You will constantly be reminded of every time you were promised future
And your wanting for it will become unbearable
You will lay awake at night like you always do
This time tasting of more than just alcohol and regret
You will swallow your own tongue wondering why fate never seems to be on your side
Thinking maybe you were never meant to love in the first place
That meeting him was a mistake
You should have known better anyway
To fall for a guy
With a heart already occupied
You know all too well
That there is not enough room in one for two
And you are the tenant with the most vacant body
Stop trying to fill yourself with things that don’t exist
You will need to recall
Every single time you have built yourself up
Your expectations piling above you
Never anticipating the crash
You always seem to be staring blank eyed
When everything around you crumbles into disaster
You learn to pick up the pieces
And glue them into something decent enough to look at
Your mind is still painting pictures
On a canvas that will most likely never be tangible
And you will be reminded of it when you’re laying in bed
And your hands grab for someone who is not there
When you love someone who is not there
You will spend every second of the day
Searching for them in crowded rooms
When in reality
You know
They weren’t there to begin with
And they probably
Never will be.