Category: poetry

Short Fiction: My World is Glass by Erica Ruhe

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My world is glass. Sometimes it’s a window. Sometimes it’s a mirror. Sometimes it’s dark and smoky. Sometimes it is radiant white. Sometimes it is as clear as the sky. When reflections take me to dark spaces within, sometimes I need a clear view, a clean window to look out and free my thoughts for a while. Sometimes these flights of fancy become hollow and vapid and my soul yearns to look deep into the well of the tragic and trudge through its depths for meaning. Sometimes my diversions lead me to dive into darkness I did not know was there. My world is glass. Sometimes I need a window and sometimes I need a mirror. Fragile, capable of distortion and illusion and yet the most convincing proof I have of my own existence. It allows me to peer through, and in to, and out of, and not. When the looking glass breaks I pray it will be the one that hides the truth of myself. It may not be the window. It may not be the mirror. Perhaps it is the lens that is bound to my eye. Until then I will look for that which is true; that which is me. Sometimes I need a window and sometimes I need a mirror but each will reveal that which I desire to see.

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Poetry: Goodbye, Melody

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We crowded around the mirror

Painting our lips sinful red

We got drunk on Bailey’s

Because we were young and dumb

With Red Hot Chili Peppers on repeat

We daydreamed of Hollywood

And all the things we would become

Model, actress, triple threat superstar

Even then a part of me knew

That all our dreams would only remain

Dreams

Something to sigh over when we were older

But then I left for Hollywood

Without you

I was too old for frivolous dreams

And didn’t try to become

Any of those things I wished I could be

All those things we were certain we

could achieve

When they told me that you died

I already knew why before being told

All I asked was, “How?”

Because even at seventeen your gaze

Held a brokenness to it

That gave me insight into your future

I just wish that my intuition had been wrong

That I could be walking the Walk of Fame with you

Bathing in the waters of the Pacific Ocean together

Getting drunk in Griffith Park

Falling in love with movie stars

Although I’m often tempted to join you

I feel the burden of having to live

For the both of us

Striving to live and love

Like you can no longer do

Even if sometimes, I wish I could let go

Because living without you has become

A punishment I always wished I didn’t have to endure.

***

Did you enjoy this poem? You can find this poem and many others in Lost Girls Go Everywhere: Poetry & Prose on Amazon!

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Poetry: Unwanted Memories

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I removed your mark from my skin,

They gave me pills to forget.

I begged the stars to stop

spelling your name

But they’re cruel,

So I blinded myself instead.

There’s peace in darkness.

**

Did you enjoy this poem? You can find this poem and many others in Lost Girls Go Everywhere: Poetry & Prose on Amazon!

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Poetry: Insomniac

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Some nights I wish I could simply sleep soundly

Clutching nothing but your photo

But some nights

The fact that you’re only a photograph for me

Now

Is enough to keep me up all night.

Did you enjoy this poem? You can find this poem and many others in Lost Girls Go Everywhere: Poetry & Prose on Amazon!

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Poetry: Supernova

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Summers spent with sticky fingers

And cotton candy kisses

The Luna Park was our campground

Of our young love

Dancing to terrible music on repeat

Drinking rum and coke

You were the patron saint of vice

Blowing smoke rings and

Your hand in my hair

Whenever I’d suck your cock

Trying to be edgy

Wearing a torn I Love LA top

My lipstick smeared like Harley Quinn

Flying in the night on your motorcycle

The wind in my hair

Feeling free

Stars flowing from our wrists

Instead of blood

We were magical

We were invincible

We were one.

***

Did you enjoy this poem? You can find this poem and many others in Lost Girls Go Everywhere: Poetry & Prose on Amazon!

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Poetry: First Cuts Kill

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broken-heart-candy

I should’ve known I was set up for heartbreak

The moment my eyes settled upon you

You were a modern Mozart

Wild hair and hands that could create

The most beautiful music

I yearned to be your piano

I wanted to be your favorite song

Maybe if I hadn’t been so young

I would’ve known that you were

A beautiful disaster

I had so much love for you

Just bursting at the seams with affection

I would’ve given anything to be your girl

But I didn’t know what to do

My teenage days were filled with a

Poe-ridden depression

Because I kept trying to make you mine

Always chasing your love

Not knowing that your heart

Was never something I could steal

Facing the world like I had been locked

In Mr. Rochester’s attic

Screaming at the injustice

Of being unloved

Not knowing that only some of us

Are meant to be the heroines

While the rest of us are forced to be

The villains

When I finally vomited my heart

Leaving it on your doorstep

You pitied my frailty

Wishing me good luck

But had I been lucky

I never would’ve met you.

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Poetry: A HOME IN THE WORDS

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smiling woman using laptop

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Home, in spite of the house.

Home, in spite of the neighborhood.

By the fourth grade, the many homes I’d had

Could be counted on two hands.

Make new friends, be social,

Strike up conversations to be normal.

I talked with words,

Hoping to find another

Who would talk similar words at me

So we would have some words in common

To talk about.

Report cards chastised my love of words—

“She talks a lot.”

“She talks too much.”

“She talks in class.”

Little girl, hush!

Home, in spite of the city.

Home, in spite of the state.

The state lines blurred and swirled in my head

Class clown or introvert?

But the truth is, when the talking came

To a merciful stop,

That was home.

School bus rides spent in solitude,

Left to my thoughts.

An inconspicuous corner in the park

To people-watch.

Quietly learning things

That can’t be taught.

Silently yearning

To accompany none.

To simply be

In the comforting company of one.

Alone.

Talk is tiresome.

And I’ve talked for too many years.

Home, in spite of society.

Home, in spite of deity.

I covet, I desire, I lust to communicate.

It’s a sin to have waited this long.

To let these words languish,

Unused and unloved.

Herds of unwritten pages

Penned and left silent

Under the varnish of a social façade,

Confused and shoved aside.

The words that aim to hit a woman’s heart,

Not her eardrum.

The words that pull laughter from a man

Residing in the slum of his despair.

The words that inspire the inner child,

Not to give way to fear,

But to demand fear bows at their feet.

Smiling, no matter how many tears scroll down their cheeks.

Surviving collateral damage in the years they toil to be unique.

Braving the verbal batter all the peers who scold their defeat.

Home is right where I write.

Home is right where I think.

Home lies in the honesty of humor, humanity, honor and humility.

Home is in the words

That haunt and transcend language.

And they linger, patient

In the periphery

Needing no translation.

It is the holy dialect of our motherland.

That is the tongue I long to speak.

By: Erica Ruhe 

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Poetry: Apexia

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blonde long hair of smiling woman

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A tangerine and lavender dawn bleeds across the horizon and

I drop my hiking pack on the cold, rocky ledge.

My breath rasps cold and jagged down my throat,

Much like breathing in a piece of amethyst,

Depositing it into the quarry of my oxygen-starved lungs.

The air at this altitude is shallow, lacking nourishment,

Much like the education that inebriated me

Throughout my formulaic youth.

Every facet of my life had been fastidiously polished

With superficial pageantry and public praise.

Until I became a ghostly reflection

Of the studio lights that shone on me.

Condensation swirls from my lips now,

As if a few society’s expectations

Escapes with each exhale.

Alone at the summit,

I am sober.

There is no intoxicating high of over-proof self-worth,

Only a calm, pure proof spirit.

I sit cross-legged on the cold, rocky ledge.

Admire the bruises blossoming on my shins.

Much like purple merit badges bestowed from the mountain.

By: Erica Ruhe

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Poetry: Fire Effects

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We are of Taraxacum.

A volatile genus in duress.

Our heads disseminate, blown from our stems.

Rash thoughts ignite into words and whirl

On the wind,

Take seed in a flash of tongue and slice of eye.

In the young, loamy soils

We till fears deep.

They spring up from the ground and

Spark into being.

Fractured fragments of the whole,

Born from friction, this contempt consumes.

And it is like a wildfire.

Thick, fiery vines twist and coil.

Flowers, stoked to an angry bloom, blaze and burst,

Throwing open petals wide with the backdraft of odium.

It scorches and scars the skin of the earth.

We are barbaric in this unnatural state.

Hearts sterilized by the heat of hate.

Hearts full of bitter sap and brambled embers.

Roiling smoke stings and blinds us,

Chokes away our empathy.

This fury lashes through our humanity

Until there are only blackened sticks and

Smoking patches of ashy dirt.

The afterglow of spent, searing sentiments

Fade from the carpel.

Here, a pistil of arrogance and one of defeat,

And here, a pistil of disgust

And another of ignorant nostalgia.

Fear singes the last delicate cell walls

In a red, luminescent squall line.

And finally, fully charred,

The spent bloom wilts and crumbles.

But their fire has not left me infertile.

In this crackling, wild prairie,

There is a budding, a delicate anticipation

That the rains of my sorrows will sprout new growth.

I must germinate, cultivate

A bright breath of compassion,

Lest the world around me burn out and

Smolder into cold nothingness.

 

By: Erica Ruhe

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