Accidents: A Collection of Poetry

lightly confesses to the moon at 3am

i realized how some poems are selfish,
in that every line wants to be about myself.
that what i hear is what i wanted to hear, and that
thoughts from anyone else are unnecessary.

you see it everyday
in the poems written on the mirrors that tell you
you're not pretty (you believe it).
you see it in the eyes
of the people waiting for the next train to come;
you see it in the trembling of their hands,
how they felt guilt about crimes
they never even remember committing, sins
they're perfectly innocent of.
i guess they read too much poetry themselves,
perhaps the ones not for them.

and it is sad
how often poems made me feel bad. don't get me wrong—
it's usually not in the well-thought lines and
well-structured verses that you feel the warmth of home
or the wrath of affection, or the misleading of confidence,
(although we have more than our fair share of those),
sometimes it's in the blood flowing forth from her teeth
that shape themselves into petals that drive wounds deepest.
it is in the sudden bursts of fire from her skin—
there dwells the sorcery of song,
and i lose my consciousness in the words.

but when you wrote me a poem saying goodbye for the last time,
i was even more convinced that this is true —
that poems are selfish, naturally, like me and you.
curiously, then, i did not feel the warmth leave me,
nor the cold visit me,
and i thought, maybe this time i could go home,
and ponder on how to better manage
my emotions. perhaps i have imagined it all
— the little things, the misunderstandings,
the saccharine lines offered vespertine —
and how i preferred my dreams in sleep,

and sleep may be the most selfish response of all—
but so is love, and hate, and everything that lay (lying) in between.

— A. P.