UP ON SHOULDERS

(As featured with Heroica Women)

I envision love being something like being up on shoulders. A gap

between you and I and where the atmosphere begins, where the world is outlined in a fragile

and erasable pencil.

I let the atmosphere press upon my head; I rejoice

at the sound of when pigeons start to cry.

I picture love being something like being up on shoulders, where one feels weightless with their arms thrown up to wind.

A kind of folklore dangling

that clutches death and makes living worth the drape. Still, I cannot seem to convince myself

to make the climb.

Hand me the air but I will slumber on the staircase.

You, the sexual parasite planted inside of my teenage brain. I am rebuilding my bar now and it will touch the headrest of the sky.

You become a dot and I become a full-grown damsel who dreams of wedding bells and sewn devotions.

I picture love being something like being up on shoulders.

I never wanted to leave the livelihood of being a child.

-Michelle Freya

MY FATHER’S MUSIC, MY MOTHER’S TEA SET

 (As featured in Verses Issue 5: Garden)

Is every song written

for the one they have loved the most?

this is a pit in my soul like

oceanic endlessness

looking out

clambering sand, teacups clashing in the cupboard

and even when the maid laced and

cherry haired

sorts it all out again in rows

I think everything remains cluttered one way

or another

and my father still brings

my mother her morning cup of tea

even when she

sleeps the whole ordeal through

I can hear his devotion

through the door

-Michelle Freya