Posted on by Christina Strigas · 5 Comments

i took all my books out of the way

i made a path for you to walk into

but you send me cryptic messages

i can’t understand. i’m not that smart

i think in beats, rainbow schemes,

i want to finish writing this poem

before he gets here and breaks my

silence into too many questions

i avoid answering. i removed my

poems for you, made you walk

straight into my heart and pull

it apart with my own weakness.

i never should have trusted you

with that one secret, you haunt

me with it, pass it around my

air like a ball. you’re playing

with my vulnerability. i tell

you to fuck off instead of good

night and in the morning you

wonder why i left for work

so early and we don’t talk again

until the following day

where we start over and forget

the past. it’s what we call

staying married these days.

Posted on by Christina Strigas · 3 Comments

The hues of light around the anger

Every day is a blur of the one before

and the one before that

and the one happening now.

I am changing the date on my journal

to keep track. For a while there,

I stopped.

I felt darkness around the

days of the week and months.

I feel this abyss will never end.

I don’t know what will save me from

the days. Nothing really. My coffee is warm.

The longer I stare out my window

at my lilac tree, the colder it gets.

You wake up and want my attention

you make me coffee. You know how

I get weak when you speak my

language of love. It’s still a cloud

in my heart. It could be grey one

day, blue another, white, moving

silently and then you crack the mirror.

I’m out of my skin, I’m shedding

a new layer of your anger.

so I have to drag myself out of the earth

and walk on planks.

You want me

to love you and I do. In the way

I should not. I know better by now

but the clouds never leave, they hover

and expect me to be my best self.

I’m writing and spinning out of control

over hatred, you’re making me tired.

Let’s stay naked in bed

create our own clouds

dissipate the anger with our skin.

Even fantasy has holes

we refuse to mend.

Posted on by Christina Strigas · 2 Comments

Use me as a Motif

Listening to subscribed channels about loving myself

is probably more harmful than actually loving.

You can abandon people and they are still in the dark

even if I research the best methods of unloving someone

it can’t be done. Rooms wait for people to walk into

and as long as I wait for you, you can’t come in

to see me.  It’s fine.  I prefer it that way.  Death beds

are such beautiful places to end up in. Heaven

is a place you described once, while I wasn’t

in the room. I can see you there talking to her

and pretending I don’t exist. It’s fine. It’s not fine.

I’m absent from this part of the story.

You can use me up until I say no more. It’s coming.

That day you dread.  Death sucks up love at will.

You can go about your silence. It has no guilt.

Posted on by Christina Strigas · 2 Comments

Don’t wanna know

It’s been such a long time I haven’t seen your face

maybe you don’t believe in the same books anymore

or philosophers

or artist

or punctuation.

I see a garden stopped growing

journals overflowed with moss

I am giving up on this whole

we got so much time

because honestly, we don’t

time soaks us with truth

and keeps on creating death

to remind us

that we won’t live forever

even if you sing about it.