A flame was never meant to extinguish this abruptly. Starved of oxygen, your origami letters became ash in a mouth that bled (for too many years). I would say goodbye, but the word is a branding iron razed against a smoldering tongue.
Forgiveness never came easily for the dead. Graveyards are full of grudges and barely concealed debts. When I told you that I loved you, I disguised the words (behind shattered glass bottles and origami letters confettied like New Year’s).
I remember your eyes cold like marbles, frozen like winter ponds. (I made a half-joke and thought myself funny, but your lips never curled up in a smile.) This is autobiography, but all you ever asked for was a poem or a story (but not this – not an obituary or an elegy. Not a eulogy or a goodbye).
I could never say goodbye. I ran from endings & ripped the last page out of every book I ever read.
Sometimes, I even wrote stories that ended in the middle of a —
White knuckle it, and the pain still sears through these autumnal bones. Crumble them like my skeleton has memory. It hasn’t forgotten the calendar days piling up (as thick as novels).
It’s time to start spitting matchsticks and not caring about the consequences (the aftermath) of fire.
My ears, stuffed with cotton, muffle the sound of silent, blood-curdling screams. I have crushed tears into my palm and have screamed silently into lungs of shower stalls (yet the world still whirls as though I were flung off a carnival ride).
I wasn’t being coy when I said “no”. I was being adamant. My teeth marks in your shoulder blade should serve as a reminder.
I will punch through glass with words alone. No amount of duct tape, super glue, will repair the realms destroyed.
Memories are like binge drinking. I wake up with my throat burning. (The ghosts wail outside my house, rattling the windows and causing the rafters to shudder. Begging to be let in.)
He mistook my empty for hollow and tried to fill me when I was merely seeking fulfillment.
Another left shadows form-fitted to my figure, lying, saying I was just an angel slut falling when really, a shove sent me flying. (The truth tastes as rusty as nails and goes down just as smoothly.)
He lied to me about the taste of electricity, claiming it was a needle to a vein. And all I ever wanted was the stars to be bright enough, I never needed a neon sign again in this town.
These memories are skyscrapers, and these skyscrapers are leveled by volcanoes. (And now, I am soaring like a phoenix, above the rubble, taking me beyond the landscapes I once knew.) No longer do I care about where these matchsticks may land, nor who may scorched by the words that sear.
I remember tasting the tobacco shored in your lungs, and you had the courage to tell me my auburn hair smelled of a bonfire.
I once vowed a dress I owned would forever smell of rain and my ink-stained fingertips would fidget – restless with memories, but now, when I cradle myself to sleep, my eyes are empty.
I no longer name the silhouettes that landscape my bare walls or dance along my broken skeleton bones.
I remember when my brittle skin was scented like my favorite library, but no one picks up an abandoned tome when the ink that travels the pages is nothing more than a smudge and ashy dots.
I am an empty teacup in a house that is haunted with your name. When I reread the letters you wrote me, shards of glass glitter along voids of thought, threatening to lacerate the emptiness. To puncture the silence where memories once towered like infernos.
I was so excited to interview the poet EJ Kuhl tomorrow for my Poet Spotlight for Global Poetry Writing Month, but this week has really been overwhelming for me.
Alfred just recently shared with me a reader review which I feel entitled to share a part of with you all before including his interview. A reader of Alfred’s poetry had said the following:
The candor of this review honestly speaks volumes about Alfred Gremsly’s poetry, and while I am just starting to familiarize myself with his poetry, I can tell he has the same intentions I do with my writing and my day job – to provide a voice to communities normally stigmatized.
Alfred Gremsly is an American born poet who writes about mental health and the struggle that comes with it. A lifelong sufferer of anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses, Alfred began writing poetry at the young age of twelve as a means of escaping his own mind.
Whose poetry style is most like your own?
I don’t know if anyone’s poetry is like mine. I don’t read a lot of poetry, and if I do read, it’s going to be something that’s complete opposite of what I write.
Have you received formal training for writing? If so, what’s your background? If not, what got you interested in poetry writing?
I started writing around age 12; I was a very depressed kid. We lived in the country and had nothing to do, and so, I would make homemade books for myself of my thoughts and feelings.
Who are some of your favorite poets?
Some individual poets I like to read are Jan Serene, Ashley Jane, Angie Waters, Margie Watts, and Sarah Kay Collie.
How do you feel when you’re writing a poem? Is it cathartic or do you find it draining? What types of emotions do you experience when writing poetry?
As I, myself, am a lifetime sufferer of depression and anxiety, I have extreme highs and lows. Unfortunately, it takes being in those extreme lows in order for me to get out what I’m needing to say.
I sometimes feel as if writing is a curse of sorts – so horrible would be the feelings and emotions I’m under while writing.
A lot of my poetry features fractured versions of myself as a narrative voice. What subjects do you write about and how are they influenced by your own experiences?
I write about what I’ve been through in life’s journey – my struggles with mental illness, the feelings of being mentally ill. I have overcome a lot through in life through poetry. I now have a grasp on my depression and anxieties, and I’m now on a mission to help others suffering from mental illnesses.
Am I just pretending there are voices in my head? And can anyone else hear a single thing they’ve said? Am I really talking to someone who has been talking back to me? Or have I just become a psychotic mystery? Life’s no fun pretending when you need a friend and a therapist is not the answer when you want the words to end. Can anyone hear the voices that are screaming from my head? I’ll be dead before I’m better ifI’m not already dead
Isabelle Palerma 