Is it set in stone
if you hold a hammer?
©haylesmaree
Letter to the editor
Proofread your essays
not your stories.
Do not stain your voice with red marker
to feel publishable.
Be a notebook
full
of mistakes
torn pages
pages out of order
so many words spoken imperfectly
on the perfect skin coloured parchment
of you.
©haylesmare
For casting
She was a storm in a teacup.
Fierce
and
Comforting.
Sip by sip
depending on the sip.
©haylesmaree
Dressed up
Is it still considered paradise
if we’re drinking volatility
out of a coconut?
©haylesmaree
Changing the programmed
Self-sacrificers always leave
what compelled them to stay
when the pain of compromise
outweighs the pain
of expectation non-conformity.
©haylesmaree
Lie on the flaw
It’s true.
Nobody has ever loved me
in such a way that allows me to love myself.
It’s truer.
The flaw is not those who are loving,
rather my belief that their loving controls my own.
©haylesmaree
Unde-find
She was a thousand words
I could not find.
She was the perfect sentence
inked in an unpublished book.
She was countless unwritten poems
on the tip of my tongue.
She was the unopened letters
in the envelope of my skin.
She was…
she is.
She stays missing
to exist.
©haylesmaree
