Meenal Poets - Blog Posts

the birds are singing for the first time in a while and it’s 4:30 and it’s not dark at all and on my walk home the sun kissed my face like an old friend

it feels like i’ve been waiting on spring for so long and she’s finally showed up at my door

we’re gonna be together forever, and we’re going to live in a house with colored glassware and floral wallpaper with some angel-faced kids who know too many curse words and i’m going to love you. i’m going to love you when you forget to grab the milk and when you kiss me after we fight and when i am laying in your arms during one of those corny kids movies. i will love you when our names end up on a tombstone together and they call me your wife in my obituary. ours is a forever love.

the first thing you learn in chemistry is that the atom is 90% empty space. the brunette in the front raises her hand. how does that work? she asks. everyone sighs. mrs macdonald smiles her eerie grin. we don’t really know, she says. maybe one of you will find out. i unclick my pen slowly as to not make a sound. the atom is 90% empty space. i am more vacuum than i am human. at an atomic level, i am nothing. is that supposed to be comforting? i blurt out, a supernova in the empty silence. it echoes against the tile. mrs macdonald raises her eyebrows. does science ever comfort? chemistry itself opens up all these existential questions. it’s the scientist’s job to find the things that nobody thought about much, and rip them open. gut them. make everyone worry. science is not for the comfortable, my dear.

the brunette in the front shuts up. the classroom is silent. the atom is 90% empty space. i decide that day to become a scientist.

I am a poet and a scientist. There is a sort of curiosity in both, I think. Both take a lot of wondering. For most, the differences are too staggering, they’ll scoff at my paper-strewn nights and the mornings where I annotate diagrams.

There is a poetry in chemistry, though.

The rhythms of experimentation are engraved into my mind. Routine, endless, and yet revealing. And the minute details of life fascinate me as much as words. The minuscule particles that take up our entire existence, create everything you lay hands on.

I am a poet and a scientist; I am a living contradiction.

“the weight in my chest used to be a rock. i could toss it away when i wanted, i was able to pull myself out of those situations. nowadays I liken it to an anchor—it’s dragging me deep into the ocean, i can’t breathe, and i need someone to pull me up. the problem is, there is nobody to pull me up these days.”

—from a book i’ll never write

ours is a earth-shattering love. darling, you are in every pen-stroke. the back of my hand seems to yearn for your lips again. press yourself up against me, you told me you loved me last night, prove it. you lay your head in my lap, my fingers throb as i run them though your hair. i am not close enough to you. i fear i never will be. 

keep the kiss, my love. no need to return it just yet, i want you to have me for a little longer. let my lips linger where they were until you get sick of my taste.

every day i live in fear of your disillusionment—

you see sunlight now,

but i don’t know what will happen when you see my ripped lungs

and shallow ventricles, the ones i created for myself

because i never really got used to feeling my broken skin.

your lips on mine were a mere wisp in time

and yet i can still feel them when i speak—

all my words are tinted, such a blessing for

someone whose speech tends to be tar-black.

i have loved her since she held me wholeheartedly, left her hair caught on my sweater. her fingers gripped into my arm, red marks in my skin. never let go. i wanted to whisper it into her soul, leave such an unmistakable mark.

i feel the weight of her head on my chest when she can’t be there. her fingers interlaced into mine like vines around my skin, cutting off circulation. her absent face seems to haunt me.

i know you love to watch the sky but look at the rain, my love. it comes every fall, hurricanes lining the coast. we have lived it--the wind and floods have raised us. you stare at the sky when it's beautiful and i watch the rain as it pools on the road, remember how i used to jump in puddles. i never had rain boots, and i guess that was the best part as a child, to feel the water in your socks. now i don't leave the house when it rains because the thunder scares me and i watch the raindrops through my window, i feel them through the thick glass. i'm older and a bit of a cynic, i never let the water touch my fingertips. 

i think i find comfort in your details, the way you brush your hand against mine, the way you squeeze tighter when you have to leave. you've been embroidered so carefully into my skin, clearer than the running stitch my grandmother taught me as a child. 

winter chill is setting in and i am bundled up safe and warm--we might not get the chance to exist in the same room for a few days but you're here, you're always in my heart, love. i catch glimpses of a newfound future in my dreams, stained glass newly coloring my visions. i can finally live a life free of the vines tying my wrists. you have brought me such a gift, the light i needed.

they'll all ask what happened when you kissed me 

but i will keep my mouth shut, the details are only for you and i to know. 

like your blue ink that i covered up with sweater sleeves, 

i don't think i can let anyone else have your neverending love. 

(the only thing i tell them

is that it was just as perfect as i had imagined.)

the snow may never fall in our hometown

no matter how cold it gets, 

but i will hold your hands and you will kiss mine

we can pretend to make snow angels in the grass

till we're old and tired and can't get up

and perhaps then we'll be in a winter wonderland. 

when i go to bed i almost miss

the feeling of your hands in my hair, 

how your lips meet mine in the most world-changing way

and the look in your eyes when you tell me you love me. 

for once, my dreams cannot live up to my reality. 

i wonder if you think about me when you wake up, 

because i do, i seem to remember sunday mornings that haven't happened yet

and the way i'd kiss you while the sunlight began to cast lines on the floor.

i'm going to war with my own mind--

my heart is shrapnel in my chest and i am wildly unarmored

because i let someone see me once and now 

there is an arrow in my shoulder, i let the fletching stick out

of my red-raw skin,

just to remind myself what happens to those who reveal.

is it possible to have the most intoxicating love and the most chilling pain coursing through your veins at once? my hands are shaking and i can't tell if the black cloud is back or i just kissed the love of my life. it's all real, it's all becoming more real, i pace around the piles on the floor and figure out a way to text you back. somehow my existence amounts to more than just words on a page and my bronchioles are becoming shallower by each breath i take. my neck has whipped around one too many times to see your face--you have punctured my aorta in the most beautiful way, i might bleed out from this feeling but my plasma will be on your hands. i'll always be with you, i suppose. 

someday it’ll be thanksgiving and i’ll wake up in your arms. we don’t have to have dinner with my parents or your grandparents it can just be the people we love. someday it’ll be thanksgiving and i’ll set the table while you stir the soup and maybe our kids will run all over the place waiting for everyone to get here. i’ll kiss you before the doorbell rings, we’ll pour white wine while it rains outside. i’ll wear my heels and you wear that dress. when the party’s over it’s not a relief because they’re gone—it’s a relief because it was perfection.

you’re the cloth daisies on my nightstand—always there, always appreciated. i touch them each night before i go to bed. i can only hope that one day i can do the same for you. i can tell you wonder if i think we’re going too fast but i can’t see it, my love. i think that all our trials, all those weeks spent in denial—those count too. technically we’re only one month deep but it feels like i’ve loved you my entire life.

it’s raining. by sunday it will have been a month and somehow my mind is getting lost in a fragile future, all the dreams i have are daisies, i can only hope the wind won’t blow them away. i chastise myself for getting my hopes up all the time but i think this time i can let them fly free. because i finally know i can lean on you, sink into your shoulder. there is no way we could end in a ditch, not after all our tribulations.

i wish i could go back to the september day

when i met your mother and i wish i could have told her

that i wasn’t in love with you yet but soon enough

it would develop like the sea glass she kept on the table.

they say the second kiss isn’t as good as the first

but i think i could kiss you a million times and i would

still feel like i’m walking on clouds.

i think i’m drowning in missing you

but the waves only come when i’m

tired and scared, when the world

is turning the wrong direction

and the only way to fix it

is running back into your arms.

today i was sick

today i was sick but i came to see you. couldn't imagine even getting out of bed--my head felt so heavy but my heart must've betrayed me because i got on the bus and i went to a place where i don't really belong. i tell myself i don't belong--until i see you. 

and i felt bad for possibly making you sick too, because it's the worst thing in the world and i love you the most. but the moment i touched your skin i think all my worry went away. you felt so soft in my arms. 

no idea, no idea, no idea how you feel. i can't read your mind, all those runes i wish to uncover. i don't even know if the way you hold me is genuine. but i know i'm lying to myself every time i reread our memories and say it was never anything at all. 

because if i sink into you for ten minutes straight how can it be just friendship?