Oil Canvases

Put me in an oil painting,
and make me feel beautiful.
Smudge the outlines of my body
with your fingertips so I can blend
in with the background, and no one
will know where I begin or end. I will
become parts of the sunsets and oceans
you’ve painted on days when you
missed the way the water felt
against your skin, and I will become
parts of smeared faces that have no
identity, and I will finally be free,
dancing in a world of colors, frozen
on a piece of glory. Let me be your
masterpiece.

Garden in a City

I am a garden,
I have flowers growing from the
darkest pits in my stomach, and vines
that wrap themselves up and down
my spine with the weight of an anchor,
making sure I stand straight on the days
I feel like crumbling. I have peppers
growing under my skin and lips, and
that’s why every touch burns. I have
weeds growing through the lines in my
palms, and I am slowly learning not to
pull at their roots because they still add
a little green to the rainy days.  

You see,
people are a lot like gardens. They
need to be loved in order to grow,
and they cannot survive on only
sunny days. Rainy days still give
reason to live, for the excitement of
tomorrow is forever implanted in their
systems.

1:14 a.m.

I have stopped myself from writing poetry for the past week,
because I know that the second these fingers hit the keys,
your name will type itself subconsciously, and I won’t even 
notice until the next day, when I will see the letters of 
your name standing out as if they are in bold or italics, when
it’s just the way your name is branded into my skin. 

I know I will write about you, 
and the way our bodies fit, our atoms in sync with the way 
we moved. There was something about the way you had
your arms around me that made me want to pause the 
sun’s descent and tell you all that my heart could pulse – 
every thought that has rained in my mind. The
way you pulled me closer, I thought I would melt right
into your body. Your voice was soft when you told me
everything was going to be okay and that was the first
time I believed it.  

I don’t want to write about you,
because I hate love poems and the way they all sound
the same; the way it makes me feel powerless of my
emotions. If we never work out, this poem is just another
crumpled piece to prove I’ve wanted someone I could never
have. I don’t know why you have the capability to make
words drip from a drain I thought had closed.  

Love poems start the same,
and end the same. 
This poem starts with you,
and ends with you,
and it is your decision
if you want something to happen
in the middle of it all. 

Quotes from My Unwritten Novels

“What does he have that I don’t?”
“A chance.”

“This isn’t fair, why is it she gets to live and I have to die?”
“She’s dying, too. We all are. Some just quicker than others.”

“I’m married to the sea.”
“But you just tried to drown yourself in it.”
“I wasn’t drowning, I was just trying to go home.”

“I don’t like telling people I count stars instead of sheep.”

“I’m just a background in other people’s lives.”
“But, you’re still important. You’ve witnessed love and random acts of kindness, sometimes you were the one doing those acts. We’re all background blurs in other people’s lives, but together we build sounds to make cities sing and tornadoes of colors that paint the wind, and that’s what your lungs hold onto. Backgrounds are special because they have the hope and smallest of chances to become center stage. There are backgrounds in your life, too, and if we didn’t have them, we’d always be lonely.”

Stroked Hues

Some days, I feel like I am living in a painting.
The sky with perfect hues, so elegantly still,
breathing softly through the wind. 
The trees, some days, will stand so quiet,
the birds have to sing for them. 
I will sit and watch the paintings dance,
a piece not even Van Gough could capture,
the clouds stroked perfectly white, and 
stars that swirl like tea. 
My life has turned into a painting, and I 
will spend my time admiring it.

Wasting Time

When asked what I do for a living, I tell them,
‘I am a waster of time.’
I spend my days thinking of poems I will never write,
and counting my freckled legs twinned with water droplets in the shower,
and sitting in silence as I listen to a song that makes me feel more than myself,
and watching the way the sun hides and rises from buildings and roads and how people do the same,
and getting anxiety at the people I pass by because they all have a life and problems,
maybe one of them is suicidal,
or lost a parent, or friend, or is abused;
I would never know,
because my days have turned into a blur,
a simple compilation of the same thing,
a tropical country with no change of seasons,
a cathedral with the same sinners,
the same sky with the same constellations and the same thoughts.
These days mean nothing, and in ten years I will not remember this
exact moment,
I will not remember the boy I craved,
or the assignment I procrastinated,
or the day I wanted to kill myself.
Every moment is smudged with the next, and I quietly
wait for the day that my life will gain meaning.
But, once in a while, I’m shaken,
awoken,
aware:
this is my life, and what am I doing with it?
Wasting time.

Poets

Poets are the people,
who stay up past midnight
because the night sky cradles them
in its diamond blanket, and sometimes it is
the only time they can speak and be heard.

Poets are the people,
who drink tea when they miss the
way their throat felt warm from an ex’s lips,
and they are also the heavy drinkers
writing poems with perfect slurred words
because it is the only time they allow themselves
to see and speak the truth.

Poets are the people,
who will kiss you hard and leave you
wanting more, as they implant words onto your
tongue, that will grow to impress and
make your mouth bleed, and they will stay until
they are envious of your voice. They
are the one night stands that leave red marks on
your back and mind.

Poets are the people,
who spend their Friday nights in
cheap cafés, or parks, or night clubs where they’ll
meet a person to spark a poem, or roof—
tops as they contemplate the delicacy of life, or their
room as they try to make their walls bleed with
confessions. They are intoxicated by
breaths and coffee, soaked in the sky, and the worst
kind of lovers.

Poets are the people,
who will help you see the truth,
give you lines to make your heart ache and stanzas
that slither into your bone marrow.
They will make words become part of you, until each
rib is a metaphor, each vein a river,
until you realize you are swimming in the beauty and
drowning in the misfortune of life. They
will speak when there are no words left to say, and you
will fall in love, until you cannot breathe without a poem

© Claire Sibley

Eyewitness Memory

Eyewitnesses are often unreliable, my psychology teacher said,
our mind is not like a tape recorder. 
I thought of all the memories that I have of you, 
of the picnics and afternoon naps, and kissing until 
we sucked the breath out of each other and exhaled our fears
into each other’s mouths because we thought maybe that would help
us connect. I thought of the night you threw the dinner plate 
onto the wall and it smashed into five pieces, and I somehow felt
that it was my heart you threw instead,
our mind is not like a tape recorder. 
Maybe you are not as I remember, your eyes are no longer a sweet
a hazel and amber, and your fingertips do not hold lightning. 
I don’t think I loved you, I loved the idea of you.

Coffee Artists

I drank my coffee as the sun began its descent, 
dancing with the clouds on wild colored rides. 
I was sitting North and you were sitting a little Southeast, 
but I could still catch glimpses of your eyes and the way
they walked over the sky. You had a cigarette in one hand,
a pencil in the other. Your brows were furrowed and I 
could tell you hadn’t brushed your hair in days. You grazed
the pencil against the paper and I could hear it sing of the 
great defeat against a blank sheet. Your eyes were like 
binoculars and watched for the smallest details. Often times, 
you’d erase what you just drew with a slanted pink eraser. 
Draw. 
Erase. 
Draw. 
Erase. 
Draw.
Erase. 
It went on like this until you got a sudden flow, your inspiration
hitting you like your cigarette hits your lungs. You let the pencil 
washed onto the paper and created mountains of lines and circles and
shadings and the changing from darkness to light. I couldn’t see
what you were drawing, and I wondered if you were an architect,
or a struggling portraitist, or simply someone who needed to 
clear their mind and watching them fill this white blank page was the 
only way to release yourself from the demons and photographs 
that your mind creates. You drew, and I wrote. We were artists,
sitting at the same place at the same time, and although to this day 
I still have no clue what you create, I knew that we collaborated. 
You breathed as I did, and you bleed as I do. We were a lot a like,
and we contribute to the world what we could. 
We are truth. 

We are Dying

Ever since I was little, I knew that one day I would
die, and that this day would come whenever it wished, but 
I needed to forget about that and keep on living. 
Let me tell you a secret,
we are not living. 
We are dying. 
Each breath is one closer to our last and each day is 
closer to a broken sunrise. I have let this fact 
eat at me for the past 16 years of my life, and I have 
let it devour my heart with rusted hinges and I am left
paralyzed from the hands on the clock who have raped
me of a future. 
I am trying to put it in the back of my mind, telling myself,
you do not need to know the back of your mind like the back of your hand,
and I am learning that time is a bitch,
consuming us and screwing us,
but I will find a way to love it.