Tag: the past

Erasable Scent of Yesterday

Published on by Tosha Michelle30 Comments

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She finally realized it
wasn’t him she missed
but her old ideas of him.
Molded by the absent
years. The feelings lost,
and reshaped in her head,
so many times, that they
became something that
didn’t exist. Emotions.
so foreign they felt
familiar.

Standing on reality’s
shore, her back turn
to the mountains.
No longer between
the future and the past.
The desire to move
ahead, stronger than
the desire to recreate

Freedom replaces fright.
That which is gone, is
now gone completely.
The sun swelled, and
disappears.
She slips away on
the stars, leaving
confetti in her wake,
and the erasable
scent of yesterday.

-Tosha Michelle

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The Grudge

Published on by Tosha Michelle49 Comments

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I watered the grudge with a
fervent devotion of a priest
giving communion. I watered
it with the determination of
a drunk on his fourth glass
of gin. The destructive
clockwork of a not so
righteous self.

The cactus in my heart
erupting. I watered it everyday
with a can of venom. My hands
blistering over from the hate.
The fluid and its dark nutrients
taking root, until the petals
bloomed over and clotted my
brain, until there was nothing
left but arid air, laced with
regret, and the silence of
time wasted. The stale
taste of a garden grown
on the wreckage of malice
Gone. The long reign of
bitterness. The tight reign
of hurt feelings. The shards
of anger, shaken from my
eyes. I finally see the sterile
landscape clearly.

How the realization stings.

-Tosha Michelle

Little Boy Blue and Mary Quite Contrary

Published on by Tosha Michelle58 Comments

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Dear Past,

It’s been awhile. I come waving a
flag of peace and unarmed.
My arsenal is depleted.
I have no time for hate or malice
laced air.
I imagine like me
you want to live in peace without
the threat of guns and
claws. To awaken to the sound
of serenity, not bombs going off
in the distance.

I hope hearing from me doesn’t cause you pain.
Frankly, I miss you. Your theatrical ways,
always leaning toward a Shakespearean tragedy.
No time for much ado about nothing.
Although, everything had to be as you like it.
How you were
a master at parlor games and word play.
Your eyes a depletion
of fallen leaves and green tea.
Hair as dark as a grackle.
Arch so charming, fencing with
unseen stars. Little boy blue,
and Mary. Mary, oh, so contrary.
How our garden did grow.
Shells that pelted the ground,
causing wreckage and carnage.
It wasn’t all welts and hell.
There were days when light swelled
and sliver bells grew.

But i digress, as I climb a slide of memories,
backwards with slippery hands.
My legs lose traction,
my lungs clog with dust.

I end up on the ground negotiating
with my untapped toe.
Trying to reclaim the beat with
half recounted facts
and nostalgia’s false sense of rhythm.
Holding a few cards in the hand you deftly dealt me.
Beside me lies a map, marred
by revisions.
that reads let it go. Let it go.

I stand up, and realizes there’s a
tear in my heart, that I
mistook for my sleeve. I walk through the open gate,
ignoring the stained alleyways,
cobble stone,
and street lights shaped like a question marks.
The scent of orchids lingers in
the tired air.
My soul fighting off bees and
the counter winds.
You, dear past, will always sting.

-Tosha Michelle

Imagined (Not Desired)

Published on by Tosha Michelle21 Comments

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It’s just you and me
alone in this room
of memory
called my mind.
No door for anyone else
to enter.
We dine on privacy
and live on nostalgic air.

Seeing everything
but what isn’t there.
We are always
best here.
Near but not near.
Out of nothing
into nothing.

Here your thoughts
turn in my hand.
We linger in the
backyard sun,
playing songs
about decaying
orbits.

On the swing.
In the grass.
we make love.
Stretched, sugared
on the over grown
yard of false charm.
Futile as the wet
tongue of dew on
the dying rose.

You touch me here,
where the pulse meets throat,
down my shoulder,
and lower.
Need peels from me.

On my knees,
beneath dust’s feet.
The weight of you
in my throat.
I taste the edges of sanity.
There’s no letting up.
No hint of the dark
birds overhead.

Remembered or
Imagined?

I can’t stop the
breathing air.
A victim of my
blinded eyes,
and the shadow
of you, infused
with what I do
not want.

Singing my fierce,
unthinkable out
stung melody.
Cluttering the
idiot air,
the threads of
flimsy pockets.
Trying to stitch
it back.
When I should just
let it rest.
This sweet delaying
of truth.

One day, I’ll tear down
this room, knocking it
into reality chinks
of light,
into the quietness,
into the empty enamel
of you.

The only thing left,
debris and an
unkissable memory,
the easiest to bear.

-Tosha Michelle

Dust

Published on by Tosha Michelle18 Comments

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On lonely nights when
the moon
is absent from the sky,
and all
my distractions are spent.
The sky
so dark even the void feels
approachable.
The room as quiet as the
stars.
I dream about the past in
metaphors
It whispers to me in hushed
alliteration.
Bent close to the curve of
my ear.
Unfastening all its forgotten
secrets.
Dissolving inside of me. I
struggle to
find meaning in yesterday’s
lament.
When I awake the night’s
residue will
find its way to paper, to
text, that
you, my reader, will decipher.
My words carry dust.

-Tosha Michelle