Chatterbox: Down to Earth

Poetry Club!

There hasn't been one of these in a while, so I'm bringing it back! Calling all writers, all dreamers, all wordy weirdos with a penchant for poetry!

Here, we can post our writing, read poems by others, discuss rhyming versus free verse, be poetically melodramtic, and anything else you really want.

To kick things off, I'm going to post one I wrote a while ago, based off a lyric in Owl City's Take To The Sky— "Purple burst of paper birds, this picture paints a thousand words." It's a very happy song, but the poem took a different turn.

Hope you enjoy, and I'd love feedback. ^^

Purple Burst of Paper Birds

The ink stains are purple.

Not quite lavender, not quite indigo,

a sort of pale violet,

like the color of a summer midnight.

Exactly the color of a summer midnight.

It’s a peaceful shade,

relaxed and careless,

but for some reason she hates it.

She tells herself that she can’t place why,

really, that’s it’s just random.

(everyone has a weird quirk)

(she just doesn’t care for the color, that’s it)

She’s lying, she knows, and

continues to pretend.

Her hands are a little damp, she realizes

when she touches her fingertips

to the towering stack of forms

leaving streaks of purple

on the crisp white pages.

She should wash her hands.

She doesn’t know if they’ll even take them

if they’re all inky like that.

Does this place even have a bathroom?

It’s so silent, so still, so white.

She flags down a lady

with kind eyes

that are overshadowed by her

blindingly white uniform

bright crimson letters

(thick and blocky)

(it looks too foreboding)

on the back

stating the name of the hospital.

White and red.

She has seen too much of that today.

Red blood and white sheets and walls

and colorless cold skin and insipid vermillion diagrams

that are supposed to explain

the jagged line on the heart monitor.

There is so much.

So much white and red and

(she looks at her hands)

purple, which she needs to get rid of.

Yes.

That’s what she was doing.

The woman points her to a restroom

she thanks her, walks down,

pushes open the door with her hip.

She’s standing at the sink, the water running

but strangely she’s reluctant to put her hands under.

She thinks a bit then does,

watching the purple float off of her skin.

It swirls,

down

down

down

the drain, softening

among the tendrils of clear liquid,

spiraling slowly, then quicker and quicker—

and it’s gone.

She turns off the faucet.

Her phone rings.

She fumbles with it as she pulls it out of her pocket

(her hands are still wet, slippery)

She can’t find it in her to be scared,

just sick to her stomach,

as the voice, leaden with condolences,

begins its speech.

We are so very sorry…

She can feel it.

The dread fills her stomach like a stone.

… we did the best we could…

It doesn’t make it any easier to not be surprised.

… she was very brave…

The ink is gone, her hands are clean—

why does that matter?

… but she… she…

(the voice pauses)

… she couldn’t hang on. I hope you understand …

This is a dream.

It has to be.

She’s going to wake up, any minute now,

with her at her side, black locks framing her cheeks

like a halo around her sunshine smile.

No gunshots

no blood

no haze of consciousness

no yelling

no ambulance sirens

no deathly quiet.

No ink that reminds her of that first night,

two years ago

(had it really been two years?)

when the sky was just that shade of purple,

and the stars couldn’t hold a candle

to her eyes.

She’d laughed when she had said that.

They used to say that it felt like so much longer

that they’d known one another

but now it feels like it couldn’t have been that long,

she wants to scream, say, it’s not fair,

you’re not allowed to take her from me!

But she can’t.
The words get stuck

and they wouldn’t do anything, anyway,

words are pretend,

they never fix anything.

… she’s no longer in pain.

She mutters out a thank you and her phone falls

hitting the tile floor.

She hears it crack.

She doesn't care. 

She leans against the wall

and sobs.