Ode To The Rings Under My Eyes

from Stouthearted Bitch by Julia Gaskill

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lyrics

I.

you sucker punched caverns
inching colossal
purple trail blazers
all monumental and zombie mouthed

violent violet bursts
firecrackling sainthood
you unrelenting earthquake

you ring around the rosies
bubonic plague never looked so good

II.

insomnia made bedfellow of me
at too young an age

the moon kissed supple skin
leaving these thick prints
always constant
never pretty
no matter how i muse them

to help on sleepless nights
my mother kissed each eyelid
gifted me a double prayer
as the hands reached two in the morn
as her hands massaged through my hair

i softly found sleep
in the dead of night

III.

the purple darkened with age
but not for lack of sleep
but for fear of it

before we buried my mother
i kissed her eyelids
played mirror
to her and the moon all at once

i did not sleep for years
she only visited in my nightmares
only came back to life as a drone
or a monster or not mother
or everything wrong stuffed into a corpse
or a lie

the circles under my preteen eyes
harden as the hour hand finds 4am
deepen as my bed goes unslept
widen as the moon kisses me and
kisses me and kisses me and kisses me
just like she used to kiss me

IV.

i really did want to write
an ode to these rings under my eyes
to love all of the unloveable parts of me

but isn't it so like me
to strike out with such good intentions
only to decide that they are not worth the effort
only to make it all about my mother

but isn't every poem i write about my mother
isn't she the echo in all my verses
has she not kissed each syllable
isn't she my mouth and voice

don’t i already spend every day
sounding like a ghost
or a prayer

V.

i sleep soundly now
wake up feeling as big as the moon
pretend she doesn’t still frequent my nightmares
smear makeup under my eyes
cover up the unlovable parts of me

you wouldn’t even know of the lilac bruises
that will never fade
shrouded and feared and mourned like
a mother’s kiss

credits

from Stouthearted Bitch, released October 19, 2019

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about

Julia Gaskill Portland, Oregon

Julia Gaskill (she/her) is a professional daydreamer hailing from Portland, Oregon. Her work has been featured on FreezeRay Poetry, Ink&Nebula, SlamFind, Knight's Library Magazine, Write About Now, and more. Julia is the author of four chapbooks, has competed nationally with her poems, runs the mic Slamlandia, and co-founded the Bigfoot Regional Poetry Slam in 2019. ... more