I still have your t-shirt.
It’s red, like our passion
Was
Like my anger is.
Like our sweating, breathing,
My moans.
I still have your t-shirt.
I don’t know why.
I touch it’s fibres
And feel your coarse skin
At 3 am when the world
Was too much
And I needed to feel
The heat of you.
Bending my shape
To fit yours,
Your hand
Protecting me.
You don’t know
How much it burned.
I still have your t-shirt.
It reminds me
To forget.
What a dent has been left.
I cannot move and yet every ounce
Begs for activity,
Until a small tapping plays
To the tune of my own silence.
Pretence at a marble topped temple.
Surety of a citrus covered habit.
An unessential burn of people.
Welcomed smiles and a nervousness of
What if.
What if it burns my eyes
And grows my bed
Until the other side is lost
To the fuller.
Why do I know them
But I feel like a stranger
As strange as the blur of a ‘good night’ spent.
And a knowing
A certainty
That is astronomical and aware of itself,
Where I will never be.
I am tired of the ghosts.
The ones who say they are there but you turn around only to find an echo.
I am not just another rock pool they can visit until the tide comes in.
I am filled with the lifetime of a thousand worlds,
I know secrets and magic they could only dream of
But they won’t know because they can’t see beyond a hunger
A seeping view of taking what ‘is theirs’.
I am not a green light for them when they decide.
I turn of my own accord.
I am more powerful than any of them would ever know
But they just want to see my weaknesses.
Of which there are few.
I have allowed myself to be vulnerable only to be taken advantage of.
They take what is easiest to take.
They screen up emotion because they think that’s the movie you want to see
When really you only care about who you’re watching it with.
You want to see their name in the credits, but they do too.
I ride waves.
But the water is filled with the sewage of
10000 people,
10000 possibilities,
10000 ways to stop.
I hold my beliefs for myself,
But my self doesn’t hold my beliefs for me.
It makes me question
Whether what I think is reality
Or if reality even exists.
And it’s easier to let go
But harder to feel numb.
When nothing really matters
How can anything persevere
And I make dinner to not eat it
And I pour wine to not drink it
I just do to be done.
Not to exist for the reason everyone craves
But to exist because
Well, exactly.
I thought I’d post some of my poetry before introducing myself and what this website is. So, hi! Welcome, I hope you enjoy my work. I’ll be posting more poems and segments of the books I have written in the coming weeks and months.
I’ll also be sharing all the acting work I get to take part in, if that interests you! If not, there’ll always be plenty of words coming out of my finger.
Till tomorrow,
L x
Death has kissed my skin in the depths of a darkened night,
and held me so close I held my breath for fear of him leaving.
Words spilling, toppling, piling,
Words miles high and inches long.
What words come out may lead thoughts
Shatter dreams, end lives.
I have words within me, like
Piracy, plinth and magical,
Dreaming. These spell out or,
Rather, express the noise inside me.
Wanting a voice, yet feeling
Empty, unnoticed. It ends
All inspiration.
You may tell truth,
But it may not be heard,
Listened to, accepted.
I won’t rest, nor take breath
Until I am heard.
To you, what I say may
Not be important.
But to me,
It is everything.
Lily Portman 