Lines That Wouldn’t Let Me Sleep

You remember when you were young

And you held the night in the palms of your hands

In the lines on the insides of your fingers

And in the creases of your elbows

Sometimes you can still sense little bits of it, there,

Hanging,

Threads of starlight and midnight city air stuck

Under your nails and behind your ears

But when you look in the mirror

It’s a grown-up who looks back,

Haggard, adult,

A woman whose circles under her eyes tell more

Than her cracked lips ever could.

By Betsy Jacobson, 6.2.2011

In Which I Have a Headache.

so here's another
lost-soul-baby-girl
crying at four a.m.,
inhaling her failures
along with the nicotine.
life is oh so tough, isn't it,
when you're in-between
and underpaid?
when prayer is
less effective and
harder to come by and
burns your insides more
than the contents of the
bottles on your
nightstand.
give it up, give it up,
baby girl,
cuz no one's gonna steer
this ship to shore.
no one's gonna anchor you down.
no crew to help you weather
this storm.
i'm not here to unmix your
metaphors, not gonna
take the wheel or
be your wings or
carry you home.
no one has the key.
not you. not even you.

In Which I'm Wearing BPAL's "Ulalume" and It's Making Me Feel Like a Faerie.

it's easy forget
(or pretend to ignore)
those little things
those
add-it-up knock-you-down
slings and arrows
when you're freshly showered
and smell like a poem
or when someone sleeping
is beautiful enough to merit
kisses that
only you will remember
or
when you never leave
your bed,
your
soft comforter and clean sheets.

In Which I Took A Mental Health Day.

isn't lying supposed to
make you feel bad
or something,
tear at you like claws
or guilt?
you know, when it's not
to dry a loved one's tears
or keeps those special
gift-wrapped secrets?
or is that just what grownups
tell you so
you'll stay in line and
they won't have to figure out themselves
if it was you who ate that last bag of
Cheetos
before dinner?

In Which Everything Is Different.

maybe it's a dry heat,
but anyone can see it makes for
sticky situations,
especially when mixed with
equal parts
hidden tensions and
changing priorities.
you can only do so much
before you crack or worse --
fold in on yourself
like an old letter
(or more like last summer,
when the nights that
used to bring you to life
turned against you and were cold,
sharp).
she's been trying for too long
too hard
too much
to let that happen this time,
and
it's her turn now.
it's her turn now.