literature

Sleeping Ghosts

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itotallycantdraw-woo's avatar
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Literature Text

Fabric of you is still threaded through my sheets.
If I look closely, I can pick them out one by one,
And lace them around my aching feet,
Course them through my naked torso,
Holding together the pieces with loving needles.

I still see you hanging on every drop of liquid crystal,
Every swirl of heavy smoke,
Fleetingly passing me your eyes.
I hear you in my breath,
My jaw shuddering with each whisper.

These ghosts dance around my sleep,
Melting their hands with my skin.
They tattoo your smile onto my fragile frame,
Encode your laughter to replay in my ears,
A permanence not undone by waking.

I lay hidden within these stone walls,
Ghosts trapped in my mind to torment me.
This lace envelopes my body,
Crushing me to dust that hangs in the air
I wish would blow to you, so you could breathe again.
This is most definitely one of the most interesting things I've ever written. It actually had me tearing up a bit as I was writing it.

Comment please! It's so important to me to I hear your thoughts, especially on this one. :)

Addition (10/7/14): So I've changed one word in the poem to help get my point across a little better. I hate putting my ideas for meaning in the author's notes since I like people to interpret my work in their own ways, but I hope my edit helps. My idea with this is not only/simply the debilitating death of a lover, but also a substance abuse that went with it. I imagine someone lying on their bed, always lost in a drug dreamland, but even in this "sleep" they can't get over it. Lines like "Permanence not undone by waking" imply that it's often just as bad in the drug haze as out of it (or even worse out of it). Key words like needles, smoke, and my new addition of liquid crystal I hope send the reader in this direction. I received a comment about how the transition to ghosts is disruptive, though since that's the main idea of the poem, I hope that by changing the word, it makes more sense why that suddenly gets introduced, since I feel like the ghosts encompass the pain, memories and demons that haunt the subject (including the drugs, key line "melting into skin") The lace represents a binding/dependence, which is why it's important that it is connected around the subject with needles. Anyway, there you go. This is my interpretation and ideas for the poem, but anything can be read in different ways by different people, so any feedback about any of this paragraph would be greatly appreciated! Thanks if you actually managed to read through all of this :)
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Comments9
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bunocerous's avatar
I love the idea of a person's memory permeating the things around, such as the fabric in your bed.I can see how that extends to sleep, in another verse. But it is a little disruptive when it jumps to the stone walls analogy and ghosts.