COLLEGE FEMINISMS: When She Breaks Your Heart: A Collection of Poems

By Ray Fraizer

~~~

 

Fear

 

Tell me what fear is when you’re going eighty on E

smoking what your father smelled like

when you were fifteen

turning away from his embrace

 

When you have a bleeding in your brain

from trying too damn hard to be brave

 

Lie down and watch the structure of what you thought

would be home in your heart forever

splinter and collapse like it was made of paper

built on sand

 

If goodbyes are traitors to memories

prisoners of war kneeled in a row

a gun missing a few rounds but still loaded

aimed at was once your strength

then fear is the never knowing when it’s your turn to be hit

 

Fear is wishing you were tied to the pain

because feeling will always be better than floating

like no one remembers who you used to be

 

When left each other heavy with the weight

of every nightmare coming true

and I knew that fear would always find me

when I think of you

 

*****

 

Secondhand

 

Diamonds in my palms and knees

a sharpness I was pushed into

blood money folded up in your pocket

you’ll buy yourself something new

I’ll fog up the glass display cases

 

Pawnshop pity

fifty cent heart

a velvet parade ribbon already cut in two

 

Bells ring when you walk out the door

and ring when the wind walks in

 

Despite myself I have been reduced to pulp and rind

dust thick on antiques, rings, silverware

a neon sign that only flickers

 

******

 

Remain

 

Your scent clings in the creases of my fingers

and the underside of my pillows

at night your memory rises like the moon

lightening me up in your after-glow

 

I can feel you between my ribs

hot like an underground spring

close to the center of the earth

boiling steadily

crystal bubbles break the surface

deep inside

there’s a place that still remembers you

 

We burn the same there

and I think I have sucked

enough of you in

that you’ll always remain

 

******************

Ray Fraizer is a writer currently attending the University of California, Davis as a Women and Gender Studies major. Reading is her first love, and writing is a close second. She hopes to eventually contribute published works to the queer literature genre.