Elizabeth Hemp

Learning How To Stay – TCK Poem

If This Love Is Supposed To Be Permanent (I Don’t Know How)
Elizabeth Hemp

No one ever taught me how to stay
And you’re getting too close
If this love
Is supposed to be permanent
I don’t know how to do that
And I must confess
You’re scaring me
This close is too close because
What if you leave now
And my world is shattered
As I have always known it will one day be?
Too much power, too much trust, too much
Potential for hurt and no one
Has ever accused me of being an optimist

I don’t know how to stay
This point is farther than
I’ve ever gone before
And I don’t know what comes next
Except leaving
Leaving has always been the abrupt cut off
For all of my history
And I have always hated it but if I’m honest
I don’t know how else to do it
This is the point in the story
Where the ending is supposed to go
And it’s aching nervously
In my bones
I don’t like not knowing what comes next

So there’s no reason to leave
Except every reason in the world
We’re too close, I’m too scared,
You can’t understand this fear in my heart
Compelling me to leave you behind
Before it’s too late and I am the one being left
Again, like always…
Besides that, no one ever taught me
How to stay
And all I know is goodbye

Safety is in goodbye
Safety is in goodbye
Safety is maybe not worth it –
Do I dare to try
And stay?

Click here to read more poems by Elizabeth Hemp

By CulTuremiKs, ago

Airport Poems – Elizabeth Hemp

at the bottom of the escalator in terminal 3

I’m sorry
He says
And I hear
Don’t go.

I carefully study the dust
The shadows
The darkness
The hope in the future
Anything except
His eyes.

He takes my hands
Warms my fingers
Kisses me with the gift of release
Brushes my soul with a last
Moment of sunshine
And lets me go.

I’m sorry
I say
But I mean
Goodbye.

Traveler’s Deja Vu

My shoes have walked these carpets before,
On a different continent but
It was the same.
It is always the same.

Quiet sunset, orange glare reflecting
Off the windows but the
Chaos never ends and
It is an odd contrast, calm and frantic
Side by side here.

We are sprawled out, headphone cords
Held in cool palms, hands that know this routine.
The man next to us is tired, army green and brown.
The woman across the walkway is saying goodbye,
Teary eyes and too many hugs…
Maybe it is her first time – she is young.
I can’t remember my first time.

The little ants in neon vests outside are scurrying
And inside every type of shoe imaginable walks past
But it all feels familiar, deja vu from a thousand
Past experiences – my passport might not agree
But I am an International; airports will always
Feel like home.

Read more TCK poems – this one includes a response from Elizabeth Hemp

By CulTuremiKs, ago

But I Did Anyway – Mock Funeral

Mock Funeral

There was no funeral.
No flowers.
No ceremony.
No one had died.
No weeping or wailing.
Just in my heart.
I can’t…
But I did anyway,
and nobody knew I couldn’t.
I don’t want to…
But nobody else said they didn’t.

So I put down my panic
and picked up my luggage
and got on the plane.

There was no funeral.

By Alex Graham James

A Response

“I can’t. But I did anyway, and nobody knew I couldn’t.”
Isn’t that the summary of every goodbye I have lived through? How many times have I done the impossible, entered into the unimaginable simply because I must? The human spirit is resilient, determined to live, capable of withstanding much. All the same, every time I do something I can’t, I lose myself. Piece by piece I’m losing myself, trails of bloody footprints in my wake.

No words or imagery could ever be enough to capture it, and I’ve spent my whole life searching for how to explain something that is inexplicable. The sacrifice of innocence, the absolute helplessness of a child, the depth of the ache bound up inside my knowledge. Too much knowledge, too much logic, and I cut myself off from the relief of grief, thinking I hadn’t earned it. Wasn’t good enough for it. Isn’t everyone good enough for grief?

By Elizabeth Hemp

By CulTuremiKs, ago