Tag: Megan Falley

“What the Hour Hand Said to the Minute Hand” by Megan Falley

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry2 Comments

At 7:35 A.M, you lay your tired body on mine

before peeling off, like a slow band-aid.

At 8:40 you sprint home and make instant coffee.

At 9:45 we finally drink it, cold.

I finish your leftover half.

By 10:50 you are already breathless.

I live for every time we overlap.

When 11:55 comes I spend the entire minute convincing you to stay.

You never do.

By noon I put my hands on your shoulders and say, “Baby,

you’re getting thin. All this running in circles and barely sitting down to eat.”

At 1:05 you tell me that while you were gone,

15,300 babies were born.

At 2:10 you don’t say a word,

just come in and kiss me for sixty seconds straight.

At 3:15 we sit quiet, listening to rain falling everywhere

in the world at once: all 15,000 tons.

At 4:20 we pull a little from the tight joint I keep behind your ear.

You do not inhale.

At 5:25 you meet me for happy hour.

My neck already salted, a lime wedged in my teeth,

a shot of tequila sitting on the bar.

At 6:30 I hear the ticking.

I count your heartbeat like seconds between thunderclaps.

By 7:35 I can see you in the distance,

each second a tease until you drape over me.

We always love quick and you never let me hold you.

I dream of drinking you through a straw.

At 8:40 you watch my beard grow 0.00027 of an inch.

At 9:45 we do not speak.

Too many people have died since we last met.

At 10:50 we pray for a meteor,

at least a clumsy kid to spill sugar in our gears.

11:55 is my favorite.

We’re only apart for mere minutes.

But at midnight you’ll apologize sixty times

because it will always be like this.

At 1:04 AM I am already sleeping.

It’s exhausting loving someone

who is constantly running away.

– Megan Falley, “What the Hour Hand Said to the Minute Hand”

“lana del rey intervenes when she notices i’ve stopped writing about my ex” by Megan Falley

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry4 Comments
It’s good that he’s gone,
but don’t let him be too gone.
He’s got to be candle blown out
in the other room gone.
Or exhaust pipe
huffing down the block gone.
Not closure-gone. Not someone-else’s-
baby-gone. Not cut your hair gone.
He can’t ever be too far
away to hurt you, honey.
You can pedal away but make sure it’s a polaroid
of him clicking in your bicycle wheel down the boulevard.
Put a suitcase in a trunk and every state in between you
if you want, but when you turn on the radio,
search for his song.
Don’t get me wrong, you can love.
You can bend over
a pinball machine for a biker,
or a balcony for a photographer.
You can bend over a bridge
for a poet, but when you’re in a strange city
at a lonely hotel bar and they ask
what you’re drinking,
say his name.

—Megan Falley, via Rattle #46, Winter 2014

 

“Telling Him I Kissed A Woman” by Megan Falley

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

I cut the pill of truth
and served it with honey.
A half-lie, I said

we were drunk.

Painted us starved,
in dresses of gin, egged
on by the barstools.

Painted myself stumbling
onto her face,
more so than an actual kiss.

Painted it as if cameras were rolling.
An image he could beat
off to, instead of curse. Said

it meant nothing

And how could it?
I was straight
as a wedding aisle.

I touched
his beard. Begged him
to stay. Insisted

it was only a kiss

and hoped he wouldn’t hear it
in my voice, how it sounded like

it was only a decade.
It was only a war.

I didn’t say there was no bar,
no audience except
the magnetic poetry falling

to the floor as she pressed me
up against the refrigerator, beaming.

That I felt more in that
one kiss than anytime he thrust
his tongue down my throat,

or wouldn’t get a condom,
or wanted it facedown.
I swore

it will never happen again.

He called me a whore.

I said

I love you.

He called me a bitch.
I said

yes.

 

~ Megan Falley (@megan_falley), tumblr.