Sarah Szweda

October

The wind smells like change. It smells like the time my boyfriend slipped inside me with my heartbeat pulsing through my back on the cold concrete and how we went to the McDonald’s afterwards and he bought me an ice cream cone. I can still smell my heartbreak when he left me and it was my first real boyfriend and I thought, this is it, this is it, I’ve fallen in love with sex and ice cream cones and a boy who doesn’t understand the significance of either.

The smell of cigarettes warming hearts but disturbing the crisp October air brings me back to the time my friend and I sat on benches outside the Starbucks, cigarettes in our left hands and coffees in our right, talking in broken French about Audrey Hepburn and Faulkner with the airs of distinguished women who have outgrown their skins.

Fall smells like the realization that school has started, when I walk through the gated entrance and feel the shackles descend upon me, chains dragging my feet backwards through my mind instead of plummeting me forwards into creativity.

October smells like orange paint drying on paper mache pumpkins and my family gathered around the TV, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” blaring while they giggle and my dog barks as she smells her bone, because dogs deserve treats at Halloween, too.

October has rolled around again, reminding me that I live in my memories, instead of in the present; that everything changes from year to year and nothing, absolutely nothing, is constant.

This is my last October.

(Source: sarahszweda)

Indigestion

Today I said the words I love you. They rolled off my tongue; cold, intruding, unfamiliar, leaving an icy block at the back of my throat that I wish you and your love could thaw. I tasted the I in its bold admittance, the love in its overwhelming honesty and power, and the you in its hopeful, pleading tones. I played with the words; chewed and spat them back out. I let my taste buds sift through them one more time, my tongue and my teeth fight with them in a friendly battle. Then I swallowed the words, locked them up inside my ribcage, kept them close to my heart, but never on the tip of my tongue. Sometimes they threaten to leave again, rising with the nausea of realization, but I’m able to swallow them back down. I love you, I whisper, as though you’ll hear me. But they’re just words, and I’m just hungry, and you’re not going to feed me.

(Source: sarahszweda)

Pictures

I want to teach you

all that I have learned from this relationship, that

I have reflected on the nights and days we spent

yearning for eachother and for something that would quiet the insatiable needs of our souls and the hunger of our hearts.

I want to tell you about my days spent alone,

curled up in fireplaces

emerging with a darker soul and an unclear mind,

soot dusting the tip of my nose.

There were nights where I slept in the darkroom,

strands of film strangling and entangling,

our undeveloped pictures haunting me

with their white and eyes and black faces.

For once I was happy that my fingerprints and scratches

had ruined the stills, tainted the images of a love

that I no longer want to see captured on camera.

(Source: sarahszweda)

Hello

What I am struck by as I open Word is how casual my return to writing is. I never thought it would come with a clash of cymbals or the epic tones of an orchestra in the background, but somewhere in the last few months I started thinking it would be years before I could put the so-called pen to paper again. Even as I write this, I realize there is no “return”, that the thoughts/ability never left me, and the words will slowly follow. I leave this here because I’ve long wondered if I need an official outlet and perhaps in the future I’ll want some evidence of my thoughts, dated and honest. Peace xo

Rewind and Release

Ever since you left me

I’ve found you in the mouths of other men

seeking solace in sheets unfamiliar to us both,

neutral territority in which to lose you and find myself.

Here is where I leave behind

the “mine’s”

and the “yours’s”, shedding

another layer of the skin we shared

with each fuck, your definition of me

slowly

           slipping

                          away

in hopes that you, too,

will vanish.

I have lived

what seems like years in your bed.

Now I seek to turn back the clock,

to put the clothes back on,

to push you away,

to lick my lips instead of the crevices of your ears.

The room and I are both untouched

and it is as though you were never here.

(Source: sarahszweda)