I Crawled Out of the Sewer to Write This Chapbook

7/27/2019 I Crawled Out of the Sewer to Write This Chapbook

1/15

I Crawled Out of the

Sewer to Write thisChapbook

some poems by Annabelle Goll


2/15

THIS WORK IS LICENSED UNDER THE CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION-NODERIVS 3.0 UNPORTED LICENSE. TO VIEW A COPY OF THIS LICENSE, VISIT

HTTP://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY-ND/3.0/ OR SEND A LETTER TOCREATIVE COMMONS, 444 CASTRO STREET, SUITE 900, MOUNTAIN VIEW,

CALIFORNIA, 94041, USA.

Dedicated to anyone reading this.

I love you all.


3/15

TIMESTAMP

7:15 I got out of bed howcould you ask me foranything else

7:30 my shadow wont leaveme alone and its really startingto piss me off7:33 I am dreaming of crawlingout of drainage ditches to eatyour entire family7:36 off the wall and onto the ceilingas you sleep, Im looking downat you Im watching you dream&;#& I am the ghost thatall of those forward emailswarned you about in the

fifth grade


4/15

REALITY TV MAKES ME FORGET I EXIST

news flash.a bug repeatedly slams its body against aflickering light. it reminds me of me

and you. the nightis redder than my fingernails i painted today,inhaling the fumes pretending like idever try and kill myself that way.

ive been watching the tendons inyour hand as your fingersmove. we carvedinto those grooves in the barkour names, meand youbut they cutthat tree down to build a house or something elseless important than love.

who cares, i guess.

news flash.

the sky actually is falling andno one is going crazy anymore.they took this as their cue to leave,so it turned to autumn,weve raked up piles ofdead souls and now were jumping in

like children. we must justbe children. news flash:were all just children.


5/15

AM I DAYDREAMING OR ARE YOU REALLY HERE

imagine that your eyes are the moon and weare breathing muddied waterthere is an empty hourglass mounted onmy wall because i really dont givea shit what time meansthink: the fog is trying to suffocateyou, the rain is tryingto tell you somethingimagine that your mouth is the sun

and we are hanging by our necks betweentwo telephone poles, swayingin the breezepleasei just need five more minutes

NOTES

1. She has an infatuation with dying slowly and she calls it being in love with life.2. It is cold. I am cold. You are cold. We are very cold.3. I am tired of being sad and tired.4. I fucking hate lists.5. Numbers arent even solid enough to hold on to anymore.6. Write poems for yourself and not for him.7. Notice the places where your skin is raised and dont be afraid.8. Notice the way the trees are framed by the light in the sky.9. There is indeed light in the sky.

10. There is a beating in your chest. Grab it. Hold on. Dont let go.


6/15

in my head i constellate the things you said to me and try my best to make sense of it all i stall like anengine in the dead of january amidst the falling snow and snow was like swans if they were migrating

geese at least tell me if you remember that winter how we went outside just to throw things and feel

our arms move in the air we didnt even have a pond to throw into to watch the ripp les watch the

ripples of my stare i see you flinch when i look at you and you drop your head like a child who

knows theyve disappointed their mother

you never disappointed me I swear you never disappointed me


7/15

SUMMER NIGHT

bite into the summer night like itsan orange, wrap the peelaround your fist and

punch the moonone time i jumped so high ihit my head on a zeppelinone time i cried so hard iwent blindone time i cut so deep ibled out all the madnessscream into the summer night likeyoure being chased by something otherthan your imaginationsilence the voices, for just five secondsexorcise the feeling that youre

being watched, stopswallow the summer night likeits just another pill

JUNE

june came like a frost in the night

which is terribly ironic, and if I were less of aterrible person I might paint my fingernails withthe sun or bathe myself in the shade but insteadIll stick my head in the freezer until my cheeksare redder than sunset

if I died laughing it would be wonderfullyironic, because what a way to go, with a smilefrozen like frost like june like my head inthe freezer, Id have my nails painted in red andmy hair tied in a bow, Id die with irony before

Id ever let you go


8/15

1.

I cant remember waking up most mornings

I put a fork in the microwave and now everything is so tangibly broken

and that feels good to meI painted a picture of a girl ripping her chest open and

it was semi-self-representative, accidentally of course

I keep forgetting what being whole feels like so

when things come together it is like sticking a finger into

a frowning electrical socket

I am snapping my fingers in half one by one

and its like music only even more beautiful

2.

you are eating goldfish whilegoogling the symptoms of PTSDand biting your fingernailsflashback to when you were sitting on the roofwith someone elses shadowflashforward to when you cant rememberwhat time it is anymoreyoure lying on the floor ponderingthe implications of the ceiling fansrepetitive motion

right now it is 3:33 and you areslipping into a dream about being completeyou are a puzzle before anyone has eventhought about taking you out of the box

3.

if i cooked you dinner would you sit and talk

to me about the way the light looks

when it filters through the surface of

a chlorinated pool or maybe how

when i sleep for too long i get migraines orhow too many prescription drugs make you feel full

of warmth?


9/15

IM NOT SAYING HIDE BUT IM NOT SAYING SEEK, EITHER

if you dont want peopleasking questions just brandyour diagnosis across

your forehead, justfucking do it,god

watch me standat the top of a crows nestand scream I ALMOSTKILLED MYSELF TWO TIMESand then laugh til myhead literally falls off

let me just post a screen shot ofa screen shot of a pictureof someones broken wrist taggedwith soft grunge and gore

oh yeah, exploit me morethats just SUCH a turn on

i will paint my depression all overmy face like its a carnival andall these washed-up washed-outoutcasts arent just running away

from their problems

i will wait and i will wait and i willwrap my wrists in headbands and then whenyou make a list ofyour mental illnesses and put it in your blogdescription i will literally fuckingkill you


10/15

YOU MUST HAVE HEARD ME WRONG

you bite down on my heart but think its just an apple.

juice trickles out the corner of your mouth like

it owns you, like youre the greatest thing

to ever happen to it.

youre so reluctant to change

even when the sky is crashing like the end screen

of a silent film, and its the apocalypse, i say, but

you assume you heard me wrong.

i bite down on my tongue like its yours

and were in love, were making love under the stars

but thats just my imagination acting up again.

you dont really notice how i look at you, do you?

youre so absorbed in yourself

that you dont notice me biting down on

your shoulder, you dont hear me scream that youre

the greatest thing to ever happen to me

you dont notice as i rewind the tape and

you dont realize that none of this happens

in real time, you dont notice that the rain

isnt still falling.


11/15

shut up

you are going to keep existing after

you're dead, so suicide is not

really a viable option

goddamn, the sun is so bright

goddamn, the night is so fullgoddamn the sun the night

i was right

when i said that i wouldn't survive

as it was but things have

changed, look in the mirror and

bite your lip some more

you'll wish you could ever feel sexy

goddamn, people can be so beautiful

but not youright

you are going to keep existing even after

you're dead so like i said

suicide is not a viable option

have a conversation with your reflection

in the water in the toilet as you try

to keep from getting sick

have a conversation with yourself over

a bottle of pills that youre not too scared

to take, but you wont take them

stick out your tongue to catch the rain and

look at that goddamn sky

so shut up

you're so fucking beautiful


12/15

SKIN

the lights were too bright to think clearly

but i could see my own breath as it hit the skin of the sky

i didnt feel that cold but i guess that was just a trick of the mind

the clouds were just goosebumps

werent they, just raised cotton pimples that the atmosphere

rejected as ugly. i fell in line with their movements because i felt ugly, too

you sat next to me on the bleachers

and cheered as the team in blue and green made the first down

and you threw your head back to laugh, and laugh, and laugh with everyone else

i felt the brush of your skin as

we returned to our seats. it was different than

the skys, different than the earths, different than mine

sometimes i feel the fingers of

a different hand, i find myself in the palm of some

being too great, i can never quite see his face, but only an arm

stretching up, like the notes

at the end of a song, hitting just right, not flat

not sharp. you dont ever seem to share the same visions anymore

the team scores again

you rise with the crowd like you dont havethe discipline to do anything else, like you dont have the nerve

i remain seated in the sky

alongside the ugly and the arms of great beings

reaching out for us, skin like the wind, the lights are blinding


13/15

I REALLY WANT TO BE OKAY

think of the sky singing sunsetsoff-key, id laugh at them, probably

id take my mirror and smash itinto pieces, seven years bad luck butits not like the past seven years havent been bad enough

seven years ago i was about to startthe fifth gradeseven years ago i started to have consistentmigrainesseven years from now ill be out of collegeif i make it through withoutkilling myself

i want to draw you a picture of howwell be in the future

i want to scratch the words iam alive" into the side of a carand see what happenswill they call it vandalismi think i know the answerbut truth has never been morebeautiful than when it was dripping

onto the bathroom floor

i love everyone

i love the way that when you lay on the groundand look at the trees sidewaysyou feel like youre standing inthe sky, still sighing, dancingon the moon i say this doesntfeel like home anymore"but thats okay

because home is always changingand i am changing for the better,i hope


14/15

WORDS THAT TASTE BETTER THAN COFFEE

i see your hopelessness and raise you

a hand, to grab a hair off your black jacket

you once stopped me cold with your stare

so unblinkingly like a blanket of snow in

the dead of winter

for the life of you you cant remember

its bitter but you like it

its old but youve never seen it like this before

im old but ive never seen you so beautiful

we link arms, tilt heads back, swallow something

that burns our throats and makes us build

campfires in the pits of our stomachs

lets have smores to make ourselves feel better


15/15

I Crawled Out of the Sewer to Write This Chapbook

Documents

Transcript of I Crawled Out of the Sewer to Write This Chapbook