for when you only know your best friend through discords and Other Poems

By Jillian Thomas

Originally published in Ice Lolly Review

for when you only know your best friend through discord

i am sobbing more than i need to
beneath the eyes of the beholder- i am
the beholden to be judged
the muse // model // rose through concrete
and you are still looking me in the eyes
oh how painful it is for you to see
me manually operating my very own breath

you surely think my tears
are shed in vain for what could i have
to cry about- falling apart 
before your very palms
i have only ever given you envelopes-
signed sealed delivered and sent from
you to me

[we are a dead language yet i still
attempt cpr]

we talk in singlets and rhymes
never stopping to wonder if 
the prying eyes of one another
aren’t prying enough and that,
my dear friend, is why you see me cry

[you see me in blooming shades
of midsummer and i let you, for who am i
to argue with your ebbing laughter]

you regale me and i, you,
& persimmons on trees are
the closest we come to embrace

the willows must keep on weeping
for we will never know each other
through more than birds of paradise-
if we try to speak,
i have decided that your eyes will
continue to judge

flown too far from the sun

i am the icarus // you are the sun
& only one of us holds the abacus
time gave us herself
there are lightyears still until
i reach your cheshire glow but
still i watch the beads, adopting
the nature of their interval

//

we are hurtling towards
one another at an alarming rate
but the abacus never slows and

i do not have the time to reach out
and beg it to undo
my predetermined fate-
i never would have guessed
would meet my match in
exponential twin flames 

// 

i choose to believe maybe
the abacus had my name on it-
willing to be used as my very own
pandora’s box
                  [i always wanted
                  to be historical 
                  but maybe not historically a fool]

i pleaded for exile for the longest time but
now i am hurtling towards my heliocentric decline,
maybe ptolemy has merit after all-
if i am diving in the opposite direction from
the sun i cannot possibly
fly too close

phobos and deimos

i am forever awaiting the dropping
of the other shoe; surely phobos and deimos
have craters that can only be filled by my fetal position

i have learned to tiptoe daintily around the salted pillars
one saintly confession from collapse-
i operate on the marionette
strings of the gargoyles seething through the 
fourth dimension

i sleep with one of everything open, 
vacancy for midnight conjurings i
seem to forget when morning covers her breast;
my dreams seem almost alcoholic, 
fermented from my crazed sobriety

but perhaps it was only a fever dream, 
sickly half-formed embryos
mutilating my coherence until it was crucified 
and i am forced to
nurture its dead weight with sugar water 
until it is sweetened enough
to return to consciousness

it is not only in my slumber that the gargoyles appear 
or the wine is dripped
between my gums, no it has nestled itself
in my dwindling telomeres

i have reconciled with the fact that
the shoe i am wearing has a partner in the sky,
looking for my feet then 
aiming for my head

Jillian Thomas is a 17 year old poet from Pennsylvania, who enjoys writing about mental health, outer space, and love, among other things. She has been published in Footprints on Jupiter, the Weight, Levitate, and the Ice Lolly review, and enjoys skiing, napping, and listening to music in her free time. Her poetry can be read on her Instagram @astrallyprojecting.