Father’s Sweaters
I steal my father’s sweaters
to show him that I care
For us, words don’t come easy
Too vain to lay hearts bare
My father strokes his ego
I sit and comb my hair
The bones collect around us
Calcified feelings we don’t share
I wear my father’s sweaters
as to mimic an embrace
And I think of all the good and bad
I dare not utter to his face
–A. G. Paravel
Happy Mother’s Day
Her bones whined and spit
and from the blood and breakage
came a breath of life
–A. G. Paravel
Echoes
The pain is now an echo–
distant and soft
barely impressing,
but a reminder that it was real.
–A. G. Paravel
I remember the time you told love was touching souls
But surely you’ve touched mine ‘cause
Part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time
Blindsided
Your lips parted to release
Cries of bliss that echoed in my chest
Our whispers so seemingly reciprocal
that they had me fooled
So much so that I let down my guard and danced with a stranger
So much so that while I felt love
I was blind to your guilt
While I felt sincerity
You felt disconnect
So when the unfavorable sentiments fell from what were once lips so kissable
I could only sit in silence and swallow rusty nails
Your words so laced with regret, they felt like ash pulled into my lungs
–A. G. Paravel
3.2.15
You paint the world blue
Like cool metal on sun burnt lips
Like lightening in a bottle
and rivers deep and pulsing
Like menthol pulled clean into my lungs,
sending shivers through my marrow
You are the way that ice feels as it slides down my throat
Cool and present
And when I look into your eyes, they’re like the dancing ocean
and I a willing passenger
whisked away
–A. G. Paravel
Or I Will Turn to Stone
I bend at the waist
and after heavy breathing
heave the monster onto the canvas
We should burn the pages
Yet we put them on display
For if we didn’t purge the darkness onto paper
It would live inside us
A cancer spreading throughout the organs
Infecting the blood, thickening like mud,
hardening in our veins
and turning our bodies to stone
A gallery of frozen dreamers
So I put the pen to page
To stay among the living
–A. G. Paravel
In Darkness I Dare
It’s only in the deepest quiet
that I greet the loneliness
that I dare cry
There’s no warmth here
only fear
and the feeling the fault is mine
–A. G. Paravel