Sierra Demulder Quotes

Your body is not a temple. Your body is the house you grew up in. How dare you try to burn it to the ground. You are bigger than this. You are bigger than this.

My body is a dead language and you pronounce each word perfectly.

I loved you head over handles like my first bicycle accident — before the mouthful of gravel and blood, I swore we were flying.

Writing a list of ways I could be better and writing a suicide note are the same thing

You are a souvenir shop, where he goes to remember how much people miss him when he is gone.

You wonder why I don’t answer your 3 a.m. phone calls. When you say “I miss you”, I begin to undress myself out of habit.

My sister told me a soul mate is not the person who makes you the happiest but the one who makes you feel the most, who conducts your heart to bang the loudest, who can drag you giggling with forgiveness from the cellar they locked you in. It has always been you. -Love, Forgive Me

Your body is the house you grew up in. How dare you try to burn it to the ground.

I’ve hoarded your name in my mouth for months. My throat is a beehive pitched in the river. Look! Look how long this love can hold its breath.

When I feel myself falling out of love with you, I turn the record of your laughter over, reposition the needle. I dust the dirty living room of your affection. -Love, Forgive Me

Because suffering is the bible she was sworn in on. Because self-doubt was the ferry she took to get here and yes, it did get her here, but she never knew she could swim.

I loved you head over handles like my first bicycle accident— before the mouthful of gravel and blood, I swore we were flying. -Cycle of Abuse

tonight in yoga, I realized for the first time that breathing is not the process of being filled and emptied: breathing is the act of actually making love to the whole world

We only carry what we think we need,

When he sleeps, the snoring does not bother me: the rhythmic growl, gravel shoved across the sidewalk of his throat. It is the grasping, desperate way in which he takes in air—his gulping lungs as if every dream is filled with water and he is trying to inflate the life jacket under his skin. I babble in my sleep. He believes I am trying to tell him how my heart works, says he will translate the manual one day. I want to ask him: am I the ocean? Are you drowning in everything I don’t say when I’m awake?” —Heart Apnea

Tonight in Yoga I realized I have been afraid of meditation my whole life, which is to say, I have been afraid of myself my whole life

So here’s to our blistered feet. Here’s to my whimpering knees, your weary shoulders. Here is the foreclosure of my shame and here is our brokenness. Look at us being so damn human: yes, it happened, yes, it was not our most graceful unfolding, and yes, we were both so present the whole time.

I am trying to teach poetry in school districts that only know how to starve. I am trying to show my students, who don't know how to spell, how to write their lives in anything but blood. I am trying to learn how to give and foster forgiveness in a body that wants none of it.

I have calculated the total number of hours we spend sleeping beside each other in a week and I wanted to tell you it could be considered a full-time job. We could be eligible for healthcare benefits, could probably even pay for a mortgage by now. I remind myself of this, in daylight, when I miss you and cannot reach across the bed for the comforting filling and refilling of your chest. Such a strange affair we are having on each other; these hours that I have not lost but do not remember. This cannot be the best of love: to drool on someone’s collarbone or inhale an elbow to the jaw or be woken by the most ungraceful sounds of the body. But what is it if not the softening of grips? A letting go of. Your heart finally slowly that stubborn, lonely march.

I emote not unlike a blender on high with no lid and lots and lots of ice.

ODE TO CARBONATION you taste like what I imagine swallowing radio wires feels like: all sparks and pop music in my throat.

Look at us being so damn human

I dream of you more often than I don't.

Change, it moves like a bullet and you already pulled the trigger.

Mantra to Overcome Depression Vitamin D. Sunlight. Go outside. Get a good night of sleep. Not too good. Not shades drawn forever good. Not like you used to. Open the windows. Buy more houseplants. Breathe. Meditate. One day, you will no longer be afraid of being alone with your thoughts. Exercise. Actually exercise instead of just Googling it. Eat well. Cook for yourself. Organize your closet, the garage. Drink plenty of water and repeat after me: I am not a problem to be solved. Repeat after me: I am worthy I am worthy I am neither the mistake nor the punishment. Forget to take vitamins. Let the houseplant die. Eat spoonfuls of peanut butter. Shave your head. Forget this poem. It doesn't matter. There is no wrong way to remember the grace of your own body; no choice that can unmake itself. There is only now, here look: you are already forgiven.

Today Means Amen Dear you, whoever you are, however you got here, this is exactly where you are supposed to be. This moment has waited its whole life for you. This moment is your lover and you are a soldier. Come home, baby, it's over. You don't need to suffer anymore. Dear you, this moment is your surprise party. You are both hiding in the dark and walking through the door. This moment is a hallelujah. This moment is your permission slip to finally open that love letter you've been hiding from yourself, the one you wrote when you were little when you still danced like a sparkler at dusk. Do you remember the moment you realized they were watching? When you became ashamed of how much light you were holding? When you first learned how to unlove yourself? Dear you, the word today means amen in every language. Today, we made it. Today, I'm going to love you. Today, I'm going to love myself. Today, the boxcutter will rust in the garbage. The noose will forget how to hold you, today, today-- Dear you, and I have always meant you, nothing would be the same if you did not exist. You, whose voice is someone's favorite voice, someone's favorite face to wake up to. Nothing would be the same if you did not exist. You, the teacher, the starter's gun, the lantern in the night who offers not a way home, but the courage to travel farther into the dark. You, the lover, who worships the taste of her body, who is the largest tree ring in his heart, who does not let fear ration your love. You, the friend, the sacred chorus of how can I help. You, who have felt more numb than holy, more cracked than mosaic. Who have known the tiles of a bathroom by heart, who have forgotten what makes you worth it. You, the forgiven, the forgiver, who belongs right here in this moment. You, this clump of cells, this happy explosion that happened to start breathing, and by the grace of whatever is up there, you got here. You made it this whole way: through the nights that swallowed you whole, the mornings that arrived in pieces. The scabs, the gravel, the doubt, the hurt, the hurt, the hurt is over. Today, you made it. You made it. You made it here.

I’ve hoarded your name in my mouth for months. My throat is a beehive pitched in the river. Look! Look how long this love can hold its breath.

he realized he was not the unnatural disaster he once was. His pain was no longer something one could drown in.

the person who did this to you is broken. Not you. The person who did this to you is out there, choking on the glass of his chest. It is a windshield and his heartbeat is a baseball bat: regret this, regret this. Nothing was stolen from you. Your body is not a hand-me-down. There is nothing that sits inside you holding your worth, no locket that can be seen or touched, fucked from your stomach to be left on concrete.

God Bless Your Fingers Ten sugar-dipped strawberries. Ten humming sailors. Let the church say amen. Let the chapel doors open and open again. Ten gentle explorers who found my body buried inside itself. Who can see in the dark. Who can baptize me from across the continent. Let the church of my legs say bless. Let the church of my breasts say oh god. You have found the presents I hid from you. You have grown in me a basin I can never fill. Ten wise men. Ten pilgrimages across my stomach. Ten lit candles. Ten holy ghosts. I am a séance. I am a séance.

Livia, your words are weapons; your voice is the strength it takes to wield them. Better yet, let's free ourselves of violence as you have only ever been a valiant champion of tenderness. Livia, your words are lightening bugs. Your voice is the darkness that allows them to glow. Please know every sound you have ever made and will ever make will always lead to grace.

MEMORIAL The bonfire from last night had been swallowed by the earth and covered with white ash. We placed lawn chairs on its grave, sat on the blanket of dust and spoke about things we pretended not to miss— oblivious to the stubborn kindling that refused to let go of the fire which had burned so strongly for it once.

him

I am telling this story as if it were mine. I am harvesting this splinter. This embarrassing toothache. I am dragging my father’s temper out of storage by the wrist.

You, this clump of cells, this happy explosion that happened to start breathing, and by the grace of whatever is up there, you got here. You made it this whole way: through the nights that swallowed you whole, the mornings that arrived in pieces. The scabs, the gravel, the doubt, the hurt, the hurt, the hurt is over. Today, you made it. You made it. You made it here.

HEART APNEA When he sleeps, the snoring does not bother me: the rhythmic growl, gravel shoveled across the sidewalk of his throat. It is the grasping, desperate way in which he takes in air – his gulping lungs as if every dream is filled with water and he is trying to inflate the life jacket under his skin. I babble in my sleep. He believes I am trying to tell him how my heart works, says he will translate the manual one day. I want to ask him: am I the ocean? Are you drowning in everything I don’t say when I’m awake?

It Rained for Two Days Straight Yesterday, Ryan told me his grandfather was admitted to the hospital. It was raining the way it rains in the movies, like whoever does the dishes left the faucet running, heavy drops polishing everything in the city dark. We ran from one drooling awning to the next, quicker, then slower, quicker, slower. If one had watched from the sky, our bodies would have looked like two small needles being pulsed forward by some invisible machine, stitching the streets together. Today, Patric was left by a girl he did not love but did not not love. He told me it was impossible to imagine himself both alone and whole. It was still raining--the sky's silly metaphor for sadness, untimely, startling, the way it makes the whole world more honest. Death is like this, too. Heartache, also. The sudden absence of what was there but now not. I touched Patrick's shoulder, attempting to pass my human to his. I sent Ryan a poem. I cannot do more than this art of bearing witness, to be both the bucket and the mirror, to say, yes, you are here but I am here also, to say you won't be here forever, or to say nothing and just walk beside each other in the rain.

LOVE, FORGIVE ME After Rachel McKibbens My sister told me a soul mate is not the person who makes you the happiest, but the one who makes you feel the most. Who conducts your heart to bang the loudest. Who can drag you giggling with forgiveness from the cellar they locked you in. It has always been you. You are the first person I was afraid to sleep next to, not because of the fear you would leave in the night but because I didn’t want to wake up gracelessly. In the morning, I crawled over your lumbering chest to wash my face and pinch my cheeks and lay myself out like a still-life beside you. Your new girlfriend is pretty like the cover of a cookbook. I have said her name into the empty belly of my apartment. Forgive me. When I feel myself falling out of love with you, I turn the record of your laughter over, reposition the needle. I have imagined our children. Forgive me. I made up the best parts of you. Forgive me. When you told me to look for you on my wedding day, to pause on the altar for the sound of your voice before sinking myself into the pond of another love, forgive me. I mistook it for a promise.

Breathing is not the process of being filled and emptied: breathing is the act of actually making love to the whole world, which is to say the world is your lover, which is to say love the whole world, in all sweaty folds and scabbed pockmarks, which is to say love your dirty corners, your stalk-like legs and barrel hips, love all the no and the no and the no that brought you rigth here, to this moment and love the yes. The yes: the breath that found its way to you, built a home in your blood cells, changed itself to better suit you and for it, tonight, you say: I was made to breathe and move and give, which is to say love. Love. I was made to love.

The bonfire from last night had been swallowed by the earth and covered with white ash. We placed lawn chairs on its grave, sat on the blanket of dust and spoke about things we pretended not to miss— oblivious to the stubborn kindling that refused to let go of the fire which had burned so strongly for it once.

I have always imagined forgiveness / as a garden. A serene landscape / with perfect paths and soft lightning, / not a leaf out of place. But forgiveness / cannot merely be an assembly of lovely / things or the act of meandering pass. / It must be the mud also. It must be / the weeds and the mosquitos and / the hundreds of miles it took you to walk there.

Language is the passing of water from hand to cupped hands. Impossible not to spill, we lick the bounty off our wrists.

My biggest fear is the belief that / I am and always will be rotten, right / down to my blueprints, unworthy / of love, even one as sickly as this.

But I could never come to America, she says. Your police, they are too aggressive.

I must tell you: every poem is about death when you are reading to the dying.

I have loved you even when I have asked myself not to.

There is camaraderie among women and death. Both know how to become a vigil. To be busy and still. An usher from one room to the next.

Isn’t it intoxicating— the ecstatic briefness of it all?

None of us are going back. Winter will be served cold and alone, the way things lay in museums. Welcome to our finest exhibit: the heart gutted, the lovers who know no springtime.

I was wrong; my grandmother isn’t waiting for death. Instead, drifting in and out of a much softer world. It is the living who wait. Who count the hours, the morphine doses, the last requests for ice chips. With their card games and their tears and their own hushed regrets from all the time they had nothing to wait for.


We are all heavy with outdated versions of ourselves.

I am in awe of this season, how every room in nature becomes a funeral.

Who named the ground for kneeling? Who first imagined heaven? Decided to sing upward, calling on the waiting room of everyone we love.

Tell her I am afraid, but I am trying anyway. Because what more can we ask of ourselves (now and then) but to race over and over imperfectly against time, disease, famine, heartbreak, freak acts of humanity and nature, only to wake up back at the starting line, salvaged and full of hope.

I do not fear change, but I am quieted by it.

I’ll still love you when I am bones, when I am air, when I am made only of stars.

If I am a remake and this life the afterimage of an afterimage of a soul, new as the first word, tell her I am attempting to free us. Poorly but stubbornly, I am attempting to let go. If not for us, then for the next passenger.

suffering feels cleaner.