Five Poems by Xenia Giagli

 

Pink

 

the haunting breeze of your touch

should have been enough

and yes, I did it

sat there in humiliating silence

deafening screams of unspoken hurt

oh yes, I played my part

 

do you remember the grey field of my eyes

back when you peered deep inside

suddenly the shimmering cold of numbness

subsided

but it was a lie

just for a while

then I was only a girl again

 

all of your words, worlds of kindness

what a fool I was to believe it was real

I have nothing to be sad about,

nothing to mourn

after all, what am I?

a woman, always settling for

a night’s dream

that never comes.

 

 

On remembering (Orange)

 

you left, just like I had said.

I killed us, just like I had known.

the destined, inexorable end,

has come. Now. At last.

 

remembering you,

I am writing of the sea

the summer sun

that burnt our hugging skins

 

it is the smell that remains

the smell of caring

the way you held my hand

through countless fears

 

and you were there,

during that first Pain

you will not see my rebirth

and maybe that’s the harshest part

 

we both died in various ways

I first killed myself by not loving you enough

and that’s the life I must live through now

maybe this one ending will be the final one

 

grief is the engulfing monster of goodbyes

cutting corners with its ugly voice of torment

silently sneaking in my dreams

to make me hate you

 

but remembering you,

I write of Love.

not about the thing that after it,

you cannot write poems anymore 

 

 

A farewell to innocence

 

and as sharp spring air strokes my unfamiliar frame,

I know.

unexpectedly painfully aware of an unchanging eternity

 

somehow, I walked back home

passing streets that raised me with an unblinking emptiness

all the noise of the world can’t move a single ripple

inside the fractured black of tarnished love

 

and I might try to speak or even shout

but there is nothing there

I can only feel the cold breeze

a cruel, almost comical reminder of ice-cold hands on holy skin

 

I'd like to think there would be thoughts of mom and when I laughed in summer

maybe passing by, muttering their painful goodbyes

so far away, back in a world that I now know was never mine

but cautiously stretching a trembling hand

a shameless wind slaps an already fragile nothing

back here again, floating thoughts of nothing real

alone with the terrifying emptiness that comes with death

and I’m so sorry

 

so many things I want to say

and when I reach for them, for a sign of life,

I only touch torn up leftovers of childhood interrupted

grey smoke to fill a void of a depth unspoken

and of violence unforgiven

 

all my innocence is gone. 

 

 

Her

 

Of all the words that never come,

the name is the deadliest to speak

 

there are these words that have meant things

to all these people who have existed

the right way

but she flew above the earth

never quite touching, never quite reaching

 

and all these years the silence was the loudest cry

that nobody could hear

the vacant eyes were tornados

that swept across her soul leaving behind remnants of loss

 

if you look close enough, there’s only white

in the place of what could have been love

there’s only tears

in the place that could have been bones

 

a vacant body flies through all the commotion

of human things.

Just looking up, would have been enough

 

But for some reason, nobody did see.

 

I am writing about the noise of endless silence

that deliberately goes unheard

in a language that is so foreign

To the soul that learnt to fall

 

You said I had nothing to say,

but there has always been more than I could hold

I spent the years trying to reach you,

while I am dug deeper into the never-ending hole

 

She has turned into thin smoke now.

She is gone.

nothing can penetrate the void

nothing is louder than the unheard words

 

 

The God of Big things

 

connectedness

is a form of prayer

 

laying down

your most raw pain

the screaming agony

of eternal longing

that fierce battle

you so hard fought to hide

 

you lay it all down

into the feeble grasp

of human transience

without knowing

 

if it is going to break.

and it is this risk,

the unexplainable blind faith

into something

that you know might shatter

 

that is the loudest prayer

the primitive calling

 

 

you finally find the God

you were told about

 

not the god of others,

the god of warship and wars

 

you find the God of Faith

because there is no

surrender

more deep than that of Love

 

Inspired by

“And there it was again. Another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature.”

-The God of Small things, Arundhati Roy

 

 

Xenia Giagli writes about all the Colours of life: from the Grief, the Love, the Remembering, and everything in between. She likes to play with punctuation and capitalization to convey emotions, and use metaphors and imagery. She loves to write about the uncomfortable, the unspoken, the painful, and create a community through her raw work.