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Spell Check aka Words That Have Lost Their Meaning (Slam Poetry)
Folder:
2017 “Brain, spell check my thoughts.”
I’ve waited so long to do this because I’ve been busy. Busy, okay? Preoccupied with work, sleep, human interaction, writing, daydreams, reality.
I’ve waited so long to do this because I give too many excuses.
I’ve waited so long to do this because I’m afraid of what I’ll fi-
Found: 43 total errors.
That was fast.
Finished even faster than the quickest thought of you this week.
I guess that’s not hard to do
when people like to call my head a shrine to your beauty.
26 moments of overanalyzing.
Okay, that one I expected. I’m surprised there’s not more, probably. I’m more aware than I should be when you sneak up behind me. I’m more aware than I should be of our untold feelings, the ones that have never even been written. I’m more aware than I should be when our secrets are under the same table. I’m more aware than I should be when you lean forward, bracing your weight on connected fists. Now I am even more hyperaware of how often I sit in that same position. I magnify everything, everything, everything, I read the signs before I can see them.
8 ideas you shouldn’t have had.
Shouldn’t? Who’s to decide what I should and shouldn’t think? I can’t get my mind out of the gutter when you’re around, it’s true. Most of my ideas should be outlined in a mess of green and red by now. I need to get back to the sidewalks, I need to concentrate-
6 instances of thinking about harmony, or that song, or a handful of cards with the best people, or lemon juice in an open wound.
Crooked red lines run rampant around my head, underlining so many of my thoughts, spell check complaining they shouldn’t be there, my brain thinks they have lost their meaning but to my heart they still carry so much weight, so many colors. I can’t fix myself I can’t stop thinking them I won’t stop thinking them
3 flickers of not even your name,
not even overthinking,
not even your initials
or the way you hold yourself,
just you.
The unavoidable. I could sift through my head and clear the red off this page, spell checks or bloodstains, until I can’t clear any more and even then it would go like this
“Brain, spell check my thoughts.”
Found: 43 total errors.
43 flickers of
you.
Why did I do this again? Now there’s green and red everywhere, brain.
I crumple up half these thoughts. They don’t even deserve to be folded into airplanes before I toss them out so the page is clean.
Spell check has put crooked red lines under harmony and that song and a handful of cards with the best people and lemon juice in an open wound, forgetting how those things are intertwined with you, forgetting they exist entirely.
But still I don’t want it to cross out your name.
