This weekend, I treated myself to another beautiful collection of poems. I found out about Atticus Poetry when scrolling randomly over some websites, looking for some great quotes for my posts on Instagram. And God helps me, his poems are so breathtakingly gorgeous. I know this collection of poems is not everyone’s cup of tea, but I have to admit, many of Atticus’s words spoke to me and cut me to the bones…
There are poems talking about the feelings of love that just knocked me over with how emotional they are. They describe all the facets of love that I just wish I could experience someday, the kind of person that I want to be with, and what it means to be in love:
“As he took her hand
he gave her
all she had been
waiting for—
a shiver
down her spine.”
“I want to be with someone
who dreams of doing everything in life,
and nothing
on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”
“‘There’s too much risk in loving,’
the young boy said.
‘No,’
said the old man,
‘there’s too much risk in not.’”
“Love is
throwing yourself into a stormy sea
hoping there are arms to catch you
knowing that without the leap
there is only the safe
and lonely shore.”
“Love
could
be
labeled
poison
and we’d
drink
it
anyways.”
“IT’S A
LONELY
THING,
PROTECTING
A BREAKABLE
HEART.”
“We were strange in love
her and I
too wild to last,
too rare to die.”
“Break my heart
and you will find yourself inside.”
When he talked more about love, especially the domestic side of it, his words painted my head this picture full of warmth that I always long for:
“It took me a long time to realize
that I am happiest
not at the parties
or the dinners
or the shows
but at home with you
and just our books
our movies
and our tea.
And wherever we go
for now and forever
we will bring this happy with us
for home lives
inside us now
wherever
together
we go.”
There are poems that Atticus wrote about his muse – a “her” that is the source of all his creativity and heartbreak, and I just wish someone someday would write something like these to me, with all these gorgeous verses, all these magnificent imageries:
“I JUST NEED
YOU
AND
SOME
SUNSETS.”
“When I look at you
I find it hard to believe
that the whole universe had not conspired
to bring you to life.
I can’t think of a more beautiful reason
for it all to exist
than for you in this day.”
“Don’t worry—
you see,
to some you are
magic.”
“I think it’s beautiful
the way you sparkle
when you talk about
the things you love.”
“My sweet darling,
all these tears,
this hurt,
the pain in your heart,
do not fight it anymore,
it is a gift, you see, to feel this much
and even though it’s hard
it means you’re alive
with each of these tearful breaths gasped
your soul awakens,
more alive in the pain
than you were in the numb,
you are coming back to me now, my love,
lucid in this darkness—
so cry aloud,
yell,
and fall,
and I will be here waiting
to catch you
when the waking up is done.”
“Does the sun promise to shine?
No, but it will—
even behind the darkest clouds,
and no promise
will make it shine longer or brighter
for that is its fate,
to burn until it can burn no more.
To love you is not my promise
but my fate—
to burn for you
until I can burn no more.”
“The words never meant much
that’s not how I loved,
it was when she stroked my hair
when she thought I was asleep
that I knew she really did.”
“I will follow you,
my love,
to the edge of all our days,
to our very last
tomorrows.”
“When I saw you first, it took
every ounce of me not to kiss you.
When I saw you laugh, it took
every ounce of me not to love you.
And when I saw your soul, it took every ounce of me.”
“I have seen your
darkest nights
and brightest days
and I want you to know
that I will be here
forever
loving you
in dusk.”
“SHE LIVED IN ME
LIKE THE FIRST FEW DAYS
OF SUMMER:
WARM
AND NEW
AND
INFINITELY
POSSIBLE.”
“From
the moment
I saw her
I knew
this one
was worth
the
broken
heart.”
“I took her hand,
and my heart beat fast
as her warmth swallowed me up.
A thousand times I’d run this trail
but not with her.
Her eyes were all that young love should be,
and they lit me up
in every look.
We lay in shooting skies
and freckled stars, and
promised our love would last forever—
and so in our forever
it would
there in a castle atop of Blueberry Hill,
with silver moon rivers
and sailing ships.”
“We drowned out the voices in our hearts
that our love had run its course,
for this night at least
the old music played louder
than the truth that beat beneath our shirts,
and as the stars melted into morning
we smiled at the old stories
and left our love hanging in the air
as we embarked alone
on our tomorrows.”
“I SIPPED
THE MOONLIGHT
FROM HER LIPS
AND STUMBLED
HOME DRUNK
OFF
THE
TASTE OF
HER.”
“It was never the way she looked
always the way she was
I would have fallen in love with her
with my eyes closed.”
“I fought
my eyes to stay awake
no dream was prettier
than the way she slept.”
“She was that wild thing I loved.
My dark between the stars.”
“SHE TORE POEMS
FROM MY FLESH,
IN FIGHTS,
IN LOVE,
AND SEX.”
“She was the most beautiful
complicated
thing
I’d ever seen—
a tangled mess
of silky string—
and all I wanted of life
was to sit
down
cross-legged
and untie
her
knots.”
“In this world of bits and pieces
she was whole
so entirely in front of me
the one honest gift
of my life
dripping there
in the rain.”
“Brushing a girl’s hair
behind her ear
once a day
will solve more problems
than all those
therapists
and drugs.”
“I loved her most,
for all the things she hated
about herself,
for that is what
made her different,
and it was the different
that I loved.”
“She sometimes talked aloud
when she thought I couldn’t hear
about how she felt
or what she thought
and I would just listen
and fall in love
again and again
from the inside out.”
“A sky full of stars
and he was staring at her.”
“It
was
her
chaos
that
made
her
beautiful.”
“She made gentle the wild oceans of my soul.”
This collection of poems is also Atticus’s ode to poetry, to its magic, its power, the essence of creating something touching, beautiful and unforgettable from words:
“Poetry
to me
is stumbling in the dark
searching for
the right words
to describe
the feeling
I get
when she smiles
while she sleeps.”
“WORDS
WILL
SCRATCH
MORE
HEARTS
THAN
SWORDS.”
“Every word he wrote stood in proud protest to this
most organized world.”
“Poetry’s magic
is that it is found when it’s needed.”
“One day I’ll paint the perfect sunset – if I can only find the words.”
“Poetry is a lifelong war waged
against ineffable beauty.”
“Some write for fun
others write
because if they didn’t
the words
would grow
and fester
and burst from the seams
of their souls.
Some words
are safer down
on paper.”
And there are poems that I felt like he was writing about me, and for me, for the emotional, messy and tormented young woman in me that is full of insecurities, but somehow she still marches on, to the beat of her own drums
“Every girl,
if you leave her alone
long enough,
will
eventually
sing
and dance.”
“She was incandescently beautiful
and beauty was the least of her.”
“There was a whole magnificent soul
burning brightly behind her ‘shy.’”
“She was afraid of heights
but she was
much more afraid
of never flying.”
“They saw in her
a bright star burning,
and basked in the heat of her flame,
but behind the bright
she was smoldering
for breath
in the black of a life
she never asked for.”
“It didn’t matter that she fell apart,
it was how she put herself back together.”
“There is nothing
prettier in the
whole wide world
than a girl
in love
with every breath she takes.”
“She wasn’t waiting for a knight—
she was waiting for a sword.”
“That was her magic—
she could still see
the sunset
even on those
darkest days.”
“Watch carefully
the magic that occurs
when you give a person
enough comfort
to just be themselves.”
“I woke up
from the daydream
of my twenties
in a cold sweat,
anxious for
all the lives
I hadn’t lived.”
And finally, Atticus proves to be quite a philosopher, in my opinion, with his deep and unique ways of looking at things and issues in life. I know these “life lessons” have been talked about by a lot of people before, but somehow when expressed through Atticus’s words, they became utterly marvelous and even more heartbreaking to read:
“Chase your stars fool, life is short.”
“I would rather
have a body full of scars
and a head full of memories
than a life
of regrets
and perfect skin.”
“We are astrologers of bodies and mind, searching for truths in each other’s stars.”
“The hardest step
we all must take
is to blindly trust
in who we are.”
“We humans
are so tortured
by not properly guessing
what will make us happy.”
“What a strange world. We trade our days for things.”
“Art takes time—
Monet grew his gardens
before he painted them.”
“We are all born free
and spend a lifetime
becoming slaves
to our own
false truths.”
“There
is always
a glimmer
in those
who have been
through the dark.”
“Don’t give up now,
chances are
your best kiss
your hardest laugh
and your greatest day
are still yet to come.”
“We are made of all those who have built and broken us.”
“Don’t fear,
her father said,
sometimes
the scary things
are beautiful as well
and the more beauty
you find in them
the less scary
they’ll become.”
“OUR
SONGS
LIVE
LONGER
THAN
OUR
KINGDOMS.”
“I hope to arrive at my death
late,
in love,
and a little drunk.”
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for an emotional rollercoaster of gorgeous words put together, and if you don’t mind reading really short poems. But trust me, sometimes just a few words can shake you in ways that are unimaginable…
Final verdict: 9/10
Little Corner of My Mind 