3 Poems by Karley Woods

Body Full of Sins

Out of complete crisis mode,
I try to find the small things
to keep me enduring.
The way warm sunlight peaks through glass windows and
magnifies against surfaces in chaotically pleasing shapes.
The way my hope peaks and plummets like a hazardous
arrhythmia of the mind.
The way the pen feels in my sore hand as I write,
untidy chicken scratch ink on paper.
The way I can wake with my body no longer aching.
It’s trying to find something out of nothing
in each of these 24 hours in a day we get,
the way I like the taste of an A&W chai latte.
The way my doctor says, “Keep your chin up.” But it’s so
hard to do when you’re a body full of regrets.
The way a Bud Light tastes better when you haven’t had
one in a long time.
The way love shows up in unexpected ways.
The way I can be perfect and bad and not enough at
exactly the same time.

The way I briefly went insane, but at least I felt something.
The way I want to keep feeling in this world even when it
can be so painful.
The way we can be cruel and mean and seek forgiveness.
The way we are all unique: a mix of shy and anxious and
confident and emotional and crazy and orderly and nice
and kind and rude and everything in between.
The way I notice everything.
The way to being a person.
The way to living here,
On this earth.

Blue

Light blue linen and coloring sheets,
pencil crayons and markers strewn about the round
table covered with different colors. An avid artist
sitting down, she tells me her name is Jessica.
I say my name but don’t ask her story, don’t want
to pry. Guys slipping on their sneakers and
cracking open the heavy door to light another
cigarette in the cement courtyard, searching for
reprieve. My hope fluttering in the halls of this
psychiatric ward among the blue - blue linen
clothes, blue blankets, blue as the ocean, blue like
my mood. How funny it is to see it reflected back to
me in life that keeps moving at full speed with no
end in sight despite how we all feel, despite the
hardships. Please slow down, let me catch up.

Bones

Emaciated and bony,
sharp collar bones stick out
as if my body is begging
for just a slice of sustenance.
Self harm
has ways of creeping in
when pain is high as a
skyscraper is tall and
longs to be felt in rail thin
figures too dismal to eat,
and too guilty to acknowledge
that this too feels so good.
Hide the faint scars from the steel
of that razor’s sharp edge.
Hip bones that jut out.
The comforting feel of
someone barely holding on
attempting to keep everything
together,
in a confusing dance of
induced starvation and
light as a feather feeling –
as if nothing
heavy can ever weigh me down
again.

Karley Woods is a writer based in Canada. Her work explores themes of despair, the human condition, nature, and life. She has a background in Web Development which helps her exercise her other creative bone. When not writing, she likes to kayak and hike in her native Manitoba.