My good friend Anais – sorry, Anaïs – has relaunched her poetry collection The Whisper Collector. A new cover, a new paperback, and all the edgy poetry we love her for.

Allergies to Society

I do not have time for people who
need constant supervision and
promises of my love… Love in friendship…
I have exhaustion and illness that drives
stakes into me, see, stakes like the ones
you set on how our friendship would be.
I can not take the time to pet all your
wounds, that is something a significant
other would do. Friendship is not the most
important thing in my life, not unlike how
high schoolers say Forever and mean until prom.
I have an interior world I do not let
anyone inside. I do not care how persistent
you are in asking. Can you not see
the door is closed? As well as all this,
consider this, I have lost my voice.
I have to cough it out in the morning and
soothe its aggression against me with
medicinal teas, throat herb drops, and
steam baths. I am carrying about tissues and
using them all until I am flushing the remainder
of the wealth down. Weak of tone I am now,
I only called my mother and even then sat
in silence for some time as my voice had sailed on.
I have had my anger sparked and no air
in my lungs to blow out the flame. It is not
that I wanted to forget about you. And I did
not forget. I just could not speak your
language those days. I could only cloud bust
with my eyes tight shut closed. My fingers
escaped their lacing with my sweet heart’s.
in the night my heart is a closed glove.
I have no energy for you after him.
I am pretending all social skills, because
I want them terribly. For you and for me
and for the masquerade of normalcy. But
the mask slips and I settle back into my skin
of the person who forgets, and is bombed
by her flowers, bombed into creation.
A symbol of the human genius should be
a figure in love with a book. A book has so
many connections and a friend is only
that one person. That one connection which
never ends up seeming important unless
they can handle when I am silent.
When I am coughing up my voice again.

You can find Anais on YouTube, Facebook, or her own website – but first, go get your own The Whisper Collector now!