Lies and Other Minor Tragedies: Poems

By Alexandra Mikah

Mystery and wonder
Spewed from his very pores.
His skin,
Made of lightning bolts
Ignited my spine.
As we stopped in the rain,
He made it easy to forget
We were playing a game.
I was attracted to his darkness

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491758939

Alexandra Mikah

Alexandra Mikah was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Book preview

PART ONE

Him

Like James Dean

February.25th.2014. - Circa 15:00

It’s always the same

Blue eyes compared to oceans

And skies,

Blond hair to sand

And the crusts of pies.

But when I thought of his blue eyes

I thought of the brown couch in his basement,

Or his kitchen

And the green placemats.

I thought about his jacket that smelled of smoke

And the spicy jalapeños we ate

Trying not to choke.

His hair was neither brown nor blond,

Too long on top and shaved at the sides;

Carefully styled to look careless.

He drank way more coffee than any boy ever should

And smoked less than any smoker I’d ever met.

It wasn’t a habit or an addiction,

That was the contradiction.

He was the kind of boy

Who looked for himself in every poem he read

Trying to find someone he could relate to.

When he read of boys with unkempt blond hair

And blue eyes,

Wearing leather jackets that held their cigarettes

In the breast pockets,

He couldn’t help but wonder

If they were miserable too.

It was a shame

That he dreamt so big,

Because only his nightmares ever came true.

Playing songs on his pillows

And singing into his guitar,

His greatest wonder

Was if anyone would ever miss him

When he was gone.

He isn’t gone,

But I miss him every day,

And that’s ok

Because I don’t think I miss us anymore.

The last time I looked into his basement couch and green placemat eyes

I finally saw blue,

And it faded much too quickly into grey.

The blank look on his face reminded me of the white paper wrapping his cigarettes.

The light in hospitals always scared me;

It’s never really been light.

You can’t call something that takes the color out of us ‘light’.

Especially when it takes more than just colors from us.

For a split second,

I couldn’t tell if he was unconscious or