Author: EKArts

Erin Knape is a University of Michigan senior majoring in psychology and minoring in creative writing. Her greatest passion has always been the arts, whether that be writing, painting, or photography. Capturing Campus, a weekly installment of poetry and photography, aims to capture campus life through artistic expression. Dive into Capturing Campus every Sunday!

Capturing Campus: In shades of blue

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*Content warning: Vulgar language*

Dick around in shades of blue

Blue jeans trimmed at the ankles

Blueberries buoyed in jam

Oceans I’ve never seen

Lakes like paintings

Searching for Moby Dick

Crayons in cornflower and indigo

Blue raspberry Slurpee for two

My brother’s favorite orchids

Blue bunnies on plush pastures

Late night bubble blowing 

Songs with somber melodies

Twitter when it was ours

Blue jays in the park

Beneath a soft sky

The color of her eyes

I tended to pastures

Jammed ankles that sang

Like indigo weather

With melodies like paintings

I’ve seen before 

Orchids were her eyes

Two parked beneath the sky

Blowing wind

I love your shades

Of blue

Capturing Campus: Alternative Transportation

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Alternative Transportation 

As a child

colors dissolved

and speckles of magic 

emerged

I waited for something

to take me away from here

But nothing did

so I held up a mirror

and imagined I’d fallen in

to a world opposite this one

grass grew from the sky 

clouds like slippers

teary eyed turned upside

anger was to satisfy

a vendetta paid in full

My friend gifted me a book

empty pages and a burn building 

in a chest beating

for a richer life

where pain isn’t pleasure

where people mean what they mean

where I’m far away

but home

yes, home

Capturing Campus: The Right Way

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The Right Way

I could tell myself 

I’m right

but there is no way to know

how I was meant 

to turn out

the beliefs  

the hurt 

a mind in mutiny

the inside suffering  

indoctrination until opinions

become ghosts

untouched and unfelt

preaching reason and absurd escape

packing the mind until stuffed and bursting 

with hard-to-hear thoughts 

was I meant to be this way

or did circumstance

bend me

into a familiar shape

Capturing Campus: Dichotomous Nothing

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dichotomous nothing

the air bleeds 

honey cough syrup

stirred by a Southern wind

winding ribbons around the soul

symphonies around suffering

boxed up in pairs

sweet like pears

the taste of bitters on my tongue

lick the surface of starving minds 

tired bones buried 

deep

in the earth 

dormant dead and dusted 

dreaming of something better

than sallow skin 

bone marrow chipping in

to make days of dichotomous nothing

will there ever be something

Capturing Campus: I’ll meet you there

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Content Warning: Mentions of suicide, abusive relationships

I’ll meet you there

I’ll climb down to hell

with its flat plains and dry heat

to reach you 

not to save you

but to die there with you

I’ll swallow what I’m drowning in

and find you at the bottom

a swollen face

apart from vitality

I’ll fill a bathtub to the lip

feed the wire three feet

into the socket

on the other side

of bubbles and brutal force

track my end in beats of five

on the railroad

until the engine begs

and I spill open

on the grass

I’ll kick my feet

to tighten the rope

a necklace just for you

a party favor

that never loosens

I’ll host the funeral service

an open casket

for all to see

a blackened pit

and the soul

you never took from me

Capturing Campus: Hummingbird

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Hummingbird 

what must it be like to know someone?

not their favorite color or where they went to high school or where they want to retire or how they like their scrambled eggs on any given Sunday

but the texture of their skin

the patterns on their fingertips

born in the womb of their mother

the webbing and weaving 

are they high-strung or laid back?

with skin that sags around soft eyes

and peach fuzz

molded lips that taste of

dark-roasted coffee 

and the beating in their chest like a hummingbird 

when I press my ribs against theirs, my hip bone against theirs

we make a sculpture that breathes and pours

with sweat and some saccharine 

pleasure in the moment 

a pulsing and pressure

the roughness of legs

shaved two days ago

the bowing of their side and the curve of their arms 

bracing and borrowing glances

eyes closed, mouth wide

taking honeysuckle and morning dew

speaking only of cardamom and chamomile

whispering of rapture

to be enchanted in a body

to feel, to know