Poetry | ‘Your Father’s Carpet’ by Holdyn Bray | LGBTQ+(Vol I) – Issue 35

You gargled salt water

Pretending you would become the ocean

And maybe you believed you could 

But saltwater turned into cheap whiskey and cigarettes

Yet no matter how many you lit 

you never went up with the smoke

And I’ll admit you stained me 

like the wine you spilled on your father’s carpet

All the sleepless nights

We wasted talking about the future and the people we wanted to become

How our sadness became a lifestyle 

And in the blink of an eye I saw everything we would become, all the time we would waste so I gargled salt water to get rid of your taste

And moved to the ocean, yet every time I light one,

I wonder if you can see my smoke signals or the way you stained me 

like the wine you spilled on your father’s carpet


Holdyn Bray is a poet and makeup artist from Sacramento, California, who currently resides in Los Angeles. She received a bachelor’s degree in Women and Gender Studies from UCLA in March, 2020. You can find more of her work on Instagram @nydloh .

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