Piper Gourley
​Image by Kleiton Santos on Pixabay                                                                                        
Piper Gourley is a professional ghostwriter currently residing in Anaheim, California. Their work has been published in Glassworks Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review: Mixtape, Etched Onyx, The Interlochen Review, and more. As a ghostwriter, they have published over 650 creative articles across the web.
Somewhere, Somewhere Underwater


I have lived as a patient,
impatient,
            full of pills,
a capsule in a bottle in a mind
gliding through currents
of chemicals
as thin as gold

Lived as a ghost:
translucent, rumored dead,
rumored haunted.
My name has been a question.
I have lived as a lie within a lie,
a yellowing sentiment,
ransom on the long stretch
of myself

I have swallowed celebration, grief,
known a hill as a view
and as a leaping point,
clung to the distinct and
intimate chill
of running out
              running out
of reasons: reasons
to climb up, to climb off,
to climb

(The pain is where you left it
The pain is always where you left it)

and there are people in bodies
on beaches and hillsides
splayed out, hands full,
eating themselves, eating
the world, stomachs full

there are people who have never
lived on pills, lived in white rooms,
lived in their minds,
lived in the pages of a
blue binder, tucked onto
a shelf, somewhere,
somewhere
underwater








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