Chamomileteandpoetry - Camille Lee

You have a beautiful talent for writing. May you always continue to write so passionately and may you continue writing in that beautiful manner that somehow never ceases to leave me in awe. Love life and ascend dear friend! Rooting for you and wishing you all the best, dearest Camille.

Oh my gosh🥺 <3 this was so incredibly sweet of you to say🤧 thank you anon 💞 that was beautiful, I'm honoured🥺 I'll come back to read your kind words every time I feel doubt towards my ability to write. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, I'll cherish your words always and wishing you all the best as well. —Camille Lee 🎀

do you think you can write something using the words iridescent💎 or fractal~🌈✨?" 👀

I closed my eyes as I felt the warm water on my skin, cascading through my hair, down my neck and down my back. I run my palms over my damp hair and I open my eyes to see the way the sunlight catches the water from the showerhead, through the bathroom window. I smile as I think to myself it looks like a mini waterfall, magical, ethereal and otherworldly. Like little tiny fairies should be fluttering around the water that seems to sparkle at this time of day. Iridescent shampoo bubbles dance off the tiled walls and pop. In the stillness and silence, I remember living isn't only in the grand, but also in the quietness of a bath after a long hard day.

—Camille Lee, iridescent shampoo bubbles

Honestly, it's a bit silly to think you thought you could break me. When the women in my family (on my mother's side) while loving aren't gentle, aren't kind— always, with their words especially. My grandmother wouldn't notice how hard she tugged my hair when she combed it and my mother told me from young "if you wanted a soft, gentle mommy to baby you, you aren't going to find her in me." Still, her casual, cruel comments sneak up on me, like little thieves with little knives to stab me to death, in my dreams, in my sleep. One by one, each little cut adds up. Death by a thousand cuts. You thought you could have easily taken me apart, but no, you'll have to compete with the critical voice of my mother who lives in my mind. Always loving, not always kind.

—Camille Lee, always loving but not always kind

An old sparkly journal is buried at the bottom of a weathered and worn, old cardboard box. Every other page has an "I ♡ Alex" written in pink ink on it. That girl used count every hand-holding, shoulder-touch, head-pat her first real crush ever gave her and wrote it all down. "He held my hand and rest his head on my shoulder." Fast forward three years and I started a new school, I'm fifteen years old and I reminisce fondly over my younger self's crush, at a party. Everyone around me mistakes my smile as lingering feelings for him, after all, I wasn't very subtle with my feelings back then. They just don't know. Now with older eyes to look back with, I realized something. I was always made of love. Love was never something I had to look for outside of me, it was always within me, I just didn't know it. I am love and love was always made of me.

—Camille Lee, love is what I was always made of

Love is the one who holds the ladder when I climb up to change the curtains. Love is the one that insists "let me do it, it's dangerous." but love is afraid of heights and holds the ladder with a white knuckle grip, despite the fall only being three feet deep. "It's still a long way to fall." Love is knowing I must be the one to change the curtains no matter what love says because love is still deathly afraid of heights, and love is mine to protect as much as I am theirs.

— Camille Lee, love is the one who holds the ladder

Love is extensively and excessively patient with me, but that's how I know love will never run out of it with me. Love messages everyday at lunch “did you eat?” because love knows I’ll forget when I’m busy. Love holds my hand when the doctor administers the needle and love carries my things after the appointment because they’re a ‘gentlemen’. Love always insists they carry the bags with me when it gets heavy. Love takes great care to place their hand on my left shoulder, to cradle me closer, the pain in my right arm subsides a little quicker. Love held me in a doctor's office and they dried my tears, after I cried over little teeny tiny, baby needles.

— Camille Lee, love is the one who holds my hand

I’ve still got dance moves, like a friend I no longer talk to. Someone I’ve lost contact with, someone I’ve missed, someone I’ve contemplated reaching out to, to ask “How are you?” but I haven’t found the courage. When there’s a new season of  Bongou Stray Dogs, and she isn’t someone I can just call anymore, what do I do? When my brother is excited about the new Sonic the hedgehog movie, are you too? After all this time, I’ve written so many letters in my mind to tell you I’d still want you to be my friend but would you like to be mine? 

—Camille Lee, "I miss you" excerpt taken from the "Letters I never sent" poetry collection.

read full poem here.

I try not to fall in love. I really do, because I know that I'll think about them, those things that will make it hard to forget. The curve of his back, the outline of his hips, the way his necklace falls at the base of his neck, the way its only something I can admire when his back is turned, because he likes to tuck his necklaces inside his T-shirt, the matching bracelet hangs off his wrist and sparkles in the light the way his eyes do when morning comes the next day. I have his sleepy smile when I'm the first thing he sees as he opens his eyes, memorized, and his low playful drawl to"take a picture, it'll last longer," before he scoops me up in his arms with the strength of someone who had definitely-been-awake-for-a-while and I'll remember it all. These are the things, the things I'll think of when you're gone, so I try my best not to fall in love.

—Camille Lee, I'll remember everything

I'm terrified one day I'll look around and realize for all my platonic love, it isn't enough. For all my friends have paired off like Noah's ark, all over again, one by one, I am but the exception. The lonely outlier, the undesirable creature, alone in the raging storm of living. The one to throw overboard to make space, the easiest at least, because they know there's no one here to miss me. I watch as they gaze into the eyes of their lovers with all the romance I've longed for, talking of the new world and the "rest of their lives together" I'm sick to my stomach but I pass it off as the back and forth rocking of the ark, sea sickness— I send a silent prayer to the sky or to God or to whoever will listen to me I can't possibly be fated to live out my days alone, right?

—Camille Lee