POETRY.
For me, nothing compares to writing a good poem, so much comes from emptying your brain onto paper. Here are the good, the bad, the sad, but most importantly, here are some poems I have written that are meaningful to me.
DAYLIGHT DARKNESS.
The sky blurs,
The clouds fade,
It is so bright despite being
The darkest time of day.
A way to burn and bruise,
Without worrying it won’t wash away.
My body feels loud but silence holds it all,
Cradled in sounds that hush my voice down,
That is when I build the wall,
To avoid letting myself drown.
I wish I could erase what you ingrained,
But without your words, I am nothing but a waste.
Sweet as sugar,
Fruity as can be,
Apples grow tall and eventually fall,
I cut through the layers of my apple’s skin,
Carefully drawing with silver,
Until white meets me like a deadly sin.
I looked at the skin,
with a disappointed grin.
21.
Six days until my freedom rests within my own reins,
Twenty-one years of Emma Mary ringing in my veins.
When I was five,
I woke up spry,
Ran down the stairs,
Swung on the windowsill
On the landing that still stands there.
I knew I’d remember this moment forever,
Not sure why, but sixteen years later,
I still feel that spark of early light,
A tiny kid learning what it meant to take flight.
When I was eight,
I picked out a book and squeezed next to my dad real tight.
Our green velvet chair waited for our next adventure.
I always chose Junie B. Jones.
I told myself I was old,
That I’d never be this young again.
I remember feeling sad,
Like my time of being important was coming to an end.
But then he read me the book, and that was the last time
Our green chair held us both in its velvet, gentle light.
On my ninth birthday,
I sat in a tall dark-blue chair,
Smiling before my class with a paper crown in my hair.
My classmates sang; my teacher asked how old I was now.
When I answered “Nine,” he laughed, “Ninety-nine!?”
It was the funniest thing,
He did it for every student,
Yet somehow the joke never grew old, and neither did the joy it would bring.
On my tenth birthday,
My mom took my friends and I to dinner.
Izzy ate too much steak—too many blue slushies too.
She threw up in the car,
I watched as vomit flew.
My birthdays in middle school were quite a blur.
I had friends more focused on boys and every dramatic turn.
My thirteenth birthday was the worst one yet.
Although I can’t really remember the events,
I remember sitting in my dark room,
Emotions were running high, the air thick and tense.
That was the first time I cried on my birthday—
And every year, tears have found their way back since.
As I grew old, birthdays consisted of
Dinner, cake and fancy clothes,
Lots of pictures and pets,
All made some of my sweetest birthdays yet.
The best is when it’s my mom, dad, sister, and pets.
This year will be different,
But birthdays change, and people go.
Still, I’m holding onto hope as the candles glow.
Happy 21st to me,
Cheers, and I will see you next year.
UNFORTUNATE FORECAST.
My feelings turned gray,
Looks like heavy rain today,
But the sky was blue.
SALT IN ME.
When life is good,
I know it is.
When I find salt in my water,
Leaving bitterness on my tongue,
That’s when I know
Life is about to fracture,
Here it comes,
Another catastrophic disaster.
Not like an agile figure skater,
But like the bumper of a smashed car,
Force meeting failure.
It isn’t only the salt.
It’s the memories.
It’s the chemistry in my brain.
Never too much,
Until I am.
They taste it too,
The residue.
The ache of what I carry.
Not intentional.
Just inevitable.
TOO SWEET.
If life is like peeling an orange,
My finger can’t quite get under its skin.
My nail punctures through the inner shell,
It’s not that I can’t do it well.
It’s just that I don’t know where to begin,
All over it splatters and rebels,
The juice swells, and boy does it smell.
And eventually, I have to say farewell,
As this orange can not be skinned.
But,
Oh well.
