I wish I could write a poem about what it's like to forget to write.
About when a pen feels foreign in your hands
and when your fingers can't find the keys of your laptop.
How does it feel to lose a gift that you once felt you had,
and and a passion that you once held so dear.
My words feel like echoes of stories once told and lives once lived.
They no longer belong to me.
Like my voice with the witch in the sea,
and my mind with the gods in the sky.
I do not know who I am anymore.
How I once envisioned myself,
all but scraped away.
Can I claw my way back?
Jul 20, 2017
Jul 20, 2017 at 10:32 PM UTC
They will tell you that you cannot feel fat.
Fat is not something you can feel, it’s just something that you are.
Well, I have to disagree.
I feel fat all the time.
I can feel it on my arms, my thunder thighs, and my bulge of my stomach.
Oh, do I feel it on my stomach.
And maybe they will tell you that touching your fat doesn't count.
Well maybe, I Feel Absolutely Terrible.
Feel, F
Absolutely, A
Terrible, T
Well, I may be big, but I’m not stupid.
That spells fat.
So, it must be true.
I’m fat, at least that’s what I've been told.
That’s what people everywhere have been told.
We grow up looking at photo-shopped pictures of models,
because thin is in!
So we gorge ourselves on “skinny pills” that market anorexia in a bottle.
We tell ourselves that in order to be beautiful or handsome, or desirable, there has to be an inch between our thighs.
We tell boys to have broad shoulders and a washboard for a stomach.
We tell girls that they have to look like a dog toy when it’s been squeezed,
but instead of eyes popping out, its your chest and your ****
We have created impossible standards of what beauty is,
and so we **** ourselves in an attempt to reach them.
We feel hurt by the world,
so we cut each other down with stares that could shatter glass.
Some may think that they have risen above enough to educate,
so they offer you the friendly reminder that
skinny jeans don’t make you look skinny if you’re fat,
as if we were not intelligent enough to figure that out for ourselves.
They will remind you that a moment on the lips is forever on the hips,
so we binge in the darkness,
to hide because we now feel ashamed of a basic human need.
We will cry tears that are dry,
so they will never have to know,
that being told you have a pot-belly when you’re seven,
hurts just as much as being called a fat, little girl when you’re seventeen.
We turn away from the things that used to matter to us.
We look at clothes before smiles.
We take in size, before heart.
We call ourselves ugly without any regard for our person.
We know that the outside matches the inside,
but don’t give a second thought to the kind of person we really are.
So we look in the mirror and take a guess.
That answer seems good enough.
But I am sick of good enough.
I want to shatter the glass,
let it rain down in a fine powder
of the person that we thought we saw.
I want to stop looking down at the body beneath me,
and look up at the world that surrounds me.
But, so much of the world is small, and cruel.
So, I hang my head as I walk past.
I sit next to my best friend,
her perfect size zero
is huge in the eyes of the girls who crave it.
She tells me that she feels fat,
that she thinks she is ugly.
I am struck by this;
she has more beauty than she could ever know.
But I guess I don’t pay attention to what she looks like all that much.
I tell her,
“You’re not fat. If you’re fat than I have a gravitational orbit.”
I try to laugh, but she disagrees with me.
I guess she doesn't really pay attention to what I look like either.
Mar 9, 2015
Mar 9, 2015 at 10:30 PM UTC
This one is for the dreamers.
You see the world in technicolor
even when it screams out in shades of grey
too bleak,
too stormy.
You dance in the rain.
This verse, this is for the believers.
You saw others in vibrant hues of yellow,
of green,
of orange,
when they were a navy blue,
stirred together with black.
This is for the wishers.
To you, I was pastel purple.
I knew I was cold,
dark,
and obsolete.
But you, with your kindness,
with your heart,
with your spirit,
you colored me a different shade.
Feb 20, 2015
Feb 20, 2015 at 6:01 PM UTC
If you take away our literature, you take away our sight.
We become the blinded king of nowhere.
When we look out on the world beyond the valley of ashes,
we will conceal our eyes and
forget that you don’t need a pair of glass slippers to be Cinderella.
We will forget that we need need to be home by midnight,
because after midnight it’s so dark
that you might go out hunting and mistake a mockingbird for a crow,
or a crow for a raven.
When we try to use our words, words, words, they will cut out our tongues
and force us to play a game that leaves us more hungry than satisfied.
This is because instead of pure knowledge, we are being spoon fed a corrupted education,
and we will no longer eat alphabet soup without our big brother standing over our shoulder preaching to us about the glorious future that will be 1984,
and we will all be forced to live in that cowardly, old world.
And there they will lead us like lambs to the slaughter.
Where if they see the spark of curiosity
they will try to wash it out like the ****** spot they see it to be.
We will forget why the caged bird sings
and why the baby’s gravestone only said Beloved.
They will paint an A on our chest which will stand for absent,
as in absent from the conversation because
we are not able to comprehend what they are saying.
We will not find joy in the poetry written on baseball glove
because we will not know how to read it,
and we will never be the catcher
because we will all be separate and and still not live in peace.
When we come to a fork in the road
we will take the path that everyone else has traveled on,
because we have not learned to stand on our own two feet.
Which means that we will never be able to find Alaska or
where the fault is in our stars.
We will not hear the stories of what happened to the handmaid,
and they will tell us if we are brave, kind, honest, intelligent, or selfless,
because you can only be one.
Our whole lives we will never have pride, but we will accept their prejudice.
We will hear the heartbeat in the floor boards and blame it on the wind.
When we find ourselves stranded we will reach for the conch and fight over it,
because we will all be stuck between a rock and a hard place,
and when the sirens of our society call to us with lies about what our future will be,
we will jump from the boat and swim towards our deaths.
because life without books is just as good as no life at all.
We will lay dying in coffins that our children build for us
as unspoken poets with our heads in the oven.
We will be condemned to make the past our future
and we will watch as they test what they can burn at 451 degrees.
And finally when we all sit down and accept the bibliocaust they have stoked,
we will forget the things our dear friends
Ellie and Anne warned us about what can happen in an annex or in the night.
Feb 19, 2015
Feb 19, 2015 at 10:49 PM UTC
Staring up at my tree, I do not feel small.
I do not feel as though I am being enveloped by color and light that rang throughout my childhood.
My eyes do not wink back the twinkle that they see.
There is no anticipation.
There is no heart beat to steady the carols that are sung.
Sleep eludes me still, but for different reasons.
Staring up at my tree, I feel large.
I feel too big to crawl under and reach the packages in the morning.
I don't see magic in the twinkle of the lights, I see the outlet they are plugged in to.
I do not feel joy or hope.
I do not hear the angel's chorus and I do not hear the bells ring.
I do not feel grown up, but out grown.
I no longer believe and yet I have never believed in something so hard in my entire life.
Maybe I feel large because it is not my tree anymore.
I knew who it once belonged to, but they have been gone for a long time.
Maybe the problem isn't that I feel too large or too un-small,
Perhaps, it's that I just. Don't. Feel.
Dec 1, 2014
Dec 1, 2014 at 10:39 PM UTC
If these words are my soul,
we'll never be stangers.
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 4:10 PM UTC
Long sleeves in May,
but we never knew.
I wish that I had gone up to you
and asked,
why you wore so many bracelets.
You said you didn't eat at school.
And we believed you,
like such fools.
Too much respect, but not enough.
No one ever told you
what you mean to them.
They all forgot to mention
how the stars would grow dim
without you, the world is not as bright.
Maybe in your heaven,
you'll finally sleep tonight.
They talk about you
now and then,
and the way that things could have been.
Hushed whispers
behind closed doors.
You felt out of time and out of joy.
Out of breath,
the rope deployed.
Your world was cold.
Your hands were numb.
Razor lines, where you just wanted to feel something,
and now you'll never feel again.
No one ever told you
what you mean to them.
They all forgot to mention
how the stars would grow dim
without you, the world is not so bright.
Maybe in your heaven,
you'll have some peace tonight.
Yellow flowers everywhere.
You wore a dress,
they combed your hair.
And you, are fast asleep.
Salt was painted on my face.
We watched you fall.
Amazing Grace.
And I can't go back,
and change the past.
But I wish that I had told you
what you mean to me.
I guess I forgot to mention this
before you fell on your knees.
Because you are beautiful.
And you made my world bright.
Now you'll be in heaven,
but I won't sleep tonight.
May 4, 2014
May 4, 2014 at 12:33 PM UTC
In the alphabet, there are 26 letters: 5 vowels and 21 consonants.
In the English language alone, there are over 600,000 words all made up of these consonants and vowels.
So many words.
So many things already said too many times and too little.
Originality is something to be desired;
Because I won't be the hundredth person that day to tell you that everything will be okay.
It will all work out.
You're fine.
You'll get over it.
No.
600,000 words in the English language and I'm left stumbling for the right ones just to try to make you smile again.
There's not more fish in the sea because they were your ocean.
You won't be with them again soon because you need to live a long life! even if they couldn't.
The sun won't be brighter tomorrow; it will shine just the same.
And I'm sorry.
When you shot for the moon you couldn't reach the stars, but maybe next time if you shoot for the stars you'll be caught by the moon.
This world is full of things unspoken and words not said even when they need to be poured out like alphabet soup we leave them in the can.
Because it's taboo or rude, there are times when "you just don't say those things" no matter how true they may be.
I could write you a novel of the things that I believe to be correct but that won't make the pain go away.
A picture is worth a thousand words and heartbreak is worth a million.
I just don't have anything useful to fill in those spaces where the words are supposed to go.
In the alphabet, there are 26 letters: 5 vowels and 21 consonants.
In the English language alone, there are over 600,000 words all made up of these consonants and vowels.
And I can't think of a single one to say to you.
May 3, 2014
May 3, 2014 at 8:59 PM UTC
The first death that I can remember was when I was three years old. It was some great great aunt of mine who I did not know. All I remember was the hospital.
The next was a half uncle who I had just barely met. A long lost brother ripped from the world by lungs turned black.
I remember crying; I was seven.
When I was twelve my grandfather had a stroke and we went to the hospital eight hours away to say goodbye just in case.
There was no just in case about it.
Just a tired man in a hospital bed who's eyes I never saw open again.
I remember standing up front at the funeral so people could shake my hand and apologize for my loss.
There was the faint taste of salt at the corner of my lip stretching up my face.
A friend of mine lost five kids from her school last year. I didn't know what to say to her.
Because how can you tell someone that life goes on when for some people it doesn't?
How do you console the living who are trying to console the dead?
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 9:09 PM UTC