Thick, warm, fuzzy air
Radiates against your skin, making you want to doze off
You sit on the front of a low red car that looks another era, leaning on the glossy hood.
I want to put your lips on mine
The world feels yellow, and orange.
It's as if clear smoke has filled the air
My eyes are dimmed through thick sunglasses, my body absorbing the warmth through jeans and a small black shirt
I'm in a lucid daze
Looking at you through a curtain of leather black hair, not bothered to move it from my face.
Your eyes the crisp refreshing blue in a world tinted amber
Like a fresh spray of water on my back
After hours of sunbathing
We sit there
We say nothing
We take in the sun
   We don't need anything else

Dear Mrs. Frouin,
(atleast I think that was your name.)

For as long as I can remember I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Actually, I don’t believe I wanted to be anything, especially when I was younger,
but writing chose me.

For you see,
I conditioned myself unable to verbally express my emotions, or my thoughts, since I was old enough to have them.
I know the words I want to say when I want to say them,
but I never felt anyone wanted to hear them.
I believed my constant analyzing and emotional dissection to be a burden.
I knew most people wouldn’t understand, if they even bothered to listen at all.
And so I taught myself to alter the disease of emotions, and the curse of memories into dressed up words.
I turned my pain into similes, allegories and metaphors,
whether hidden and veiled or transparently exposed.
My pen became my bestfriend
and paper evolved into a therapist.

It didn’t always do the trick, I admit.
Especially when I was fifteen, the year you taught me,
the year I tried my first pill
and found an alternate reality I could escape to where everything felt good, all the ******* time.
And that’s where you caught me.

It seems petty, immature and egotistical to still remember this fourteen years later,
but when someone attempts to crush the only aspiration you have,
the only thing you really have felt good at,
it tends to stick with you.
Especially considering I remember everything.

As per usual, I had shown up to your class ******,
there wasn’t many classes I showed up to sober.
There wasn’t many classes I showed up to in general.
I had zoned out during your lesson, probably doodling, talking,
sleeping, listening to music, writing or staring at some pretty girl.
Everyone had left and you asked me to stay behind, and as much as I was a professional **** up back then, that wasn’t common.
You sat across from me and asked me what I wanted to do with my life,
immediately I answered “I want to be a writer.”
We talked about fiction, journalism, poetry, song writing,
the things I “excelled” in according to you,
but with softness in your voice you stated,
“I believe you have the talent, but to be brutally honest, I think you lack the motivation to do it.”
I hear that sentence every two weeks or so.
It haunts me.

I can understand your reasoning,
as I said above, I was a professional **** up.
But you didn’t bother to talk to my media and film teacher,
who personally tracked me down one day when I was cutting class in the woods getting high with friends,
pulling me aside to beg me to start showing up to any class more often,
that I had missed 84 classes in one year, and that he personally,
intercepted to principal to discuss me and stuck his neck out for me,
“You are far too unique to not make your mark here.” he said.
You didn’t bother to check that even then, when I wasn’t attending 90% of my classes,
I was still on the honour roll for English, History and Math.
And that even after your words,
and even after more partying
and attempting to **** my brain cells
I came back that next year and stayed on the honour roll,
adding 16th Century History to the list as well.

But I do see your original point,
maybe I do lack the motivation to “do it.”
Whatever that might mean,
because like all things in life,
it’s all about perception
and personal expectation
and interpretation.

You see, I can confidently say that
my writing has evolved,
and dare I say, at the risk of sounding pretentious and cocky,
it has gotten better.
And while I may not be getting paid a dime for any of it,
I have people reading my work,
for some reason,
and most importantly, I have people relating to my work,
experiencing it, and above all,
feeling it.
That’s all I’ve ever wanted to accomplish from writing;
it may have started as free, comfortable, liberating therapy, expression and self reflection,
but all I have ever wanted is to know I made someone, anyone,
feel something.
That’s all everyone should aspire to accomplish,
an act that touches a person,
makes them feel less alone.
There’s nothing more noble in this world than helping another person,
no matter how you do it.

Whenever someone has tried to show positivity or support for my writing,
they make comparisons of being the next (insert famous female writer here)
and all I ever think is that I would rather be the first me.
Almost every artist wants to “famous,”
but I have always thought that I would rather be respected than famous.
Maybe one day I will be,
but maybe I won’t,
that really isn’t the point.

You believed that I lacked the motivation to become a writer,
but I always have been one.
My motivation is used everyday to get out of my warm bed,
where dreams are the only plane of existence where I feel peace and bliss.
My motivation is used to create something from everything negative,
instead of letting it beat me down
and turn me into the kind of person who would look at a
troubled teen with a glimpse of aspiration,
and tell them they couldn’t do it.
My motivation is used to support others and if I’m lucky enough,
guide them even half a step closer to the path they want to take.

Mrs. Frouin, if you read this,
and I doubt you will
because you probably don’t remember someone who you thought you read so well to make assumptions on their potential,
please laugh at the irony at the
fact that you failed me in your “creative writing” class
and I’m still a writer.
And maybe, if you’ve read this all the way through,
the student “lacking motivation”
just became your teacher.

A platform is shared
By bigots being scared
By change in the air
In range of what’s fair
So they callously pair
With arms to bear
To harm and tear
Those the meek spare

Weapons will be used
As factions fuse
Their hateful views
To give me a bruise
And lie in the news
Or blame the Jews

They go through a bitter tunnel
Acting as the wealthy’s funnel
Exploiting their grumbles
To get them to rumble
And not act humble

Arcade style fights
Illuminate the night
With exploding lights
Shining very bright
Signaling the plight
Of losing our sight
And relying on might
After shifting far right

They want the throne
For their own all alone
And their wants have grown
So we’re stripped to the bone
By a hound and his gun
In town with his son
Who drowns us for fun
For his money has won

So miscellaneous  
Missiles maiming us
With no training rust
Cause raining dust
That’s draining trust
In its radius

No compassion or mercy
They’ve lost the church key
Thoughtlessly hurting
Those seen as *****
Mortars strike angels passing above
Trying to disseminate their love
To those with bullet in glove
Who just push and shove
The transcendent ones
So we can’t be absolved
As the nations devolve
Into a racist right wing resolve

The proud and stupid
Team with the putrid
To **** Cupid
Because he ignored them
Creating the problem’s stem
Creating the bombs we send
Creating the lies we defend
For the extent
Of excess
They expect

An empire’s implosion
Will bring atomic explosions
Yet we watch the erosion
Completely frozen

An arctic fire
Scorches the Earth
Into an entire
Frozen turf
Of no worth
Only hurt
Where death and decay
Are here to stay
In winter’s way
To my grave

The leaves are dead
Like the teens *****
Who went to bed
And woke up led
To their reluctant stead

The branches are bare
Like the love I share
With those who dare
Return my stare
Of frozen care

My friends are chill
Once they take a pill
And let the ice build
Until a giant ice hill
Freezes their light will
Seeing life as time to ****
Their shifty shoes I fill

This winter has shown
That I don’t have a home
And if I want to be known
I have to build a new phone
Or get bombed by a drone
So I stay in my zone
Of an arctic cone

I was once warm
In proper form
Until I grew horns
Like icy thorns
And my icicles
Are quite fickle
Their knife sickles
Until blood trickles
On my frigid path
Of winter’s wrath

I’m freezing to death
Until there’s nothing left
Except a societal debt
Of a temperature set
That was never met

Have I already told you?
that I always miss you
on a day to day basis

Have I already told you?
that I want to hold you
in this cold, lonely night

Have I already told you?
that you're all I see
in this myriad crowd

Have I already told you?
how you look so cute
when you wear that smile

Have I already told you?
that I'm slowly falling
out of love; it's driving me crazy

Have I already told you?
how lucky I am that I've found you
my one and only comfort zone

Have I already told you?
that I'm hurt with words you've said
I thought it was me all along.

But, I was wrong.
that's why I didn't tell you
what I feel about you.

Have I already told you?
how lucky that person is
to be loved by you...