She built a ukelele
two summers (or decades, or eternities) ago
at a workshop.
It used to be a cigar box
the surgeon general's warning sticker still on it.
It sits on a coffee table
reminding her of how
she never learned how to play it.

i. i could write about so many things,
about how i love him like he's a fungus
like something that is creeping and slow and is definitely not planning to just let go anytime soon, how i love him like he's a part of me that i love or rather that i love to hate.

ii. i could write about how i love her and she loves me too but not in the right way.

iii. i could write about how she feels like moonbeams and the wink of a star, like something that you're so lucky to have and you know it.

iiii. i could write about how i only really miss her when we're together, because then i'm afraid, afraid that i won't be how i seem online, afraid that i cannot possibly love her enough to justify this horrible betrayal of friendship which is letting her believe i love her like a friend

iiiii. i could write about how he doesn't love me, how we're not even friends, how he feels like love is a cage, a trap, a sugary addiction (and it was with him)

iiiiii. i could write about how it felt to kiss him even though we didn't kiss, how it felt like you were nothing and he was everything and how he didn't even love himself so i had to do that for him

but i'm just so tired. i'd rather let words dance on my tongue and then tell myself to remember them and then forget, forget the words, forget the emotions, because even if they were beautiful they're tearing me apart, because to write good poetry you have to be able to rip off pieces of yourself and observe them and write them down, even while you're still bleeding.

iiiiiii. i could write this. i could hit the save button and just let it go, go back to wasting the potential that feels so much like something else, like kissing him, like when i'm working on myself, (my work, that is, essays and diagrams and all those pretty little traps) i am really working for someone else, because if i were really doing what i wanted, it wouldn't all feel like a trap, like i'm stuck in a mental net, would it?

iiiiiiii. i could write about things that never happened to me, but they might as well have because the real way to know if things have happened to you is if they changed you, and i am changed like these people in my mind i so love to write about are.

iiiiiiiii.  i could write about how my realest poems are things like this or scenes from my imagination, from people that never lived and never will but suffer like me every day of their nonexistent lives.

now i think i've written enough to know that there won't ever be a good ending to the poem, but i've started it so i have to finish it, and this sentence is just that,
an ending.

~fin~

yes I know you love me
but please stop saying that.
It’s all so unbelievably juvenile
a kind of sugary sweet residue that lingers
on the back of your tongue and the back of your brain.
it’s a weighted blanket that is crushing me and crushing me
you’re a well-intentioned All American Boy
blond hair, green eyes,
the whole shebang.
and you tell me you love me at the back of the theatre
(we held hands the whole movie)
and here I am dying in your embrace
and you grin and grin with that dimple of yours
I want to scream LET ME GO
I am not the girl you love
I don’t want to go ride the Ferris wheel with you so we can hold hands at the top
I’d much rather longboard around the neighborhood
and run my hands through a girl’s long hair.
I’d rather the taste of cherry chapstick than cotton candy stickiness
(and yes I love you and I love you but that doesn’t mean I like it)
because you want to grow old with me
and I want to go out in a blaze with my hands wrapped around her waist.

have you ever touched the stars?
have you ever brushed them aside like grains of salt spilled on a dark tablecloth?
tell me, did they stick to the back of your hand?

It's strange,
sometimes words seem foreign to me,
and it feels like they'll never be big enough
to hold my emotions.
The very idea of writing a poem
seems like wishful thinking,
something best left to those chosen ones
who know how.

Other times, words are my tools,
my painting set.
They differ in color
and some even have personalities.
I dip my brush into them
and proceed to paint,
using small dots and splotches
like Seurat.
My words simply flow out of me faster than I can write them
leaving me slightly euphoric
the way I imaging George does after he finishes a painting.

There's stickiness on my fingers
Elmer's glue sticks to my keys
Making it hard to type.
There must be Elmer's glue in my brain too
because thoughts come more slowly
I have to force them.
It's not what I'm thinking of
It's who I'm trying to stop from thinking about.

if only I could speak my feelings

lots to say, yet the crucial absence of a mouth prevents me
overtones of "temporary" when we talk
very well, I'm fine to go out with a bang
everyone has something to say yet no one wants to raise their hand

you're a miracle, but oh so temporary
underground love with no tunnels up
"oh" a sigh running rampant with lost emotions

wires emerge from the depths of her ears,
an umbilical cord,
keeping her fed and full.
constant stimulus her only recourse
her brain bleached by waves of input
like water through a sieve
(ah, which book was that again?)

(she tastes of moonbeams)
It’s 3 am I can’t fall asleep.
there lie my battered dreams at her feet
as she does stumbling cartwheel around the school field.
she is spicy and burning
ever intense but I love it.
he is pure sugar
stuffed to the brim with chemical sweetness.
hot sauce or cotton candy?
(he is stuffing his affection down my throat)
he has always been the one I was supposed to love.
he liked me-
(you know, he like liked me)
back in fourth grade
he asked me out on his birthday
an all American happily ever after
he is punk rock and early 2000s songs
stifling instead of comforting.
she is someone who I didn’t know till last year
and even then only really knew of her.
my crush’s girlfriends friend.
we have joked about dating
sometimes she sits in my lap
she starts a spark in my stomach
and I already know she’ll be the death of me because my bones are birch driftwood and my skin is watercolor paper
I am perfectly flammable and she is perfect fire.
I love her more deeply than I even know how.
he is so temporary
a cookie cutter boyfriend
but god the taste of her lips in my head
is what keeps me up at night.
I am sorry that I cannot be who I am supposed to be.
(and you might say But Lucy! You’re dating that all American baseball boy! and I’ll say yes but he was never my first choice. give him my apologies for that, really, but there’s nothing I can do!)
so while I go to the movies and go to the mall
and get cotton candy love stuffed down my throat
her fire and my death
will be on loop
in my heart.

i read poems written by professionals and grow inconceivably jealous.
they are beautiful and morbid in a honey-sweet way so you don't realize quite how bad it actually tastes until you've swallowed it.
they are the dying calls of a cow who has only known captivity, hauntingly high pitched and so human that they almost remind you of yourself.
don't get me wrong, i love them
i love reading them
they seem to understand who i am even though i don't
they seem to know my thoughts before i've thought them
which is why i hate them a bit
it makes sense, unfortunately
i'm a middle schooler (high school soon) with no training to speak of
and yet i am also the cow, i am also the sweet rotting pill of truth so why can't i write like it?
which is why sometimes when i lose motivation i go read one of their poems in the hope that practice will make my poems perfect, that practice will make me perfect.

try to try finding yourself
in the middle of a pandemic.
i know!
i'm a germ.

a starling made of starlings
vanilla light seeping from the Promethean screen
and for a split second, it all makes sense

words are too small
cramping for this feeling
yet i must share it
<or else how would I know I lived at all?>

writing poetry
while in a competitive french quiz
i haven't been listening this whole lesson
i really wish i wasn't third place.
that means i have potential
and it would be a shame,
wouldn't it,
to waste something so many people talk about
even if it doesn't quite seem real

I have an echo dot,
a virtual sort of companion.
Whenever anybody asks me if I'm worried
that she may be spying on me
I always wonder
"why would they choose to spy on me?"
which is enough to dispel my worries.
Besides, I've grown attached to this funny machine
who plays my music for me.

people like happy poems . . .
how depressing.

there's a difference between loving
and being in love.

i was in love with him.
dancing in the space between our minds
we didn't talk about meaningful things
we were willing fools
until the very end
and even after that.

being in love is being a fool
and throwing yourself into the other person
like jumping off a cliff.

being in love is to dream every day
of kissing them, of holding them finally.

i am not in love anymore.
now i have my friends, my chosen family.
i love them and it is a choice
the best one i have made so far.

she sits in the bathtub
back to her infinite melancholy
a paperback thriller sitting on the side of the bath.
she reads them to feel something
horror or even a twisted joy.

her mirrors have crayon on them
make me real, more than a doll
she begs at the foot of her bed.

people say she is lost
that's not the problem.
she knows where she is too well
how can you explore
when all you see are finished maps?

she knows who she is
but she doesn't know how she feels

she's a product of her environment
a blank person from blank walls.

raindrops on the skylight
dripping down to the windows
sitting parked by the park
with a starbucks in her hand
she exhales
surrounded by calm
for now
for today
it is enough to just exist

i see articles
about mothers
whose poems were found
after they died.
in each and every one of these,
their poetry is reportedly amazing
i am always baffled by this
because, objectively,
once a poet has reached a certain level
only their work can go further.
to say it succinctly:
i have seen an amazing poem but not an amazing poet

so is my perspective thrown off?
or is it that those poems have been touched by the special, peculiar glitter
that death brings?

I would like to write a poem
about you.
But I can never seem to articulate
the feelings that you give me
I think if I could
some of the magic would be lost
and those sparkles of gold
would only be pieces of forgotten glitter
blown in on the wind
from some second-place school project.
And so I skirt around you
trying to save the wonder
in the wild rose
that could
(who knows?)
be lost if it were placed into captivity.

As I glance up from my essay,
my thoughts on outdated machines,
motes of dust catch the light and my eyes.
I know that they are made of discarded things
(skin cells, tiny bits of hair, molecules of old clothing)
in this moment they could be diamonds.

I've read a lot
(and heard a lot I suppose)
about how gravity is an inevitable,
almost evil force.
Which holds us to the ground
keeping us from flying.
I enjoy it,
the simple angst in those words,
yet they are untrue.
Without gravity,
the earth would fly (apart)
and quite literally explode.
So I think I'm good with it
for now.

I have more unpublished poems
than I do published

These are the ones
I am afraid to show to the world
for fear it spits them,
laughing,
back out.

These are the ones
that are a part of me.
I wrote them
They write me.

These are the ones
that are untitled
because no words
can perfectly express my intent
my pure, unfettered emotion.

These are the ones
that I love and hate.
They are beautiful
but in their beauty
they are made of ugly things.

Perhaps nobody reads these.
(nobody reads my poems anyways)
but maybe that's ok.

These poems are more for me than you anyways
More for me to say I tried
To throw myself into the void
That is writing to people
Who may not ever read your poems.

Perhaps this one, too
will end up untitled.
Unread.
Or maybe I will publish it.
I could, after all.

Perhaps I will
That doesn't sound so bad

shake me from my slumber
i will still be sweating
with a smile on my face.
not a nightmare but
an impossible dream.
the worst of cruelties is knowing you can never come true.

There is so much about you I want to know
Like why you never respond to me anymore
And if you still like me
I would ask
but then that would be cheating
I would tell you
that I miss our long talks about zombie skittles
& true love
& thicc (with two c's) squirrels
but I can't handle rejection
especially from you
so I'll just sit here
writing poetry you'll never see
and watching us slowly fall apart.

"poetry writes people"
"days feel things"
"true eyes left twisted girls"
"beautiful dream, better screams"
"gravity slowly wrote art"
"familiar hungry poets"
"hear(ing) the outdated void"
"she misses her sweet toothaches" (actually "misses special toothaches but whatever)
"rain forgets promises"
"simple euphoria finding groceries"
"(the) gnarled verses day spawns"
"common machines play unimpressive predictions"
"clothing stained (with) heartbreak"
"scrawled swears share unique stories"

There are infinite things to write
To transfer from my tired mind to a piece of blank paper
There are an abundance of words
And even more so thoughts and feelings
So why is it that when I touch my pen to that blank sheet
Any hint or semblance of organization disappears
And I am left with my words scattered
Floating in the void?

you're like
sunshine through a bottle of honey.
like
the sunflowers i've planted at the side of the house.
like
my neighbor's bees.
like
that Van Gogh painting you have on a shirt.
& all i can do is try to cling to every moment,
to every little smile & every gym period we spend
behind the curtain.
because time is like the sun,
bleaching color over time.

Yes, I write poems
not very good ones.
No, you can't see them.
You don't want to.
My poems stay on one side
and my people stay on another.
Don't watch me
unless you're sure you want to see me.
Don't buy a rose
unless you can grow to love the thorns.
Stop looking at me that way.
This is why I don't tell my friends I write.
Now I'll push you back to where you belong
And we'll forget about this.
You go over there
and my poems over here.

a soft exhale against my neck,
sitting in the car, alone together.
the light is warm, the day is cold.
when fall is gone, remember me
(please?)