By. Lauren

Growing up I was told America was the home of the brave, but I'm not feeling so brave right now watching the riots go down.
The virus eating us away.
The plastic bullets bouncing off.
We are the targets.
We are the one's being fought against, but America is the home of the brave.
Right?
Just how do you stay brave when the death toll is rising each day?
Not from a virus, but from a fear and desire within us all.
Growing up I was taught that America was peaceful, but I'm not feeling much peace right now.
Our emotions just ricochet.
I was taught a president would hold us together in our nation under God.
Just, where is he? Where are they? My president doesn't care and God has never been there.
What now?
What is left in this so called home of the brave?
Our nation once said to be under God is fading away.
Welcome to America!

By. Lauren

Missing,
Missing,
More below.
I got the amber alert years ago.
It was a girl.
A girl that isn't me, well not today I must say.
She was short and fair.
Skinny and nice.
Kind and soft.
Now she's six feet below.
She was a happy girl,
She was me.
But the amber alert still is there.
I can't seem to clear the notification.
She's just a missing girl,
A missing girl that once was me.
Now she's flesh and bones,
No meat to be found on her.
She's so frail and pale,
You hear the grave calling her.
She's sick and scared.
All she wants is to find the missing girl for she is the real me.

By. Lauren

I miss writing poetry.
It just feels like death to me.
My thoughts under lock and key.
How do you write when you don't have rhyme?
It's just trauma on a page.
Why would anyone want to read?
My thoughts are so tangled up now that thou is dead to me.  
Poetry where has thou gone?
I feel so lost and numb.
It's all too much to say.
Trauma takes over me.
I ruined yet another friendship today.
It didn't make me cry this time.
Instead, it brought me here.
I've lost so many things.
I just feel like an empty drawer.
What am I to do?
There's nothing left to say.

By. Lauren

Last night a tear dripped down my cheek onto my pillow.
You sat there on the other end of the line and listened to my sniffle.
It pains me to think that my sniffle brought on a ripple.
Tonight I sit here and wait for yet another tear to drip down my cheek onto my pillow.
Because my sniffle is a never ending ripple.
For that, I owe you an apology the next time you pick up the line to my tears dancing down my cheek onto my pillow. And you hear yet another sniffle.

By. Lauren

I never knew love until I met you.
I didn't know how it tasted.
How it left a tingly feeling on my tongue.
I never knew something could be so sweet.
I don't know why it took so long for me to fall for you,
But once I did I knew it was love.
The love where you can go back in time.
The love where you can still go on dates at the playground and eat ice cream by the pound.
I never knew love until I met you.
I hope you feel the same.

By. Lauren

A friend opened up to me a day or two ago.
She held a story up to me, a story she'd never told.
I don't know why,
But I could feel her scars engrave into me too.
I could feel his hands creeping up me like they once did to her too.
They seemed to hold me in all the wrong places,
Nothing about it was comfortable.
It all felt so real, it felt like something I had been through.
I didn't know how to tell her I had been there too.
So I just shook my head and cried with her too.
I hope she knows I share those memories too.

By.
Lauren

Life is a book.
An ever-growing book.
365 new pages a year.
A new page each day to read.
Each page opens a new opportunity.
A chance to change the characters.
A chance to change the scenery.
A chance to change the loop.

The cycle that feels never-ending.
And then it snaps.
And there are no more opportunities left to change the page.

The book feels like it's never going to end until it does.
Until you see yet another person lie down their book to rest.
Then it all hits you.
Whether it be today, tomorrow or many years down the road each of our books will come to a close.

There will be no more opportunities to change our outcome.
No more days to change our page.
No alternate endings to choose from.
It's just a book we have to finish reading.
No giving up midway.