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.

By. Lauren

Growing up my mother told me to follow my dreams.
Step by step I grew.
From teaching to cardiology, all the dreams I wanted to pursue.
It's just then the day came.
When my clock was coming to a slow.
The ticking about to stop.
And my future here for me to pursue.
My mother told me not to let the world hold me down with their dreams for me.
But when my clock was out and it was time to leave my mother laid some rules.
It was no longer about my happiness.
It was not my future I had to pursue.
It was all her dreams for me.
She told me I must grow old and have a family.
A dream I never had for myself at all.
She told me these words "Lauren you are a career-oriented person, but that is not what you must pursue."
All she wanted for me was a future.
A real one.
But it was not the happy world I had wanted to pursue.
So I had to let her down.
And live the life I had always envisioned.
The one I wanted to pursue.

By. Lauren

I wish I could go back in time.
I want to change everything.
You told me if it hadn't of happened I'd be on the team.
I just want to be one of them.
One of the strong.
Not one of the weak.
You told me if it wasn't for what had happened to me I could be more like them.
I don't want to be different.
I just want to fit in.
Sadly, I'm stuck here with this disability.
I just want to go back in time.
I want to change everything.

By. Lauren

What is poetry?
A lost art form I can not seem to remember?

By. Lauren

Two shootings in one day.
What has our world come to?
It's so easy to get a gun nowadays.
The other week I was behind a man in the store checkout line.
He wanted to buy a gun.
It was no hassle for him, simply sign his name on the dotted line.
They asked to see his ID but the man was not from this state where it is so easy to get a gun so they let him pay and he later left
grinning from cheek to cheek.
This is America our children once would say.
I'm proud to live in a nation where no harm will come to me.
If only they could've seen that in the future in El Paso Texas a deadly shooting would **** 20 people and injure more than two dozen others.
And in a span of less than a day, there would be many more.
9 people killed and 27 more injured in Dayton Ohio just 13 hours later.
How are we expected to raise our future children in this nation where there have been  249 shootings in the past 215 days?
For every 100 American citizens, there are 122 guns.
Why must our world result to such violence?

By. Lauren

My feelings are soft and tender.
Easy to break and even easier to melt away.
My love has always been a sensitive feeling.
It's hard to find it within me.
It's always missing when the good people come around.
It's always there when the bad people come to find it.
It's yet another feeling in my magical bouquet of broken.
I've never known who to trust my feelings with.
Where should I send them when my body must go?
I just need a vacation.
A chance to grow.
Grow feelings that aren't so fragile.
Something that won't melt away in the scorching summer heat.
A feeling that I can not break.

By. Lauren

This is a happy poem.
Proud of myself poem.
Confident in where I am at poem.
Poem I never write poem.
Today I have a purpose.
My lungs are still breathing in air purpose.
My heart is still pumping blood purpose.
I am feeling proud of myself purpose.
What a happy poem.
I have a purpose.