By. Lauren

I find myself missing the people I never seemed to know.
Not up to date on their name change
Yet I find myself craving them.
Craving their forgiveness for my cluelessness.
I wish I would've known better then.
I wish I would've listened better then.
Listened to what they were going through then.
But I'm afraid it's too late.
I made the mistake.
I wish I could've apologized to them.
If only I could go back to then.
Back to then when they were them.
Back to the time, I didn't comprehend them.
Back to a day, I could explain myself to them back then.
I guess this poem is as close as I'll ever get.
I feel sorry.
But I bet they've moved on from then.
I just wish I could apologize to them.

By. Lauren

I feel like I'm watching through someone else's eyes.
A glaze over mine.
This world is yours not mine.
It'll never be mine.
It's so blurry here.
Is it just the air?
My eyes don't feel like they're mine.
Will they ever be mine?
Is it just a lost cause?
Maybe I'm in a game.
A game I can not control.
A game where I'm the pawn.
A game where there is no win.
Only death.
My only outcome is death.
I guess this world really will never be mine.
I'm just a guest with eyes that are not mine.

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

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

Drunk on the "innocence" of our youth.
Ready for another shot of liquor.
We down quicker and quicker.
It's always seemed to be this way.
Our pupils dilating larger and larger.
Not ready for the hangover.
Not ready for it all to be over.
Drinking makes the demons go away.
No more chatting in our minds.
Tonight we get to be normal teens.
Just drinking the "innocence" of our youth away.
Letting it glide down our throats
Quicker and quicker each time ready for the gulp.
The gulp that makes it all go away.

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

This color blue so dark and rich.
It covers my nails.
Then I realize this was your favorite color.
Once again since the day you left me
I am deeply saddened.

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

5th Avenue.
Where I first met you.
Where your eyes met mine.
Where our lips first locked.
5th Avenue where I knew I loved you.

By. Lauren

When my planner is full I feel alive.
When my planner is full I have a purpose.
When my planner is full I never actually get to any of my goals.
It's just when my planner is not full the spaces are engulfed in the words "don't **** your self" when my planner is empty I feel worthless.
When my planner is empty I don't want to write another poem.
The plan of my life seems to have a grater impact than the years I have lived.

By. Lauren

I don't know what to say to you.
You took my friend,
But where will it end?
It seems like every time it comes to a close
You take her again.
Do you enjoy this game?
A spiraling loop of she's mine.
Will you just let her win?
I don't know what to say to you.
Just know this game will end.

By. Lauren

Time.
You asked me to waste my time.
Take a second or two.
Can't you see I've got things to do and places to be?
Time.
Time is gone.
I can not waste it on you.
I'm sorry but I have no time.
Today you have wasted enough of my time.
So tomorrow I would just like to remind you I've got things to do and places to be.
That does not mean I have time for you.
Goodbye.

By. Lauren

A bad day,
Chaos,
A day in which everything ends.
A world in which everything seems to be on fire.
Chaos is a every day affair for me.
Because chaos is a relative refusing to leave.
Chaos is the foundation of the day that swallows all that is calm and produces a monster out of it.
Chaos is the occupant on the other side of the bed.
Because chaos is more dreaded than the day it intertwines itself in.
Chaos is the lover that breaks everyone's heart who ever thought they loved it.
Because everything seems so calm until you find chaos.
And then everything ends.

By. Lauren

"Typing"

You hit me up.
It's 1 AM and you think it's a good idea.
Sliding into those DM's after years.
What am I to say?
We once where best friends I cannot lie.
You and me till the end.
You and me in my bedroom just being friends.
I still remember everything.
The late-night texting just like friends do.
The conversations we refused to share.
Just giggling at the lunch table when all else was silent.
I remember when we were once only girls.
No relationship drama to intersect.
It's just we grew up.
No more braiding hair life got too serious.
Stuff happened.
I do not hate you and I hope you feel the same.
It's just I didn't know what to say in those times I needed you the most.
The times I just needed a good hug from you to get through the day.
I guess that's why we're here today.
Sitting across a table trying to figure things out.
Can I give you a sip of what I think?
We all messed up.
You got too close to her for my heart to handle.
It felt like you'd shattered all our good times.
No more you and me it was all you and her.
I knew she wasn't good for you.
A toxic girl only there to **** your blood and break your heart.
Just what was I to say?
You cannot tell someone their new found best friend is toxic after they've left you.
You got with the wrong crowd the people you knew I was not comfortable around.
The people I first knew and introduced you to.
This is our reality now.
I will not be your best friend because you have Changed more than you needed to.
Now you're just a ***** with a best friend itch.
I will not hold your hand anymore.
Goodbye.

"Message Sent"

By. Lauren

I know I'm just a teen but I have my needs.
I have my dreams.
The life in a city.
The fun of a day.
Living the life I have always dreamed.
A day with you.
A need of mine.
Without you my life is only the dream of a teen.
What more can I be?

By. Lauren

My world is like a broken record constantly spinning on the turntable not being able to stop but not being able to play any tune worth hearing.
As the record I call life turns the obnoxious screeching commences.
The spinning never ceases to give up its power as it begins to make me nauseous.
My life gives no concern to the activities I can no longer appreciate.
You do not realize how wondrous a record is until it spins 24/7 leaving only the residue of past headaches and brain trauma in your mind.
Because my life is a broken record ready to be tossed out.
Because my life is a broken record ready to be tossed out.

Por. Lauren

El lenguaje es sólo una barrera que debemos desafiar.

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

Anorexia why must you return to me so soon?
I look in the mirror and see you now.
I thought you were gone.
Why must you come home?
My body was getting strong once more.
Feeling so happy again.
Then you came home.
My body knew no better but to let you back in.
You moved into the chemicals of my brain.
You changed me to satisfy yourself.
Anorexia I just want to be alone.
I once found a home in the foods I wanted to consume.
But now anorexia I can't seem to find a home in my own body.
You have eaten me raw.
All skin and bones no fat to call my home.
No room for a lover all that I can host is you.
You've made my body a structure I can not keep up.
A frame with no foundation.
Anorexia this is not who I'm meant to be.
You're not supposed to be.
Not with me.
We're not meant to be.
I know we once got along.
The two of us looking beautiful in that red dress.
The compliments we ate up as our only protein for the day.
"Oh you're so thin," they would say.
Anorexia I don't want to be with you anymore!
I feel like I'm breaking.
I'm sick of watching my weight.
5'2 and 40 pounds under.
Anorexia this is not how I'm supposed to be.
Just let me be.
Not you and me.
Just me.
Let ME be.

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

I tried not to love poetry for you.
But I couldn't.
It's just now I try to love poetry for me.
And I can't seem to do that either.

By. Lauren

I never wanted to be here.
Not here.
Not in this room.
Not anywhere.
I never wanted to be me.
Not in this body anyway.
I've always wanted to leave here.
Leave me.
Leave this body that has treated me so unfair.
I never have given any care.
Not to this body.
It doesn't care for me anyway.
I never wanted to slice it open.
See its blood.
I never wanted to see my blood.
I never wanted to see it drip.
Feel it drip.
Make it drip.
I've just never wanted to be alive.
Not here.
Not in this world.
Not where I have been treated so cruel.
I've never liked all the slurs.
The hurtful things they scream.
I don't want to hear them scream.
And I can't.
And I won't.
And I still stay.
Stay silent.
I just want to leave.
I've never wanted to be here.
Not here.
Not there.
Not with them.
Not in this body anyway.

By. Lauren

Today I'm feeling done.
I know it's bizarre.
Only one feeling to represent a day not yet done.
Just today I'm feeling done.
Today I can see the end.
I can see the blood drip.
The drain clog.
The finder cry.
Today I'm feeling done.
Not the I want to die done.
Instead the I'm already gone done.
Just done.
The 15 years of trying and 0 achieving done.
Done.
Such a simple word to represent such a strong feeling.
Such a bizarre word for what I mean.
Not unique.
Only simplistic.
4 letters to represent a whole day.
A whole life.
Today I just feel done.

By. Lauren

What is it you see in me?
Are my words too real for you?
I hope your heart has not been broken this way too.
Your poor eyes young girl.
You've read more than one should bear.
How do you stay so strong?
May I have a piece of your point of view?
To the girl always liking my poetry.
Thank you.

By. Lauren

You lied to me once,
You apologized.
You lied to me twice,
I wanted to cry.
You lied to me thrice,
I wanted to die.

By. Lauren

Have you ever wanted to be someone you are not?
Breathe air from someone else's lungs.
Pump blood from someone else's heart.
Think in someone else's mind.
Fall in love from someone else's body.
Just be someone you are not.
Live someone else's life.
A whole different world waiting to be discovered.
Mistakes and all.
I just want to be someone else entirely.

By. Lauren

You use to whisper in my ear.
Where has your voice gone?
Last time I checked a whisper still had sound.
But you have faded away.
You use to whisper in my ear.
Now my ear is searching for your voice to reply.

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

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.

By. Lauren

I can't put my feelings into words.
I can't dive deep into alliteration.
Yet I find myself trying my hardest.

I can't end a line with a rhyme.
Because I am not perfect nor are my rhymes.

My poems lack the ability to feel.
Yet my brain lacks the ability not to feel.

I fell in love with poetry but literary devices fell into a hatred of me.

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

You told me we needed to talk.
The words that upset me the most.
The words you frequently spoke.
Not due to anger.
Just simply being disappointed in your own spawn.
Every time I apologized you said it was fine.
If it was truly fine then why must you yell?
Why must you yell "we need to talk."
Your voice raising to interfere mine.
Why must you take that tone?
The sounds never interlocking only blocking.
"I'm sorry" is all I know how to say.
Yet you continue to raise your voice
Because "we need to talk."

By. Lauren

A ****** day for a ****** person like me.
Beep!
Beep!
Beep!
I woke up late, once again.
Rush, swoosh, ugh!
I am late once again.
In a rush to leave I find myself throwing on the first thing my weak fingers can feel.
I'm late and my health is failing.
Today is a ****** day!
Slam!
The door closes and I left my keys once again.
"Today is ****," I scream.
As I look in the mirror of my car my eyes want to scream.
Every imperfection is visible on me.
Today is a ****** day for a ****** person like me.

By. Lauren

Growing up gay in the south is like smoking.
You know it's not good yet you still do it.
Growing up gay in the south is a destiny to be shunned.
Growing up gay in the south is like having food in your teeth.
We're not afraid to point it out!
Because growing up in the south means you're quick to judge and even quicker to act on it.
If you grew up gay in the south than you know what I'm talking about.
Just don't do it.
Because growing up gay in the south is the epitome of all gays.

By. Lauren

Falling in love with a poet is like falling down an endless hole.
As the black and white stripes spin all around,
Your mind is soon engulfed in their literature for you and you alone, so they say.
Except, falling in love with a poet means
You aren't the only one to fall down their rabbit hole of happy day poetry.
"When I look into your eyes I see a sunrise of warmth, happiness, and the love I have for you. You are my world in which my heart keeps beating. Without you I may as well be dead."
Falling in love with a poet is just a game.
It's an opportunity to write a few poems or two.
But, falling in love with a poet has no true feelings except for the shallow expressions shown in their poetic devices.

By. Lauren

I try to pursue my dreams but every time I'm faced with the harsh reality.
Ideas never come to me.
It always must be on their own terms.
Today I realized
I am lost in the obis of my own poetry.
No escape of finishing a poem:
All I know how to do is repeat a line.
Will this ever be done?
Poetry is a dream of mine.
If only it was not a weary traveler carrying only one bag at a time.
Poetry how may I help you today?

By. Lauren

Muscles are the gift you where blessed with.
Muscles are the gift I was robbed of before I had the pain staking opportunity to even learn what they where for.
You take your body for granted,
But for me I watch daily as mine deteriorates.
For you there is no worry about your health.
Sadly, for me I look down and wonder when my legs will give out.
I wonder when I am going to collapse next.
I may be young, but I know the pain of imagining when I will die.
My body
Will be the end of me
And that
Terrifies me.

By. Lauren

For the longest time I feared death itself.
I wasn't afraid all those times to take my life.
Yet today I think in fear.
I do not know in which I believe.
A heaven or hell.
An eternity with him.
All that I come back to is fear.
The world is my happy place.
A *** brimming with just the right amount perfection yet the proportional pinch of imperfection to top it all off.
I guess what I'm saying is I'm afraid to believe in heavens perfection.
It's just the preacher always said hell was no party either.
Only a scorching arena of loneliness.
Do I believe in either?
My religion was forced upon me to the point I snapped.
I do not know in which I believe.
Maybe the world just simply ends.
No heaven or hell.
Only a simple lights out.
When it all ends will we just be floating?
Souls in the obis of outer space drifting along never to see one another again.
Still alive but not truly there.
Not truly human.
Just weary travelers who will never lock eyes again.
Is this how it all ends?

By. Lauren

What's that?

By. Lauren

When will you stop my brain?
I am ready to sleep now.
I took you hours ago.
Yet you won't tuck me in.
When will you numb me
So I feel no more pain
When will you make me stop writing these poems.
Advil P.M when will you make me normal?
When will you let me live?

By. Lauren

My family has never seemed to get themselves weaned.
Not from the drugs.
Not from the alcohol.
Not from the smoking.
Not from the abuse.
Not even from the bleeding.
Year after year another resolution.
I will change they always seem to say.
Relapse after relapse they always seem to peruse.
We have never been weaned.
Learning our habits from one another not knowing that's what we should not do.
It's become our DNA.
Our flesh and blood.
Self-harm took me over too.
2 years of cutting watching the pain watching my blood go down the drain.
Yet another one not able to be weaned so soon.
Crying in the bathroom full of fears full of tremors full of hopelessness.
Yet another lost hope.
Life was useless to me
A dream I would never be able to see.
I couldn't be weaned.
Each night I tried to stop.
Just breathe and look at the ceiling.
Remaining yet another lost cause.
I never knew how small my room was until I was enclosed in the space that I couldn't escape.
I never knew how large my mind was until I was lost in all of its emptiness.
I couldn't be weaned.
Night after night memorizing my scars adding on to my collection.
It took 3 years without help to finally get here.
I just hope I can stay.
Hope I can change my DNA.
No more losing blood.
No more watching others struggle.
We all will be weaned.
Weaned of the drugs.
Of the alcohol.
Of the smoking.
Of the abuse.
And even the bleeding.

By. Lauren

Bones shatter under the pressure to be perfect.
No flaws in the marrow or bumps on the side.
Only the longing for perfection that will never be satisfied.

By. Lauren

My poetry is a work in progress.
Before I can finish one I'm on to the other.

By. Lauren

The word sick is poison to my lips.
The word sick makes me want to cry.
The word sick makes my stomach churn.
157 million people in our world suffer from some form of chronic illness.
These people go their whole lives learning to spell diseases many doctors are unable to pronounce.
Hospital visit after hospital visit yet we refuse to claim ourselves sick.
The word sick gives me the sense of failure.
The sense of caving into my chronic illness.
The word sick makes me want to cry.
Because the word sick means I have given up all hope that resides in my mind.

By. Lauren

Calling: Ex
Buzz!
Buzzz!
Buzzzz!
Buzzzzz!
"Please leave a message after the beep,"
The phone seemed to scream in my ears.
Beep!
I hope you know
You ruined my
*******
Life!
Goodbye.
*static cracks explode like bombs being fired directly at me

By. Lauren

As I sit at the lunch table,
Time seems to slow.
They seem to freeze.
My tears seem to stop.
My heart seems to start.
My pulse seems to increase.
My mind seems to race.
My life seems to end.
And I am left all alone, once again.

By. Lauren

3AM poetry has soft lips I do not get to kiss often, so when I do I want to kiss back.

By. Lauren

Am I not allowed to be me anymore?
Can I not be free?
Must I seek your approval?
An object in your fantasy.
That is not who I am.
That is not who I love.
I do not think like you.
Why must you hurt me?
Can I not just be me?
Just simply free.

By. Lauren

Some days I wake up and wonder why I'm still alive.
I look in the mirror and the view of rotting flesh cascades over me.
My body is too fragile to be my own.
Breaking limbs and an unwilling soul.
”Why am I still here,” I ask my own self?
I do not want to leave my body.
But do I really want to leave this home in this body either?
My limbs seem to crack every step I take.
Societies pressure for me to be perfect is breaking me.
I don't understand why I am still here.
I am hung up in a world bigger than I'll ever know.
Just searching for an exit.
No more morning wonders.
Searching for a home I can call my own.
Both my body and I the residents comfortable in our own new home.