Cece - Hello Poetry

Cece Apr 2015

I succumbed to a wave of adoration
when you held my face and smiled.

The happiness was fleeting
after my body remembered the pain
that comes with the price of caring for awhile.

I can barely remember what life was like
prior to surviving with a broken heart.

I was fearless, and full of hope.
But now whenever someone
makes me feel happy, again
I contemplate if it's worth the risk
of falling apart.

Cece Nov 2014

New Medicine

I met someone last week.
He makes me smile,
and I hang off of every word
that comes out of his bearded mouth.

He speaks like poetry
and cares about all of the things
I have been too lazy
to discuss these days.

He has depth
which is hard to find
in people around here.
And he forms legitimate thoughts
and challenges my typical,
simple responses -
daring me to elaborate.

But most importantly
when I'm talking to him
you don't haunt my thoughts
nearly as much as you usually do.

I'm going to try to keep him around.

Cece Nov 2014

You don't love me anymore

I think of you
every day that passes.
And then I think about how
you don't love me anymore.
I don't know how to cope with this
and I'm just hoping
that if I refuse to truly accept it
after awhile,
it'll happen without me realizing it
and I won't have to feel as much pain
but I can't imagine
it being much worse than this.

You don't love me anymore.

I find myself in my head
saying that I'll stop hoping that
you'll want me back,
next week.
Next month
or maybe
next year.
I keep making excuses for you
and thinking that I should keep waiting.
And so I just keep needing to say to myself that

you don't love me anymore.

I almost have to resist cringing
when he touches me
because I feel like
I'm cheating on you.
And then I remember that

you don't love me anymore.

He is your absolute opposite
which I hate most of the time
but sometimes it helps.
Sometimes I even come close
to convincing myself that
I actually like him.
And then the thoughts of you
flood my mind
and I know that this
is nothing more than myself
being too weak
to be alone.

I love you.

Cece Nov 2013

A Broken Memory

We speak through closed doors
and are muffled by white walls.

Avoiding eye contact
we briskly walk to the kitchen
to grab our plates in silence
only to retreat to our sanctuary.

Muted shouting always seeps through,
but I tell my brothers to ignore it
while we stare down
at our bleak hamburger helper.

Daddy is getting louder
and I hear mom crying again,
so I turn up the volume
and we try to focus on Spongebob.

After pushing my food around my plate
through a couple episodes of this,
I tell my brothers to stay in our room
while I go figure out why it's quiet again.

Mom is talking on the phone to someone
telling them what dad was wearing,
and she keeps looking out the window.

I sneaked onto the couch and saw
dad walking down the street;
a policeman stopped him
and took him away for a few days.

Mom starts walking over to me
and tells me to go to my room,
to play with my brothers.

They were too young to remember
how bad it really was.
Only now do I, myself, realize
these were not things
I should have had to see.

*CVT

Cece Nov 2013

Gobble-gobble

Turkey and bread
fill our stomachs
almost as much
as laughter fills the air.

Sitting at the little kid table
for a large percentage of my life,
and seeing distant cousins in college
bring their boyfriends to dinner
seemed so far away
and intangible.

This year, that is not
something that will be
beyond me.

Butterflies are clouding my thoughts
every time I think about the dinner to come.
I'm sharing the bustling city of Chicago
and my most cherished family members,
with the man who is coddling my heart.

And for this, I am thankful.

*CVT

Cece Nov 2013

My Former Family

No one
is who they were
yesterday.

Minuscule adaptations form
with each sunrise
and go unnoticed
until you look back at an old photograph,
or think about something that happened
with an old friend who is now a stranger
that you know nothing about.

You are your own doppelganger.

The girl sitting in the theatre
playing obnoxious games
with her loud, aspiring individualistic friends
seems like a stranger to me.

It is impossible
to pinpoint the moment
when things started to change
and I lost sight of that girl,
and who she wanted to be.

At the least,
I wonder
when everything
started to shift.
What caused the imbalance?

Now I sit alone
in classes I don't care to pursue
with no sense of aspiration
towards anything.

I remember all of the laughter
and the sleepovers, gossiping about
everything.

I remember random details
and insignificant everyday stories
that could take up hours
upon hours
of reiterating.

When a friendship terminates
what are you supposed to do
with all of your old shared secrets?
Where are you supposed to put those memories?

The girl I am right now
doesn't talk to those people anymore
and I can hardly remember
what it felt like
to be in her shoes,

and all I really have
is knowing things
about the people
that they used to be.

*CVT

Cece Nov 2013

What are friends?

When I was six years old
I went trick or treating
with my mom and my neighbor Lexi.
I was a scarecrow
and she was a princess.

At age fourteen
I went trick or treating
with my best friend Mikayla
dressed up as a witches.
We were in middle school
and it was about the time
when we were starting to think
we were getting too old for this.

Age seventeen
I don't even remember what I wore.
But I went to a party
and got drunk
with twenty of my closest friends
and we all walked to McDonald's
at 3 am.

I am less than two months shy
of being nineteen years old
and I'm sitting in my college dorm
about to go to sleep.
I don't really have any friends.
I forget what fun is supposed to be like sometimes.

I miss smiling
at more than just
my boyfriend.

*CVT