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Olivia Wirth Nov 2016
The day I entered this world, my eyes lit up.
They were a shade of blue that you only see in baby dolls and colored contacts.
Like my birthstone, aquamarine flood my eyes and breathe life into the souls around me.
I was bright blue, like the pure water I was baptized in.
Blue like the baby blankets they give you at hospitals.
The blue that no one can argue with, because everyone thinks blue is beautiful.

One day, I morphed into yellow.
I was the dandelions I made into flower crowns
and the banana Laffy Taffy that always stuck to my pants.
I was yellow sundresses, bright sunlight, and a warm smile.
My hair was the color of a wheat field.
One of my first words was “lellow.”
Lellow like Big Bird and banana runts.
The idea of something so bright, something so happy, soothed my childish brain.

There was a time when I was green.
Like the green of St. Patrick’s day, which I never dressed up for.
I was always pinched.
Green like the baseball diamonds I spent hours on as I watched my brother.
I was the grass I laid in, the grass I played in.
I was the green of an aging plant.
You could see colors swirling in intricate patterns throughout my mind.
The green of maturity;
of gears turning in my head.

Green turned to purple when I was uprooted from my home.
Omaha to Lincoln hit me like a lack of oxygen and turned me purple.
Just like a body without air, my limbs turned dark.
I was purple, like every middle school girl’s favorite color.
The purple of painted fingernails thumbing through Victoria’s Secret magazines.
The purple of trying to fit in with new friends.
I was the purple of colliding galaxies.
My brain was confused. They were making me something new.
They put me in purple high heels and pushed me forward.
“Learn how to walk,” they said.
Everything was the artificial grape that still makes me cringe.
Sometimes, I taste the purple Koolaid on my stained lips.

I’m glad my soul is done being black.
Black like the empty demon eyes that stared at me.
Like the pen that cracked in half and watched its ink flow.
Black like Sharpie tattoos and chokers.
Black mascara tear stains that burned my skin.
I fell deep into the night and into the abyss.
It was so dark that no one saw me fall.
I was blind with only a hint of yellow starlight to guide me.
So I followed it out.
I tracked the starlight through the night.
It was never easy. Sometimes I fell down and was dragged backwards.
But I finally left black.
I’m not all the way back to yellow yet, but at least I’m not black.

Now, I am white.
I am all of my colors wrapped into one.
I am the good and the bad, the clean and the impure.
At first glance, I am a blank page.
I appear to be a paper with no scratches, no eraser lines, no marks of red pens or bright highlighters.

But I am grape Koolaid stains.
I am hands covered in smears of black ink that cover my mouth.
Sometimes, I still eat Laffy Taffy and lemon lollipops.
I climb up tall trees and bask in the glow of leaves in the sunlight to learn something new.
I stare at the blue sky to remember what it feels like to fly.
I am a rainbow, hidden behind an expanse of white.
  Aug 2016 Olivia Wirth
Mary Alexander
Indirectly,
Timidly, yet
Clearly
Making plans and
Testing waters.
must resist the urge to burst into song every five seconds.
  Aug 2016 Olivia Wirth
Charlie
Heartbreak once again
Longing for your warm embrace
Hopeless fantasy.
Olivia Wirth Aug 2016
Send me your love in an envelope.
An envelope, like the hug that I’ve been craving.
Write me a letter and seal it with your lips.
A gentle lick of the envelope like a gentle kiss.
Wrap me up in symphonic sentences
Perfect paragraphs
And fracturing fragments.

My heart is
Bleeding
Breaking
Beating

Bleeding
Breaking
Bleeding.

Send me a love letter
And heal my withering, frail heart.
Olivia Wirth Aug 2016
My poetry doesn’t come from rainbows.
You don’t just look outside your window one day after a sudden storm and a flood of colors have appeared.
My poetry comes from potholes.
Day after day, month after month, year after year, rain and snow wear and tear my pothole apart.
Sometimes, it gets easier.
Some months there isn’t rain to hurt my heart again.
The pothole remains the same size.
It’s easier for just one day.

My poetry is as raw as it can get.
If I pick up a pen and start writing, I’m not going to lie to the paper.
Just like I wouldn’t like to my best friend, my poetry isn’t fake.
I don’t censor myself, always use appropriate language, or write about the most beautiful things.

My heartstrings are attached to my notebooks.
And if I somehow let you read one of them, I’m attaching you to my heartstrings.

Poetry is like my deep dark secret that I only share with my best friends.
You wouldn’t share your email password or that awkward middle school story with just anyone, would you?

It’s not always the most beautiful, the easiest to say.
But it’s me.

So, hello, friend.
I’m excited to have you here.
I’m Olivia Wirth and welcome to my poetry…
Olivia Wirth Aug 2016
Little blue-eyed girl spent every day loving.
You could almost see the love oozing out of her eyes when she stared into your soul.
Or the happiness radiating through her fingertips when she held your hand.
She was the color yellow.
She was the sunshine and the dandelions, the lemon lollipops and countless smiles.
Little blue-eyed girl loved with all she had in her.
She touched every human soul she knew
Except her own.

Sometimes, little blue-eyed girl forgot about herself.
But she never forgot to call the girl across the street or help the boy with the beautiful hair find a date.
But sometimes she forgot herself.
She wrote less,
Smiled less,
Thought about herself less,
Talked less.

But she cried more.

Suddenly, little blue-eyed girl realized she had forgot how to love herself.
She distantly remembered the days when she looked at herself in the mirror and smiled.
The girl who loved her small hands and her warm smile were like ghosts dancing in her brain.
She remembered the pigtails and the overalls that she had burned when he told her to.
She couldn’t remember when doodling on her arm in class had transitioned into counting down the ticking minutes in anxiety.

Her countless days of self love weren’t countless anymore.
She didn’t even know how to count anymore.
Where did all the love go?

And then she remembered the boy with the floppy hair that she poured her soul into and he batted her away.
Or the girl with thick, raven  curls that told her she was too much to handle, too strange to talk to.
Or the boy with the freckles that drained her of love.
The one who made her keep on giving when she had nothing left to give.
He drained her like a strawberry milkshake and he made sure to slurp up the remains at the bottom so there would be nothing left.

No, little blue-eyed girl didn’t have anxiety or depression.
She didn’t know someone who had committed suicide or had died.
She didn’t have a drinking problem, a drug problem.
Little blue-eyed girl didn’t have an illness that you can put a label on and prescribe medication for.
There was nothing wrong with little blue-eyed girl then.
Was there?


Diagnosis: “she gave more love than she could ever receive”

-Olivia Wirth
8 / 9 / 16

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