Mar 2016
I am a child, born to heartbreak, love, and war.
Like a parade, I dance with friends, learn karate after school,
And when I grow up, I sit at waterfalls with my other,
Thinking about the trees, animals, insects, logs, the lake, oceans,
And the mountain I climbed to get to where I am today.
I feel like adventure lets me travel from place to place.
I get to become a new person with every new destination.
I now feel like the wind.
I last forever and feel different to everyone.
I used to go to sleep to the sound of rain.
It was the best thing I ever heard.
Every drop felt like it had little bits of my future,
My hopes, my dreams.
I think it’s time to get my head out of the clouds.
Boys annoy me. I get sad thinking about how many people I have to give up in order to know happiness, and it’s strangely ironic.
I’ve got purple glitter in my hair and the music my mom made for me,
Told me I could trust people I considered family.
It’s like the real meaning of poetry,
Illegitimate images to imagine a world no real person could see.
The magic of a life with a girl who is able to sit in her big backyard when the sun goes down,
Thinking she’s had a pretty good day and that image has been burned into my head ever since I saw the end of college’s road and I am not even ready for tomorrow’s 8th grade homework.
When I started to think I could be alone, I ended up writing a small poem each night.
They all started with lines like,
“I miss you.
Come back I’m sorry for what I did.
I will not miss you if you leave.
Because I need you next to me all the time.”
A story of a girl who had diabetes. It all started when she was 3 years old,
and there I go. Making up characters because no one would really want to live this life.
No one would really want to be a living example of me.
But I will not leave that same mark for my legacy.
Dad, I think I want to be a scientist now.
I’ve loved complex equations since I was a kid,
Learning about life is so beautiful and cool and everyone will enjoy you,
And I’ll realize that my failures are not a disappointment to you.
I’ll be able to know how to not be sad anymore.
Because science teaches me everything and more.
I am a child, born to heartbreak, love, and war.
These are the voices of kids who have no idea what comes forward in life but will embrace it. These are the voices of kids who are disadvantaged because some societal system has decided they are nothing more that test grades. Here are the next leaders of our free world that have already been turned into scantron results.
You hear their voices and are impressed, but yet not depressed because as loud as they can be, the real world will steal their voices at the age of 18.
They are the only thing between us and anarchy.
They are the creative minds.
The souls we must nourish.
The skin we must keep pure.
If we are X, then they are Y,
And our direct relationship will always be an equation that must be balanced,
Never just an expression to be left unsolved.
Like a parade, I dance with friends, learn karate after school,
And when I grow up, I sit at waterfalls with my other,
Thinking about the trees, animals, insects, logs, the lake, oceans,
And the mountain I climbed to get to where I am today.
I feel like adventure lets me travel from place to place.
I get to become a new person with every new destination.
I now feel like the wind.
I last forever and feel different to everyone.
I used to go to sleep to the sound of rain.
It was the best thing I ever heard.
Every drop felt like it had little bits of my future,
My hopes, my dreams.
I think it’s time to get my head out of the clouds.
Boys annoy me. I get sad thinking about how many people I have to give up in order to know happiness, and it’s strangely ironic.
I’ve got purple glitter in my hair and the music my mom made for me,
Told me I could trust people I considered family.
It’s like the real meaning of poetry,
Illegitimate images to imagine a world no real person could see.
The magic of a life with a girl who is able to sit in her big backyard when the sun goes down,
Thinking she’s had a pretty good day and that image has been burned into my head ever since I saw the end of college’s road and I am not even ready for tomorrow’s 8th grade homework.
When I started to think I could be alone, I ended up writing a small poem each night.
They all started with lines like,
“I miss you.
Come back I’m sorry for what I did.
I will not miss you if you leave.
Because I need you next to me all the time.”
A story of a girl who had diabetes. It all started when she was 3 years old,
and there I go. Making up characters because no one would really want to live this life.
No one would really want to be a living example of me.
But I will not leave that same mark for my legacy.
Dad, I think I want to be a scientist now.
I’ve loved complex equations since I was a kid,
Learning about life is so beautiful and cool and everyone will enjoy you,
And I’ll realize that my failures are not a disappointment to you.
I’ll be able to know how to not be sad anymore.
Because science teaches me everything and more.
I am a child, born to heartbreak, love, and war.
These are the voices of kids who have no idea what comes forward in life but will embrace it. These are the voices of kids who are disadvantaged because some societal system has decided they are nothing more that test grades. Here are the next leaders of our free world that have already been turned into scantron results.
You hear their voices and are impressed, but yet not depressed because as loud as they can be, the real world will steal their voices at the age of 18.
They are the only thing between us and anarchy.
They are the creative minds.
The souls we must nourish.
The skin we must keep pure.
If we are X, then they are Y,
And our direct relationship will always be an equation that must be balanced,
Never just an expression to be left unsolved.
This is a poem I made out of the collective thoughts of my students in my old after school job.
