i don't write poetry anymore
i sit in my room, naked, feeling the curves of my body, searching for a sort of foreign peace within them
i study for exams, begin books i never finish, watch movies and stop halfway through, wear the same pants three days in a row, go a week without washing my hair
i lay down in the grass and watch the sky move
i laugh, i smile, i talk with friends
i feel alive driving in my car, letting the spring wind blow through my growing hair
i celebrate my mom's birthday, mother's day, memorial day
i go to baseball games and wear perfume
i play the only song i know on the piano when i should be practicing the flute
i stand in the shower and think too long and too hard
i pick fights with my dad because i can
i imagine my future, peering around the invisible bends in my path
(my apartment is beautiful, the one in my head, in case you were wondering)
i travel down 35W to see my family on their farms during harvest, the combines plowing through corn and leaving the fields bare for the snow to blanket in the winter
i sing loudly in church and pray only when i feel like there's something to pray about
i get lost in myself, trying to figure out who i am and where i'm going and what i want, the maze just never seems to end
i realize how much i'm starting to look like my mother-- my eyes, my cheeks, my nose are all bits and pieces that i got from her
i don't write poetry anymore
life has gotten too busy
life has gotten too hard