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Jul 2014
written in her voice...

When did sixteen
lose its sheen,
become so complicated?

when did the monsoon season
of transposition from girl to woman
begin, and when does it end?

when can I make my electrons
do their magic at my bidding,
like making my mum,
see me as I see myself?

don't know the answers,
don't know what made this girl think,
these equations had solutions

and when did sixteen,
become so complicated?

do I ask too much to make this straight,
I am one of just a billion teen girls
            with the same name,
knowing this doesn't help me
solve my mysteries unique, makes it somewhat worse,
how, was being sixteen,
young, but not never old enough
always a balloon misdirection, free floating, so confusing?

when I close my eyes
hear my private poetry ghost
insisting, listening to what I can't confess, even
to my diary, so I tell an
electronic stranger

(which is crazy, dangerous)

leaves me somehow relieved,
it seems impossible but he reads me,
even sees me, in my words
sees, and just, listens with every-word-attention

now he sees me as I want to be seen,
and I wonder, is he for real,
touchable, human skin and bone?

living in my skyscraper city,
I am surrounded,
pegged in a place where
sadly, where there is no dusk,
the lights too bright and 24 on,
and pressures of all kinds..make me
desire simple low lights,
that have quiet country lanes...with clears signs, known destinations

no more life exams please
especially, those that for me, were chose,
please, no goals parentally prescreened,
all, the nice and the mean,
let them meet me with pleasured randomness


so I can decide what seventeen will bring

my poem ghost sees me
far away, in other cities,
where my spirit
may have  lived once before,
in other bodies, other times,
where I heard the walls exclaim,
where once I prayed for sun
instead, brought thunderstorms,
monsoons of a different kind...
even with their knowledge past and forethought,
still I don't understand

when did sixteen,
lose its sheen, rain,
become so complicated?

algebra insufficient,
calculus trajectories,
don't intersect and
the future fortune tellers
seem to have better answers,
ones I like, they,
even tell me questions
didn't know to ask

what am I good at?

when will I be certain of
the difference tween love and  
sixteen emotional contusions that
bruise but don't scar?

when will my body speak,
informing me this trial of
the growing pain is over, done?

all these complications,
none that I chose,
do not patronize,
they are hard,
all I seek is the simplicity,
not the sympathy,
of knowing
when will
come the resolutions?


*when I turn seventeen?
Nat Lipstadt
Written by
Nat Lipstadt  M/nyc
(M/nyc)   
1.5k
       luci, ---, Weeping willow, ---, Traveler and 21 others
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