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Jess Hays Jun 2016
I wonder what the weather's like back home,
The place that I had first known.
How are all the neighborhood kids, my old friends?
I miss the fields and sidewalks where we used to play pretend.

I remember watching the people build that beautiful place.
I used to run through the wood beams
And imagine life through the window seams

Life was sweet back home in my hometown...
My childhood room and the memories i keep like photographs,
Life was simple and perfect.

"You can't go back, though"

... Not when someone has already moved into that beloved house.
And I can't knock on all of their doors when they don't live there anymore.
Jess Hays Jul 2016
He runs his fingers across his chest
He is a story-lined royalty at its best
The words he writes may seem cliché,
But I find them to be mellifluous.
His emerald green eyes with just a pinch of gold
And his charming, short mahogany hair
Can't help but illuminate his sense of perfection.
I usually catch myself from falling into such recklessness,
but  my God he's just so beautiful...
Jess Hays Jun 2016
She's a dreamer...
A beautiful little girl who has always been a believer.
A faithful follower to the idea that no one can do her any harm.
People only act cruelly because of life's deceiving charm.

Oh what a delightful dreamer.
I wish I was more like her.
So open-minded, so innocent.

Enchanting emerald eyes with a pinch of nebular gray.
Long mahogany hair.
She looks just like her favorite princess.
Oh what a beautiful dreamer.

She's the light that eternally shines,
The state of mind like that of a child.
Oh what a dreamer, she is.
What a beautiful dreamer.
Jess Hays Jul 2016
The feeling panicked my veins
Racing through me like a hurricane
Drowning all ability and faith

For years, my soul was the way of a drought
Rations of strength became food for doubt
Childhood dreams kept falling, from me, out

Like a shooting star, it was an intoxicated rush
I licked the future's candle out, but not enough
There I was, and there it came all at once

I was floating the air with a net
The intention of it getting set
But this wasn't the newest and best
Rather the same, but bigger than it used to get
Jess Hays Aug 2016
We were criminals sneaking out at night
Stealing sleep, we were caught enchanting life
We were lovers at the simplest of the word
Never did we know, we weren't part of that herd

We were running away in that blue Chevrolet
An array of plans, coloring stars as they faded to days
We were something that almost had it fair
But I was left to hope you'd be anywhere but nowhere.
Jess Hays Aug 2016
That long narrow road fell into view
Barely ripped in two, I didn't think much of you.
Rather, me giving all I was to a soon goodbye
All I can remember are the months that drug by.
Just ask, darling, and you could have had all of me
I thought you pieced me a puzzle
But you just made my mind muddled
The saddest thought ...
I would've given galaxies
Now, only a sinful reality
And this is why love will forget you and me
Because you taught it how to leave.
Jess Hays Jul 2016
The truth is I'm not okay
How should I be with you away
A daddy's little girl from far away
You were suppo... I hoped you'd be back today
But you're not.
I'm not too old to be tucked in
But I feel like I'm on my own...
Like I'm in college, not at home
Because its not home with just mom and I
It's obvious when I look into her eyes
Or stare into a mirror at mine.
I miss you daddy.
You've been away for far too long...
And you're still not done with being gone.
I'd never let you know from so far away,
But I wish you were here today
Jess Hays Aug 2016
Don't overcrowd your mind with hopelessness
Humans wander until they find themselves astray
That's the bittersweet beauty of life, of this
Find yourself, don't quit the game.

Don't keep messing with your mind
Can't you see, you keep saying this is your life
Don't let them intervene
All of you is proof of the greatness in your mind

Don't quit.
You were given this life because you're strong enough to live it.
You just have to choose whether or not you want to.
Jess Hays Aug 2016
Her, him, them,
We, us, then

The congregation grew less
Until in this empty church pew, Only I was left.
I wandered to find a feeling
An emotion other than losing

Her, him, them
...me
We, us at an end

The procession said its final amen
Relationships now reaching end
They walk until I am left
This empty church pew, and nothing less.
Jess Hays Feb 2017
Have you ever felt like you deserved a thank you?
Or an apology?
Or just anything that could explain what happened?
Because I have.
There was a boy who came and sat alone everyday at lunch. I saw it and I thought "That is not right. He must come sit with us!"
Then, hell broke out between her and I... It was fixed, but honestly it wasn't. I can't sit at my table anymore because I reached out to that green eyed-blonde haired kid... I sat right next to him and I began to care about him. He met my dad. I wanted it to go somewhere.
Little did I know what his one-track mind wanted.
Little was I able to comprehend how small he saw me along the long list of girls wearing my shoes.
This is all he does, this is what they warned me of.
He's the reason I sneak my food into these walls covered in books and constant shushing.
Because he sits at the table I invited him to.
He made me feel ignorant and self-centered when really I was made his pawn.
He wanted me because he has had everyone else and couldn't have someone walking the halls who wasn't on that list of his.
He sits at my table. He sits with my friends.
But I can't stand to make eye contact with him. I'm still trying to convince him I'm over what has happened.
It's as if I'm trying to survive in this agonizing pit of never-ending drama, the perpetual unraveling of lies, actions that are caught before they are over, apologies that are screamed because they are full of remorse they were caught.
...
He sits at my table, right where he used to hold my hand while sneaking another in the chair beside him.
He sits at my table, and he talks to all my friends.
And he hurts me daily without any remorse, but every intent.
Jess Hays Jul 2016
"These times will try hard to define me
And I'll try to hold my head up high
But I've seen despair here from the inside
And it's got a one track mind"
These Times- Safetysuit
One of my favorite songs and my all time favorite band.
Jess Hays Feb 2017
All this time, I thought home was back in my hometown
The house where I drew on the walls
The streets I'd play on and fall.
But, being this close to leaving, I know that is not my home.
It's my safe haven, my childhood.
But my parents and my brother...
That's what I'm dreading to leave.
I don't want to be somewhere starting off alone.
I want to stay with these three parts of my heart
Because if home is where the heart is
Then how can I live anywhere but here?
Jess Hays Jul 2016
"If one of the things you believe in,
Is that this world's an ugly place,
You must have never gone outside at night,
And stared up into space,
You haven't felt the way the air changes,
In the minutes before it rains,
Or watched the world pass by below,
Out the window of a plane,
You've never been awake so early,
That you see the moment the sun stats to rise,
And you've never laid with your back on the grass,
And made shapes with the clouds in the sky,
But maybe if you've done all this,
But still don't believe it's true,
It's because you can't see all the beauty,
That I see when I look at you."
Jess Hays Jul 2016
It's taken all of me not to read those faded old letters
I've tried with all I have in me, to take off the ring I got from her.
And it's taking just about all of me not to break in tears.
If I had a just a little more in me
Some sort of power to bring her here to me
I'd do it all the same, but differently
I don't want to forget,
But I don't want to remember goodbye as part of it.
Jess Hays Oct 2016
I've never put myself out to such a degree
And the lightweight that I am, the gun that shot my nerves
With the sheets in my hands, the rhythm burned in my veins
The ink in my bloodstream bled through onto my paper heart
And blackened all the confidence I built
So when I got the news
The pages were ripped and so was my strength
Jess Hays Sep 2016
If I were to walk the very rim of earth
And walk through the whips of clouds and lights
It would put things in perspective, such a dark place
Such a quiet space, I could float across to the better days
To a place where numbers never mattered
Rather were nonexistent
Where words didn't hold such mass
What a world the very rim of earth would be.
I think I'd be happy but lonely, yet free.
Jess Hays Jul 2016
Second year at a new school
I should be accustomed to it
But the fact is, most of them are strangers.

Second year should mean a second chance
But her friendship ring is leaving its mark on my hand
And my young years are drifting away at the sand

It's high tide...
To resurrect my mind into this new time
But new is different and different is unknown
And the unknown is scary.

I don't know how to think beyond
Those who are now distant characters in my storyline.
I'm hesitating..
Because new is different and thus unknown..
And I'm not sure if I can trust what I don't know.
Jess Hays Sep 2016
There's a haunting dwelling in her brain
A feeling so trying flooding in with the rain
Voices hurt her just the same
Her lack of progress has every voice stained

Falling tears are signs of weakness, she's been taught
But on her bed her strength shows all she hasn't brought
Every lesson hits her as if it was a lethal shot
So she breaks herself until there's nothing left to rot

Neither blood nor scars, she leaves it to inwardly break
She slams her door and drowns the regret, alone with no one to fake
And melodically she screams, tells what's been at stake
Her lack of progress is known when he says her name

Because there's a haunting dwelling in her brain
A feeling of these times clots in her veins
Voices that hurt her never do fade
For her lack of progress has, on her, been stained
"these times will try hard to define me and ill try to hold my head up high but I've seen despair here from the inside and its got a one track mind"
Jess Hays Jul 2016
I may not be the prettiest,
Nor am I the most easy-spoken
But I thank you for believing that I could be.
"You're not held back by those degrading ideas."

I might be insecure
And think that I can't end up getting my dream
But thank you for not listening to my rumbling
There's no occasion I'm writing this for
I just wanted to make sure you knew that
I love you, mom.
Jess Hays Jul 2016
One look around,
Plastered everywhere like a boomerang that never calms down,
Hypocritical words and false perfection.

Coloring the bags under their eyes
Camouflaging the stretch mark on their thighs
And the rest of us stay fixated on our insecurities.

They get paid millions of dollars
To correct their microphoned voices
And be honored for the 'hottest celebrity'
When they are just like the rest of us.
Jess Hays Aug 2016
Doorstep arrivals are such a thing of haste
I was a last minute thought, nothing has changed
That little niece is about to be eighteen
She can count on her hand how much she has seen
Of you... My saddest truth
That doorstep never knew you again
That one Christmas note, it was your sin
I was delighted to get a letter from a stranger
But you never did write back again.
Jess Hays Aug 2016
I think those lyrics had other intentions
But they make me relive those moments
When I would sit inside a quiet room
Smiling to what her voice was setting loose
Before, my mind never doubted your emotions
Things conform to passing rhymes, I guess

I understood those heartbroken words
Never until you
You taught me more than I signed for
That's the catch to young love
Youth brings ignorance
I had no way to know.

I may have lost you
But I gained new favorite songs
Received more knowledge
And for that, I thank you.
Jess Hays Jul 2016
Life is not depression
Love is not failure
We are not useless.

Life is not hopeless
Love is not a burden
We are not small.

Life is not unforgiving
Love is not untouchable
We are not lost causes.

Life is beautifully cruel,
Cruel in the way that it's almost as if it takes pleasure
In our rivers of tears and outcries.
But it lifts us up every now and then,
And it lifts us up high.
It drops us again, but the rush is worth the fall... isn't it?

Love is refreshingly pure,
Not every emotion humans feel is hatred and love.
There is just one type of love,
And the rest are just stemmed of that beautiful action.
That's where we fall and shatter though
Love is not a feeling!
It is not something that demands to be felt!
It demands to be held
And nourished and protected.

We are not useless.
Stop giving up, darling.
Stop...please!

You aren't even close to your last chance or your last strength
You were given this life because you can handle it.
All you have to do is decide that you will handle it.
Jess Hays Oct 2016
Three months duration, the last I saw of you
And I was different, I missed you too much
Today, however, was wonderland
I felt as a child with my brother home again
When we arrived at your apartment
I tried to have you come again tomorrow
Because it was different today, I felt whole
When we sat for dinner, the four of us
I called it family... I called it complete
And I just noticed that spending with you the day
Not one bad thing took place
Jess Hays Jun 2016
Love has been run down,
Turned to just a feeling...
No longer profound.

Oh, love, what have you become?
Plastered as something that makes us come undone.

Still, sometimes, I still see you
In the eyes of an old man talking to who
Can only be seen in photographs and stone.
He talks about her like he's seventeen
So in-love and so brand new
Burdened sweetly with the thoughts of 'you'

But, the young who have not  discovered...
To them, you aren't as special or protected.
You're just a feeling...
A burden...
An aching...
A label...

Oh, love...
What have you become?
Jess Hays Jul 2016
It's weird not having you here, daddy
I know you would've rather had mom and me along overseas,
But you're going to be busy out there
No time to see the sight-lines or soak in the foreign air.
Just come home soon, daddy.
I don't like it when you're overseas without me.
Jess Hays Aug 2016
Childhood hopes vanished
When you were trapped in concrete walls
Pleading victim, charged as guilty
Time and time, I watched you fall
Psychologically manipulative
Assimilating crime into your life
Not just you, but all of us again
This family, you gave no meaning,
Your words are so empty,
Too often you are missing.
Arrested into an orange jumpsuit
The locks keep changing on you.
Jess Hays Sep 2016
I dreamed as if a cumulonimbus cloud had caught me
Falling, I was, deeper into wherever my mind decided to be
At first it was the color of purity... marshmallow white
Colored with emotions, It was such a beautiful place to find
Though it felt like a blissful eternity, it was only just a night
I soon was forced to understood the dark underbelly of that cloud
When the alarm woke me from my heavenly dream
And the clock became my hell.
Jess Hays Apr 2017
This town is nothing like the one holding you
Even the lampposts on the sidewalk are a different hue
And neither are we the same.
Silent talks and loosely, yet thoroughly, understood stories
What could ever have broken us then?
Oh, what a simpler time... three weeks ago
Now, these beautiful corn fields are lost on my thoughts
"If satellites were broken, where would you go?"
We promised it would be okay
But... Can't you feel the way this distance breaks?
Everything is different and we are no exception, love.
All we have became are satellites..
This distance is the interference.
Jess Hays Feb 2017
Secrets are demons that shadow every thought
When the person who doesn't know is oblivious...
When they're with the one who has become everything...
Secrets are stitches that seal your desire shut.
There is no approach to let them in to such a fear...
There is only fear and second-guessing when they, to you, are close
Secrets are the brutal shortcoming of your courage.
Because there is so much you can hold back
Because there is so much damage to be done if you let it out.
Secrets are demons.
Jess Hays Oct 2016
The promise, I intended to keep
How unexpected, though, walking into see
Something so wild, something so bright
Reasons new until you're not in thought
Disregarding, Waiting for hello to pop
Something so wild, something so bright
I think your mind processes my thoughts
You're more sincere, gentle yet paused
I can feel something, there's tension between
I can not get my thoughts back from you.
How am I to speak so bold?
I need to find a way to let you know.
This could be the start of something good
Jess Hays Sep 2016
A letter with your name came to my address
Inside, it had a promise that I fell for once again
"I plan on being around so much more this year"
Now I've just grown bitter, accepting that you're still not here
Concrete walls and barbed-wire fences
That's where your home is, isn't it?
You're there constantly, do what you can to go back in
A part of me hopes you never come out again
I'm tired of your lies and excuses
And your false atonement for your sins
I'm tired of hoping steel beds will give you back to us.
Jess Hays Jul 2016
I enjoy the sparkle of stage lights
More than the flashing camera lights
But, for some reason, love the rush of stage fright.
Jess Hays Sep 2016
I'm at the end of my rope
They keep tugging, supplying me with false hope
And this dream inside of me
How am I to ever make it that far?
I thought destiny was holding my hand
But I think it lost track a long while ago
I'm running only on hope and prayers
But I'm not even religious
I think I'm losing my stubborn stare
I feel as if I'm running in circles
Never going anywhere
Jess Hays Aug 2016
The saddest thought
It pushes me around
Reminds me of our temporary paper towns
A morbid thought
That would change everything
Makes me wish there was more to see
More to do simply for pleasure
I get lost, and find my self older
Needed things become memories
The saddest thought
How sad that we're to lose this night
Oh how short these times
Jess Hays Sep 2016
Swirls of hazardous acid
Poured as he ran by drenched in tears
Everyday was someplace complicated
He was an outcast, forced to be here
But he stood out like a king in a spotlight
Everyone was blinded by his beautiful light
Just no one knew...
But I saw you standing there
So I walked up and now I get their ignorance
How're they to understand beauty that's hidden by skin?
He had good intentions when people bothered to notice him. He was sincere, the boy with love in his veins
Jess Hays Jul 2016
Masks and fiction we wear as protection
To keep us safe from vulnerable situations
Make-up we plaster as our happiness
The mentality of only you... no trespassing,
Because self-inflicted hurt is less agonizing
Than others getting to close to our truths.
Covering the life lessons with a layer of skin,
Cautioning any soul we begin to let in,
Keeping our mindless thoughts ever-dwelling.

This life promised happiness, tragedy, forgiveness.
But, in adulthood, it doesn't provide protection.
Rather, it hands us elders and guardians
That remind us vulnerability is unhooking your
Body from the steel-anchor of problems.
That the winds may knock you off your feet, but
We'll fly again as the water flows along the breeze.
Jess Hays Jul 2016
Such beautiful minds have become perverted... narrowed.
They say human life is just wasted,
All here to wait for heaven or damnation.
But religion only hurts when we become cutthroat
Like everyone, but ourselves, is lost

He never intended this..
But nobody seems to care
Because all that matters is what is next.
Religiously consumed in tomorrow...
While today is just
Degraded.. Forgotten...
I just don't understand.
Jess Hays Jul 2016
Take life as a riddle.
There could be many interpretations
Or sometimes just a little.
But the point is, there is good and bad

This world will break you to see how far you can bend
And they will make you feel like you don't fit in
But inside our blood is red.
All of our blood is red
We are the same inside.

No you are not alone
Because somewhere, someday, somebody's going to need you
Someone's going to love you
And they're going to want you.
Because somewhere, someday you are going to need them
You're going to love them
And you're going to want them.
Because somewhere, someone feels just like you already.
Someone is wondering if there is any one else who feels the same
... they need you..
You need them...
We need each other.

Don't forget, darling, you matter.
We all matter to someone
Even if it feels like we're something that would be better off gone.

Remember that all their judgments are small
It doesn't matter because you can build what's inside so tall
This is the upside of the downfall
Jess Hays Jun 2016
There are minds with bad intentions,
It's a dangerous and aching society...
But, I wish, we would be nice, regardless of our anxiety.

How would our actions change if
We imagined us in their broken-hearted shoes?
Wouldn't we hope that just one person would see passed the
World's burdening lessons that left us with deep tattoos?

How would this world change in just a day
If we, regardless of our intimidation, attempted to try?
Jess Hays Aug 2016
Will I be okay if I let go of this devotion
Let it be with the rest at the bottom of my ocean
They seem alright on that same old beaten road
Making it, though barely, and not entirely alone.
This is a butterfly I've been chasing all my years
I don't think, though, that I'll ever get out of here
Envisioning it, it is not the same
Now I see me in front of no one on a stage
They tell me I can do anything to my heart's content,
Insecurities are overpowering their comments
Caught in this overpowering riptide,
Will I ever get there alive?
Jess Hays Jan 2017
I wanted it so bad
But now i just want to go home.
This town is killing me.
Jess Hays Jul 2016
The two of us connected the day I met the world
And you would comfort me when it sent me in a whirl
The first time I was home alone
You came to me at the drop of the phone.
Through all those precious, irreplaceable times
I guess I forgot that your age was getting older with mine.
Like a jagged knife,though, time was sure to remind.
You were my first best friend and forever star.
And after all this time... this is how we've ended up.
Your growing pain makes it hard to stand up.
I wish I could have you here as endless
But you are my timed Heaven.
Jess Hays Oct 2016
Each drop falling upon my cheeks
Was like a knife slash in what could be
And I confess
My bedroom rained as my mind drifted into dream
Perhaps, you are the one who understands
The good in the bad plastered and written by hand
My sweater sleeves were drenched
But only because of the  beauty on the sheet
Like a hug from God, your words made peace
Jess Hays Sep 2016
I was smiling but then you came
And I tugged on my dress
Hoping it had more length hidden in the seams
But you had already said what I was doing wrong
I wanted to run up to my room and change like I never owned that dress
Instead you sat next to me in church, you made me an insecure mess
Jess Hays Feb 2017
I cut my hair.
I laugh louder.
I'm changing... Well, trying.
And you're pulling me back into your gravity
Exactly what I've been waiting, hoping you'd do
But I know this is no good
We're a poison together, that's the only way we mix
You'll be the death of me.
Don't let me keep wanting to want you.
Jess Hays Oct 2016
I wish that you were here
Because tomorrow I'm going to cry
I'll try to hold it in
But I'll be fighting inside
So I wish that you were
Because... does there have to be a reason why?
I can already feel tomorrow's burden
Something feels deprived
I just wish you were here
Because I feel hollowed out tonight
All I want is to talk again
But you're still too far during these times
Why can't you be here?
Jess Hays Aug 2016
Mirages outline the shadows on the ground
The way of my soul in the middle of August sound
The crevices of the pictures, when they vanished
Lost under the other's stack, in the middle of this

This is what it's like when fate changes its mind
Forever turns to a moment that's lost in time
They don't witness this goodbye.
Only a second, was it right.
Jess Hays Feb 2017
Transparent.
Untouchable.
Visually clear, but metaphorically impossible.
Half of the explanation, why is it left out?
Minds don't have voice boxes...
We never expand. Rarely explain.
Broken into shards that so often cut through and bury themselves
They become a morbid and sick burden.
And the weight is a constant fluctuation.
Words are heard, they are felt, but they are not seen...
Neither with our eyes nor by our mind.
Words are mistakes, while thoughts are profound.
But we only speak jumbled letters...
We never speak our mind.
Jess Hays Jun 2016
Years and years, we mapped out all the journeys and explorations.
I still don't understand why she had to go, even with their explanation.
' The miles between the both of you made you a journey in of itself'

Years and years, I've tried to write a song but nothing sounds right.
If words could reach her, maybe then they'd be enough tonight.
But, they vanish into the pastel skies... into clouds. They just evanesce.

Time and time again, the lingering words become scathing reminders.
The secondhand that passes never ameliorates the days without her.

For years and years, I enjoyed the relationship we'd grown together
We were inseparable; two who had watched each other grow; sisters
And i miss her...
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