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Lee Ann Tong-aan Nov 2017
“If you’re given a chance to have a power, what would it be, and why?”

I often hear this. May it be for fun, or even a question asked to a candidate in a pageant. I am no beauty queen nor a prankster, but like anyone else, I would give my so cliché answer.

If given the chance, I want that power to travel back in time – to revisit my childhood. Yes, I want to be a child again, even for just a week! Yep, being carefree, feeling no worries of what tomorrow will bring, you know, just living in spontaneity. Eating my chocolate-flavoured ice cream until my tooth aches and still be satisfied and crave for it. Running in the fields dancing with the flowers with the sound of the rushing wind, playing hide and seek until the sun gets down and you hear your mama shouting at the top of her lungs calling for your name. And going to bed with a smile plastered on my face for a day well spent. And in the next day, I don’t have to worry if I woke up late, for sure, grandma prepared a brunch for me. No worries of being late to run errands for what’s important is meeting with your neighbour friends to go for an adventure again – collecting meaningful bruises and beautiful scars.

You see, I miss being a child. We were so eager to be an adult, with the thought that if you become one, you could have more freedom to do all the things you wish to do. But no, it’s the other way around. The moment you realized you’re an adult, the greater responsibility you need to carry. As we mature, so as the duty expected from us.

Ohh. How I wish to go back in the ‘90s.
dj mcc Nov 2017
I live in a vacuum.
I exist in a fundamentally
misunderstood airspace
inhabited only by a
lonely soul
who is
shouting and stammering
senseless pleas,
thinking,
"Who can this awful,
lonesome creature be?"
Never realizing,
"Oh,
it's me."
Anonymous Freak Nov 2017
I'm taking control
of the memories you left me with.
I'm taking away your power
to hurt me with your past self.
I'm holding the noose
around your neck,
white-knuckled,
and as *******
as hell after a rainstorm.

I won't bat away reminders of you
out of fear
anymore,
but because I choose to.
Your bad memories
won't stop me from holding
the man I love.

You don't get to ruin my life.

I couldn't stop you
from hurting me then.
But I can stop you
from hurting me.

I'm going to keep building a life
for myself,
because I **** well
decided to.
Not because the past
magically went away,
not because I was magically healed
of trauma...
but because I'm digging my heels in
and saying no.

I'm taking ownership
of my past relationship,
I'm taking ownership
of my mistakes.
I'm not locking them up
out of fear anymore,
not because I feel like
I'm a child again
and I can't protect myself,
but because I'm a woman
and I can,
and I'm angry,
and I own what has been done to me.
It's under my command.

I'm going to blaze into
my twentieth year
like a hornet
that had been trapped and shaken
in a jar,
who just had the lid removed.

I have ownership
over my brain.
Marina Neal Nov 2017
sew my lips into a smile
and take away these lids
now that i’m an adult
i need to stay awake
whatever i don’t need or want
just give it to the kids

there seems to be a problem here
i’m still not feeling right
this smile hurts
my eyes are dry
and i don’t much like to cry
by trying to survive, now i cannot get a wink at night.

~MN
Meg Howell Nov 2017
The best year of my life
It all blurs together
Into a seamless, funny film
It's an old film, a heartwarming one
There's static on the screen
There's soft French jazz in the background
I'm golden
You're golden
It's all golden
This is the only way I can see the past year
It was a massive wave of change,
A wave that brought you in,
And has kept you here
This has been the best year

12:00 a.m.
Now it's over,
And you're still here.
Devin Oct 2017
I was chasing down the moon
Burning concave, sickle bow ahead

They thought you were cheese
They praised you
They feared you
They studied you
They tried to lasso you
They landed on you
They forgot you

And now I'm staring you down
Plain and laid in my sights
The deer to my lonesome, vague headlights

As I barrel into her labyrinth
I'm yielding onto her, and as I go
She eclipses the sky beneath her
And it's shrinking in my view

It's as so the distance
Barring us both,
Is fracturing with every inch of every mile
By time, we will collide in beautiful unison

The explosion wound send to fragments,
The line dividing
The candor of life
And the uncertain ether

Celestial dust and shrapnel
Will rain down a new gravity

Heaven involved itself;
Instead I am now driving with the moon
We team south as she occupies
The passenger side

She's my hitch hiker
Or if she were Bonnie
I'd have to be Clyde
We're gonna rob that big bank in the sky, baby

Weaving stories of home and the road
And love and loss and time and hope
And destinations and longings
And belongings and beginnings

And we disagree and we fear things
And we share dreams and we lose sleep
And we split gas and we drive fast
And we smoke grass and she laughs

But time passed
And she was due a few miles ahead
So she climbed to the back seat
To rest for a moment

And I drove on
With the familiarity she shone
She was quiet now
And so I kept to my thoughts and the road

I'd look back on occasion just to assure
She was still a pendant on the drapery of night
I glanced about enough to spot her
From the corner of my eye

And I sigh at the strike of reticence
But flood with saccharine
I remember her glow as a child
She was in a sidecar on every road trip

Again I turn to her,
But she made no appearance
Like a thief, she fled by window,
Not even a disturbance to the wind

I smiled for our ride together
And the protection she laid over me
It was finished now,
But everything always is

I caught the blemish in my rear view
As I moved on
She was a speckle behind me
And being swallowed by the hills and buildings

I couldn't know what anticipated in the remote
But I remember my old friend
As the slack between us
Became taut and expansive
Zoe Oct 2017
Disillusionment is the price for having your head in the clouds,
For youthful idealism,
When dreams aren't concise.

I used to feel so enticed,
Seeing how a pigmented nail polish,
Could give a pallid hand a sophisticated finish.
But these days there is no novelty.
My cuticles are sliced,
In the places where the paint wasn't precise.
Teeth monstrously disregard the life of the flesh, making a mess,
Now that my nerves have every reason to take out their stress.

Aunts and grandfathers go out of their way for us when we are little enough,
Just to remind us our faces are beautiful enough to rule the world.
Of course we believe them, with faces like blank canvases,
When they say that blossoming will only make things better.

Before long, boys have painted us with scarlet letters.
Their only warrant is our existence.
By eleven, we disassociate and find our old face distant.
Old before our time. Tired and haggard.
You don’t need to point it out when our flaws come out to play.
We know already- but hey, you can still remind us of lumps on our noses, stomachs, and chests.
As if it's gruelling enough just to get through the day.

Didn’t we all see our futures in silver screen angels?
Or a centre-stage princess?
Blind to her hidden talents, so baneful.
Did it ever occur to you,
That our idol queens,
Were more enthralled by lines of coke in their dressing rooms,
Than the magic of living our dreams?

Follow their footsteps, I dare you.
Flip a coin between thriving and doom.
And let us wonder why our aspirations have lead us to death’s doorstep.
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