fourteen.
fourteen and I am alive.
fourteen and yet I feel like I am five
fourteen and my poems still aren't that good
fourteen and my skin still scars just as often
fourteen and I don't talk to my mom as much I used to
fourteen and I still hate my body
fourteen and I still hate my body
fourteen and I never liked celebrating my birthdays
fourteen and I never liked waking up on my birthdays
to a stranger who looks like me and sounds like me
but isn't me because I'm fourteen and that's
supposed to make a difference
fourteen and I feel like I am too young to be writing
about the things I do but my cousin's fourteen and she
does the things I am afraid to write about
fourteen and this is probably the only honest
poem I've ever written in my life
fourteen that's probably why it isn't that good
fourteen and I feel like I'm running out of things to say
fourteen yet there are so many things I haven't said
fourteen and I miss the way people used to love me
fourteen and I feel like it's ****** up that I don't miss the
way I used to love me because fourteen was when I stopped
remembering what that feeling felt like
fourteen and I don't hate school as much as I thought I would
fourteen and there's nobody in my school I'd celebrate my birthday with
fourteen and I haven't talked to someone I love in months
fourteen and I have more regrets than my age
fourteen and I realize that means nothing but it feels like it means everything
fourteen and I used to dream about doing impossible things but
fourteen is the number of dreams I have that died
fourteen and I don't blame the people that have given me love
and then tossed it aside because it's been a year and my tears have dried
fourteen and I have learned my heart is an abandoned garden
that only grows weeds and that planting flowers in it is useless
fourteen and it took me a long time to realize that I am more than just my age
fourteen and I wish I was still five, with my hair curly
and my mother's soft singing the only tune in my mind
but I am fourteen and life is supposed to be better
in ten days when I turn fifteen and
yet I have a feeling everything will be the same

(h.l.)

please don't take to heart what that bully said to you when you were 14, when you were just learning to survive and he told you to die. and it's okay to cry. bend you might, but break not quite. you'll be alright.

tomorrow, if not tonight.

© Melissa Carlson 2015

Yours is a dead end, but it's the only path I want to take

your eyes are beautiful
but it becomes more beautiful
when you are looking at her

Young enough to say what you feel,
Old enough to know your feelings are wrong.

Young enough to embrace love,
Old enough to let it go.

Young enough to laugh openly,
Old enough to be embarrassed.

Young enough to cry freely,
Old enough to stop

Young enough to feel pain,
Old enough to know there is more to come

Young enough to write,
Old enough to communicate.

14 and so naïve
I could have sworn
you were the one
made for me.

It was like happy was bursting upwards
and pushing on the inside of my cheeks--
a smile.
Not hardly forced

Cleaning up the mess of past years from the carpets
In my Hawaiian themed bedroom
half lime green, half baby blue
and all Haley.

I sent you a simple apology
for kicking your feelings
and hurting your heart

A part of me knew we weren't through
the day we had finished.
When your best friend kissed me
at the top of a closed in stairwell

I guess I'd missed that feeling
where your fingertips tingle
at the tiniest touch.

You wrote back
with open arms
even with that stomped up heart

You asked what my favorite day of summer had been
foolishly,
I'd responded “this one”

Back when we knew everything.
When parents taught us nothing
and schooling,
even less

I'd missed you
the brown eyes I'd been in love with,
more so--
infatuated with.

I didn't plan
just played games
that felt sincere.
Toyed with hearts
that felt like home.

I don't know how you did,
or why,
but I sent you an apology
and you replied.