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cr Sep 2014
"her writing depresses me" he says

my voice quivers, falls up toward
space and crashes
down
against the sea-salt waves. my voice

s-s-s-stutters, repeats the first
syllable five times and once again
for an even six, repeats, repeats,
repeats. my voice is

quiet and every teacher i've
ever had calls on me with a
"speak up!" but no one ever
listens.

writing is the only voice i've ever known
you will not take that from me.
someone  told me this today when i was reciting a writing prompt in class; my thoughts on it are pretty clear.
mars May 2014
I am the queen of stutter.
There was a time every creak and crack in my bones resonated between every slur of a word and every pop in my vowels.
I was a young girl with a white picket fence and yet there were still moments when words mixed and broke and-and-and-and
kids thought it was weird.
So I hid the voice with lollipops and suckers because I was
"That kid" and the "Freak" and I started to believe it like I believed my mothers bedtime stories that rested in her cheeks.
I was a broken jar and no matter how many times you tried to put me back together I always broke again and again and again.

There was a time where words came out together,
like a butterfly hatching from a cocoon and instead having feathers. I spoke with a voice of the age of four and before I was five I spoke no more because ****, vowels came out like clicks and grinds and everyone told me they paid no mind but I knew that they hated it liked I hated consonants. And I think the reason I hated it so much was because it reminded me too much of her and it made me feel like I was turning into her and all I could see was her standing over me like a murderer stands over a corpse and for a moment I forgot what it meant to be cradled to a chest, fluttering with a beating heart.



The first time my mother left, It was June.
She gave me a kiss on both cheeks and said she'd be away for awhile but that her love for me was longer than any mile that she would have to cross. I kissed her on both cheeks and it wasn't until she left that I realized that I was the one pushing her out the door. So when my dad came home from work he found an empty house and nothing more, he knew where to find me. I sat out in the pouring rain on a swing set that was older than my veins and waited to be saved to be rescued to be heard to be found to be be be be be be
I, was the queen of stutter.
And I had dropped that off when I moved from the city and I started a new life, carving it out of the trees outside with motivation and a knife. I did not yet understand that life was difficult.
But then my mother did not return and my father got scared because she had been the only one to ever love him the way he needed to be loved. And I did not understand so I started to carve life out of my palms and wrists and every **** kiss and nothing was ever good enough. I was the kid that turned to pill bottles and drugs but it was a metaphors for my dying bones and cracking lips. I breathed air that was blue and told my dad lies that were true and I was lost in a lost world, where being found was something that happened when you were dead and God, I wanted to be found.

So the story continued on and I wrote poetry to encompass my heart and my lungs and I painted over myself, scribbled all the mismatches and righted out all of the wrongs. Life seemed to continue and my dad had been injecting life into his veins and had been living at the doctors and had been tired all the time and had been lonely and sad and had been gone. He promised me a graduation and maybe even my wedding if he was lucky. I took these words with me everywhere I went and trust me if I could marry now I would in a heart beat.

I am fifteen.
My marriage has not yet come but I feel like I have all the time in the world and the doctor is only a place my dad goes to visit now. I can make words come out of my mouth the way they appear in my head and I now know the meaning to carving life into my bones and into the hues of the sunset. I am no longer afraid of every click and grind and twist and churn in my brain because it reminds me that I am alive and breathing and that my veins are filled with blood and that I breathe air like every other person does.
I was the queen of stutter.
Now I am the queen of hope.
sorry i write really weird stuff and i dont know whats happening but this came from it so i tried to write spoken word and it sounds better spoken out loud i promise
Chano Williams Apr 2014
I drive away
and you come along
I suggest you stay,
but you sing the song,
drowning out my voice
with your own
We played this same game
at your home
Our lives are set
on the same path
Neither one of us
are willing to go last
Together we discover
what lies beneath
Open like the ocean,
swimming so deep

We can't leave
these shared memories
They don't belong to you
They don't belong to me
We are so right
We are so strong
We are so weak
We are so wrong

You move away
I move with you
Why do we stay?
We haven't a clue
So many chances we had
to disconnect,
but all those times
we weren't ready yet
Now that we're older
things have turned around
I fell off the cloud
and I'm coming down
down-to-earth
is what you've been
Now I'm ready
to be a friend

We can't leave
these shared memories
They don't belong to you
They don't belong to me
We are so right
We are so strong
We are so weak
We are so wrong

We try so hard
to grow apart
without a clue
of where to start
Nothing can change
unless we let it
We can't drive away
until we get in
We're letting go
at our own pace
Allowing a chance
to create space
When we depart
I know we'll understand
It's just the cards
dealt from our hands
High school poem

— The End —