#growing
Oh! There it is!
The blood of my Mothers’
Sins
Blossoming on
My white sheets
Like a bouquet of English roses.
A shame -
Laundry day had
Been yesterday.
My thighs have been painted
Rouge -
They blush
Like my cheeks
When my gaze
Lingers on my body
Too long in the mirror
As I put on my Sunday dress.
The needles in my
Lower back fill my
****** with blood -
I am a woman now -
And as such I must
Wake before the sun
And wash my sheets
And my body
Before anyone has a chance
To smell the iron and the shame
Between my legs.
I have never been so
Acutely aware of my body:
My sore ******* feel like
Overripe tomatoes ready to burst,
My stomach bloated and taking up
Space I’m told is not ladylike -
My head throbs, my limbs ache, and
I continue to shed my insides.
How is it I never noticed
The cry of my body before?
A week of blood
Before I have served my sentence
For a woman
Who dared to disobey -
I clean the stains
And wash myself
Away.
Nov 11, 2014
Nov 11, 2014 at 2:32 AM UTC
I came upon a dandelion
An ordinary, common ****
Most people don't look twice
Unless it infected their gardens.
Then it is uprooted, stem and head.
Thrown away and then forgotten.
But that **** meant something different to me
It was sunshine and laughter
Bouquets made of thistle and lavender
Bunched together and given to my mother
It was rolled up jeans
That perfect summer breeze
Cuts and bruises on my knees
It was my childhood
Memories that I can't quite grasp
But what I can remember is the bright yellow,
Stark against the grass
Apr 3, 2018
Apr 3, 2018 at 9:48 PM UTC
I have sunsets on my cheeks.
Blushing roses
and pinks.
I have flowers in my hair.
Blooming,
growing with me.
I am a wanderer
around my life.
Navigating
who I am
and who I want to be .
I wonder what
the seed of the maple knew
Before he was told
to be a tree.
Jan 28, 2018
Jan 28, 2018 at 4:13 PM UTC
You sat on the other end of the table
Glistening, shining, and taunting me
Rosy cheeks with spurts of Yellow and Green
Silently teasing
A juicy, little Apple.
Hopefully no one would see me, no one would pay any attention
As I grabbed the treat and the knife
And began to dangerously peel.
I knew I was doing it wrong
My hands shaking while my cheeks began to flush
Embarrassed by my ignorant inadequacy.
Are you left-handed? she asked from my left.
Humiliation filled the corners of my eyes, wet and distraught.
No, I mumbled. My cheeks reflecting Mose's Red Sea.
I was beginning to drown.
Your thumb needs to move, You make me nervous,
and she sounded nervous indeed.
Put it down here. Help yourself control it. Guide it.
Everyone was staring now, the whole table awed
My ignorance showing, like a medallion at my chest
My shameful Apple as pathetic proof.
You're doing it wrong.
Non così. Basta, faccio io.
Let me do it.
You're about to graduate, and you can't peel an apple.
I began choking, drowning in tears of Humiliation.
No, let her do it the small Voice on my left said.
She is finding her way. Let me watch her.
I finished peeling the Apple
Suffocating my tears as I ate.
You remind me of Daisy, she said soon after
From The Great Gatsby.
I choked and laughed, more ashamed than ever.
I'm not sure that is a compliment.
I could barely muster a mumble.
She couldn't do anything by herself.
She looked at me, gentle and forgiving.
I think it is, she replied
Wistful and Wise.
Daisy was vital to the story, you know.
And I believe that given the chance, she could have done anything that she wanted
On her own.
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 6:27 PM UTC
The sun doesn't apologize for shining.
The rain doesn't apologize for falling.
The birds don't apologize for singing.
The trees don't apologize for growing.
You don't need to apologize for being.
Jan 22, 2020
Jan 22, 2020 at 5:10 PM UTC
It's strange
how childhood felt
like a train ride
that would never stop
like reading a book
with an infinite number of pages
But now you're 19-turning-twenty
and the train has finally
come to a definite stop
the tracks have changed its path
and you've reached the end
the epilogue
It's time to move on
move along and grow up
step off that train
and on to the next adventure
close that book
and start a new chapter
Be brave and brace yourself
for there is more to come
beginnings can be daunting
because it also means
saying goodbye to a life
you've lived and loved.
May 13, 2017
May 13, 2017 at 10:02 AM UTC
This perfect little girl
seems like she's a storybook away,
and the image you wish to see
is drenched in black,
a shadow that won't reveal
the identity of its master.
This perfect little girl
used to hold your hand,
but is now letting go
to search for something greater
than protection -
she's searching for herself,
and this perfect little girl
you tried to create,
isn't who she's looking for.
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 21, 2014 at 11:06 AM UTC
There are so many voices,
Telling me about their choices,
Their words echo in my ear,
Only intensifying the future's fear;
I'm reaching the top of the mountain called childhood,
I'm growing up and life,
Begins its own complications;
People start nagging me,
Through their loud voices,
To make my choices;
This or that?
Go to college or stay at school?
Am I really smart or a brainless fool?
Oh God, this is so not cool!
People urge me to choose,
"Darling," they say, "What is there to lose?"
Oh God, I don't want to be forced upon!
Oh God, the childhood days are really far gone!"
There are so many voices,
Telling me about my choices,
I don't listen to them,
Instead, I follow my own voice,
In making my life-changing choice...
Mar 31, 2015
Mar 31, 2015 at 1:24 AM UTC
There are grapes in my path
This abundant trail
now invisible as if we never were
Here, to pick and preen, salvage and reap
for pleasure and pain
I picked you some flowers,
I baked you a pie,
labors of love
with your own hands
connected to earth.
Breaking backs, and clinging sweat
Under wool, denim, straw, and cotton
Keeping more out than simply the sun
Depleted soil
Exhausted soul
Bursting with juice
Bountiful and hand chosen
And you in a hurry just drive by
Dust in the wind
Skin of clay mud
Day after day,
A boulder among the rows
Hunched in fields
Blistered and callused
Searching for more
Ripe for the picking
Migrants moving
Servitude by season
Benevolent harvest
Handpicked strawberries
By chocolate covered hands
destined from birth
closer to earth.
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 6:08 PM UTC
You.
You who taught me love and kindness and hope
and knitting and optimism and forgiveness and baking.
Yet you were also my first loss.
You taught me grief and how nothing stays the same.
Even a mind can deteriorate so much I wonder it makes me wonder if
you ever were so good.
Maybe I just exaggerate. Because you aren't here to prove me wrong or disappoint me.
But how could anyone have been so good?
But even if I was looking at you through the rose tinted glasses of youth
I refuse to tarnish my opinion of you
I will keep these glasses forever
I insist.You taught me all this and more.
Because of you I visit grandad more
to remind me of what
I lost
and a reminder to appreciate what I still have.
That house will always remind me of you
I hope that is ok.
Nov 12, 2016
Nov 12, 2016 at 5:55 PM UTC
I often wish that I was still a child.
So many things change when we grow up.
Innocence becomes lost,
days become shorter,
the nighttime still scares me,
playing house becomes a game of survival,
boys become men, men become frightening,
I become sad, worried, anxious, and self-aware,
friends will lose their half of the necklace or their friendship ring,
being loved by someone will determine my worth,
I no longer feel small next to the kitchen counter,
but in the presence of everyone around me,
“Forever” loses its meaning,
everyone will eventually leave,
death is no longer a myth,
I will not smile as often as I did,
I will not cry as little as I did,
I will not feel safe in school anymore,
I will not go outside and play anymore,
I will try and pick the imperfections off of
my skin until it is red and bleeding,
**** in my stomach whenever I walk,
work myself into exhaustion,
feel overwhelmed by every task,
have anxiety attacks in public places,
and wish that I was a child again.
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 2:57 PM UTC
when i was younger i begged time to go faster
i wanted to grow up right then and there
but now that i know the horrors of growing older
i wish i could've stayed young
Aug 9, 2019
Aug 9, 2019 at 2:49 PM UTC
With bamboo husks scattered,
My last bones shattered.
We mourn a loss of bliss,
Draped in fear learnt to dismiss,
I call for all to gather.
The stalks once in my heart,
Intertwined; and broke apart.
I never knew how weak I'd gotten,
As my glacial mind defrosted,
And from within; resilience departed.
My thoughts cannot grow,
Pierced by what I do not know.
I'm getting colder,
I am not a soldier,
I'm a victim to the blow.
As the last bit of me was hollowed out,
I spoke the words of hope through my mouth:
"I will learn to accept the pain,
Rather than soaking it in my veins,
I'll filter it to the ground."
--------------------------------------
Jul 26, 2018
Jul 26, 2018 at 5:53 PM UTC
I remember not too long ago I was just a little boy playing ball in the park it was Little League in the heat and anyone in south Florida will tell you it’s normal and it’s true it really is normal.
Then it began to rain lightning struck the adjacent field and left a **** in right yet somehow for some reason the warning system never sounded its fifteen second alarm I wonder why.
Imagine this:
A crash as loud as if you were wearing a stainless steel stockpot and someone struck it so hard with a stainless steel spoon and soon you were knocked so silly so goofy so discombobulated that you felt like the Liberty Bell the day it rung and cracked during the funeral of Chief Justice John Marshall and you thought you were dead too.
I thought I was a goner so I bolted to safety quick like lightning no pun intended but I didn’t want to be tomorrow's toast.
As the team sat there each about eleven and twelve years old we counted seconds between lighting and thunder light and sound and what we felt were about to be the very last seconds of our young little lives how naïve we were.
One strike cracked so bright it flashed me to today and here I am at twenty-two not dead just yet and I’m not quite sure how or why maybe there’s a purpose maybe there’s a meaning to life it’s such a philosophical thing to sit and contemplate existentialism is such a weird wild thing I think.
I have come to believe that there are multiple reasons for life and one’s to die one’s to survive one’s to figure out every answer to every question and acquiesce all that which satisfies our wants and needs and one’s to love and give and take and share a life and one’s to see all there is to see like cityscapes and oceans and stars and countries one’s to see even more like frowns and births and smiles and deaths and one’s to eat all there is to eat and to drink all there is to drink until we finally figure out a way to accept the inevitable.
Or is the inevitable not inevitable?
What if there’s a way to live forever and there are no consequences extraneous to those of regular everyday life and you can choose to accept the inevitable when you choose to realize that it sure is inevitable?
Ooh! Aah! Ain’t that a concept?
This is not quite what I had in mind at birth I thought it would be smooth sailing between fits of crying and long hours of slumber and meals and short naps and diaper changes and seeing my parents’ faces and those of all others gazing about me in awe and wonder and amazement and pride and love
I was a deity!
Relative to twenty-two years one figures out that being a god is very short-lived and that twenty-two years ain’t very long hardly even a quarter of the way to the brink of a timely death.
Maybe when we’re babies we’re gods and idols?
Well think about this babies can rule the world if only they knew they command the highest of all expenses in the whole of humanity and families and friends willingly shell out money and goods and services for such a tiny little sack of fat and muscle and fastly-forming bones and brains.
Babies are ******** gods.
But gods no less.
My God I wish I could be a baby over again.
But I’m twenty-two and slowly but surely growing old living through each quickening day by day by day and so on and so forth it’s been a fun trip so far and I am sure not done so long as there isn’t another flash of lightning to send me straight to forty-four or eighty-eight—it doubles every time ain’t that a ****** shame?
Sep 16, 2016
Sep 16, 2016 at 1:01 AM UTC
a plant grows towards
the sun
as we grow towards
happiness
but the sun is 93 million miles
away
and happiness is out of reach
Jan 22, 2016
Jan 22, 2016 at 7:29 AM UTC
It's true that I never really knew you.
But I did love you
In a certain, breathless way.
In a hushed way.
I was very small, then. And very sad.
And I looked out on a great, green, vivid world,
And I was afraid, even, to whisper into it
As if my breath would push the color out.
I watched. I noticed.
I perched on the edge of myself,
On the line between me
And the air around me,
Too cautious to slip into either fully.
I was used to looking.
I was used to being a shadow, and I enjoyed it.
I thought I enjoyed it.
The day I met you, you looked back at me.
You were the first.
Imagine that- all those years, and you were the first person
To wonder what it was like behind my eyes
Enough to really look into them.
I could have loved you
Just for that
And maybe I did, originally.
I remember small things, small wakings-up,
Tiny moments that made me realize who I was.
I never lived inside myself before that year.
When I met you I discovered
That I had hands
That when the breeze was warm
I felt it
That my fingers could read the world I so loved to look at-
Change it
Mold it,
Have it.
I discovered that maybe I didn't have to exist alone
And for that knowledge
I must bitterly thank you,
For ever since then I have craved to be held,
Every second
And it has been wonderful and terrible.
I remember snapshots of that time.
The first time, when you looked at me, when you stood close to me
And I was so surprised that I forgot to recoil
And I discovered that I didn't want to.
Your eyes,
Pale and warm, a clear grey-blue, sparkling with mischief,
And what was behind them-
Pain, fear, love, wit and imagination.
You.
I didn't know you,
But I saw you.
I was looking. I always look.
I rarely see anything I wish I could write poetry about.
When I do, it keeps on coming, even years later.
Go figure.
I remember going home and laying awake in the dark
And your face wouldn't leave my mind.
You were leaving within the week,
And I didn't want to forget it, somehow.
I didn't know what made me want to look at you.
Thinking of you-
The curtain of dark hair you hid beneath a hat,
Your softly freckled skin,
Your low, husky voice that always made my head turn
As if everyone else was just background noise.
Maybe it was the way your lips would quirk up in a half smile
Whenever you said something witty and knew it.
(I loved that you knew it.)
Somehow the sum-total of you
Stuck with me and wouldn't leave.
I'd met handsome men.
I'd met beautiful women.
I'd met many people, by then,
But none I'd wanted to know quite like I wanted to know you.
It had never occurred to me
Before that summer
That I would ever want to kiss anybody.
When I discovered that I wanted to kiss you...
I didn't know what to do.
So I said nothing.
Did nothing.
I passionately looked at you
As you told your mesmerizing stories and laughed and looked elsewhere.
I didn't mind.
That was the year
Two weeks later
That I rolled over in bed and asked my best friend to kiss me.
That was the year I discovered why I'd never fantasized a white wedding
(It wasn't legal yet.)
In the years after, I searched for you.
Sometimes I found you.
Sometimes
I couldn't stop telling you you were beautiful.
Sometimes I felt close to you
And my heart would race.
Sometimes you chose a boy
Over my small, dainty face and my eyelashes and my high heeled boots
And that was the first time I felt
The now familiar aching shame- the fear
That maybe that would always happen.
The fear I still grapple with, if I am to be honest.
Still, there were moments when you and I were close, and I treasured them.
Once, I asked you for a hug
And you pulled me down onto the bed beside you
And that was the first time
I ever felt my stomach fall through my feet
In a delicious way,
In a thrilling way.
All I did was hug you,
And looked at your soft, brown eyelashes
Casting shadows down your cheeks.
And then somebody walked in and the moment was over
But I never quite forgot it.
You were kind to me.
You were kind to me in a way I hadn't experienced before,
And I wanted to make you smile.
I remember the day you told us why you wore shorts at the pool.
I remember the white hashmarks shining in the sun
All the way up your thighs.
I remember I thought a thousand things in that second.
I wanted to tell you that you didn't have to hide them.
I wanted to show you that you were beautiful.
I've kissed scars since then, you know.
Because of that moment, I've kissed scars before I've kissed lips.
I've left people loved instead of wounded.
If I'd have let myself think such things about people back then,
I'd have wanted to touch those long-healed cuts with my fingertips,
Feel the smooth hills and valleys of a chaotic heart
Made damaged flesh.
I'd have wanted to kiss them, too, like I did to different skin-
Softly and without lust, looking into the eyes that witnessed their creation.
It was a very, very personal thought. A very, very private longing.
So confusing that I locked it up and didn't think of it for years to come.
And when I did once more,
I was raising a pale white wrist to my lips, tracing a wax-white pattern of healed hatred with soft kisses
And I saw what I wanted to see in the surprised, vulnerable brown eyes I was looking into.
That moment for her
Was your fault.
I remember when I realized why you had such trouble eating.
I never did hear all the details.
I couldn't presume to ask.
All I did was watch you walk away from the table,
Burning with the desire to comfort you
But
I was so used to looking
And not touching
And so I watched you go
And thought of you all night.
It rained a lot, those years.
It never seems to rain like that anymore.
Whenever I saw you it seemed to rain at least once,
The sky turning the same grey blue as your eyes when you were thinking
And thought nobody was looking
And cracking open with a rush of rain and lightning and the sweet, low rumble of thunder crackling through the hot clouds high above.
The holes in the road would fill with water
And the whole place would become a river.
It was so free.
Somehow I began to think of you whenever it rained.
I'm almost sure it was your eyes. They were so deep and stormy, sometimes.
Sometimes they were bright blue, like those summer days when the clouds skip along the sky, pushed by warm winds and shattered by sunlight.
Sometimes they looked very, very pale, like the tide when it folds up in satiny layers against the sand.
I always felt a little strange, looking at your eyes like I did.
I couldn't stop.
That was probably why I rarely touched you.
I was afraid that I was already invading, already pushing too much
To see what was inside of you.
I remember listening to you learn lines late at night,
The way your voice would rise and fall,
And I didn't even know why I was listening-
It just pulled me in, a sound I was partial to,
A tone I wanted to feel on my skin.
I remember tagging along for countless adventures,
Making up excuses to be here or there that I knew you'd be
Just so that I could be a bit closer.
I didn't have an end game.
Didn't have a goal.
I wasn't me enough yet. I acted from fascination.
I wanted to stand near you and watch you be.
I have the most vivid memory of you taking off running
One hot, hot summer day
Into a field of tall grass,
Your laughs and shouts echoing further away
And sometimes I'd see your pale arms stretch above the wildflowers and underbrush,
Waving a gauzy net after the white butterflies that rode the sunbeams.
What a happy field that was.
I didn't run.
I watched.
I always watched.
But I remember that the smile that touched my face
Filled my bones.
I remember when you cut your hair
And I could finally see your face in full
And I wanted to photograph it
In black and white
And maybe catch the way your laughter lived in your gaze.
That was when
You started to fade away.
I saw you less,
And you saw me... much less.
Perhaps I should have let you turn away
And never said a thing,
But
You were the first thing I ever really wanted
Enough to reach for in any way.
I spoke, and you heard me.
And even though you pretended you didn't
It was still the first time
I ever shouted.
Now... now I'm not sure what I think of you
Or what
You think of me.
But I know what you were when I knew you
And I love that girl
And that girl
Created much of what I love about who I am.
And most of the time
I think she grew up.
Found a man, found a life, found a place.
Most of the time I think it's okay that we don't talk
Because you probably aren't her anymore.
I wish I could say
I thought I'd grow up like that and leave my skin behind
But
I am the girl who looked at you back then.
And I have been her ever since,
Only added to.
I know I will never outgrow how I love,
Who I love,
Whatever woke up when I first realized how I felt about you.
I will only learn to wield it.
Sometimes I wish I knew you now.
Sometimes I wish I'd known you then.
Just because... look at all the firsts you were, to me,
And for years into knowing you
I didn't even know your real name.
Imagine if you'd let me in, how we could have changed each other.
I wonder who I'd be
If I'd done more than just watch you silently and smile.
What I learned
From years of gazing at you across picnic tables and bunk beds is that
You can love somebody you don't know.
You can give to someone you haven't taken from.
And you can be changed by someone who never even touched you.
And I'd like you to know that.
And I'd like to remind you
That you never quite know who out there
Is quietly writing you poetry.
Jun 20, 2014
Jun 20, 2014 at 10:39 PM UTC
Polished and refined,
With death I have found
A life below ground
A place I can call mine
Destruction and evil deeds
A breeding of pure hate
Is all that I can create
Out of all these heartless seeds
I punch them in
To the deep sullen dirt
Water them with vengeance
And a sprinkling of hurt
Tonight is the night
I find what dwells below
I don't have a key
But I can bargain with my soul
As I place it into these seeds
I am but reeds in the grass
I'm letting go
Only Heaven knows
The blackness of Hell's wrath
I plant my lifeless soul in this plot
To groom it as it grows
So slowly that nobody knows
It's the place the devil goes to rot
Watered with tears, warmed with fire
And as time stands still, never changing
This fruition of evil continues growing
Until the depths of hell can go no higher
Then it will bloom
A flowering gloom
Growing out of control
The ground will harden
In this here garden
Fertilized by my soul
Sep 1, 2016
Sep 1, 2016 at 4:53 PM UTC
My nephew notices nearly everything around
he says saaad cooorn! because the corn outside
has now turned brown.
He knows a few colors that consist of yellow, red,
purple and green.. he likes to read and sometimes he'll sing.
My little nephew is getting too big..
He's at the age just before monsters
are under his bed,
I don't want him to experience that yet.
But someday he just might, and that's okay
we all grow up eventually.
Sep 16, 2015
Sep 16, 2015 at 2:09 PM UTC
I bought myself a kite to fly
I tossed it up and ran around
I tried to pull it through the sky
But found it just dragged on the ground.
It landed in the mud, it was mangled, it was done
And thus concludes the tragic tale of the kite I numbered one.
My second kite was different.
It caught a mighty gale
I flew it well, then let it go
And in the end I failed.
It joined released balloons and leaves, whatever else is there
In the ***** lonely cloudland in the out-of-picture air.
I still had hope and so I bought
My final silken bird
I told myself that I would soon
Unleash it to the word.
The kite's debut date got pushed back and further back until
It found a final resting place untested in its skill.
I bought myself three kites to fly
The first two meet ill fates
The third one has a dusty shelf
Where it keeps very safe.
Sep 13, 2018
Sep 13, 2018 at 10:34 PM UTC
the tricky thing
about growing up
is it’s a choice
puberty happens
because of nature
adulthood is a conscious effort.
May 22, 2016
May 22, 2016 at 3:36 AM UTC
As a kid you just want to grow up
Even when the adults tell you not to
Independence and adulthood is your focus
When they warned us away from growing up
they forgot to mention a few things:
No one said being an adult would feel like drowning,
like a slow suffocation you do to yourself
You do what you have to in order to survive.
You keep breathing in the things that drown you,
because what else are you going to do with them
But with each breath you sink lower and lower.
With each breath you learn something new about yourself
With each breath you are forced to take under this water made of
bills,
and jobs,
a lot of responility
and not much sleep
you drown a little more
and resign your self to the slow death of adulthood
Sep 10, 2014
Sep 10, 2014 at 6:38 AM UTC
moving forward
pushing so hard
to be something more
moving forward so quickly
so far from being sickly
in the past
the horrid things that didn't last
moving forward
farther and farther
from being so unsure
catching truths
while still in my youth
moving forward
from crimes and lies
from superficial friendships that only die
being my own
learning to be independent
learning to be alone
moving forward
far from that dark need
of anyone other than me
Apr 9, 2011
Apr 9, 2011 at 9:57 PM UTC
I am not a Daisy. I am a human.
Why I am not a Daisy?
I cannot sprout through concrete to meet the sun,
I cannot gather dew drops on my petals.
I don’t have petals, instead I have arms.
Arms can be called petals.
I don’t see why not.
My petals are scarred.
They hold the history of my hidden past.
Opposite of beautiful,
Opposite of innocent.
I went to my friend’s
and she’d say, “Daisy, Do you like Disneyland?”
“Yes I do. I haven’t been since I was five.”
She tells me that we’re going to go to Disneyland.
That we’re going to be five years old again.
So we go to Disneyland.
We ride the rides,
We watch the little boys and girls laugh and play,
They don’t seem to notice my petals.
They don’t seem to know of the twisted ways they can think.
They don’t seem to know that one day, they’ll have to pay taxes
and work a job.
Nothing is the same as when I was five years old.
Now I know.
It is no longer the happiest place on Earth,
because I am not. A Daisy.
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 2:49 PM UTC
As humans
during our
first year of life
we are supposed
to learn
how to trust
other people
for the
basics
but what are
we supposed to do
as we get older
and the hurt
increases
and the pain
won't subside
what about
when
our learned
balance
of trust
versus
mistrust
goes away
what about
when we
lose ourselves
and we are not
children
anymore
Mar 20, 2015
Mar 20, 2015 at 12:09 PM UTC