"tropes" poems - Hello Poetry

two days before we loaded the car with what seemed like the entirety of my heart and belongings to move me across the state to attend college, my baby brother found me on the kitchen floor, crying about the microwave. well, not just the microwave. he found me in a crumpled up heap, sobbing that this day would be the last i had to microwave things in this particular microwave. i couldn’t justify my lament then. my dad chalked it up to *** my brother called me a drama queen, and my mom told me i needed to eat less microwaveable things. but i think i might’ve figured it out now. five months later. y’see, i grew up an ARMY brat. attended five different elementary schools, two separate middle schools, one high school, and two colleges. i was never good at saying goodbye, but i’m a pro at walking away. i found out quickly that while the faces and names of my friends and classmates change from state to state, the character tropes stay basically the same. people and places become such replaceable things. i worry, a lot, about being a replaceable thing. there are talented people in this world. people that can divine the past and future from coffee grounds and tea leaves. but can anyone here tell me what kinds of awful things my footsteps say about me? there are boot marks, with my name on them, in places i know i should never have been. and clumps of dirt stuck to my heels that have been with me longer than some friends have. i sat on the floor last night while my love explained physics to me. he told me that gravity is a constant force, and of course, the earth’s gravity affects each and every one of us. but our individual gravity affects the earth as well. according to newton’s third law, the earth pulls of me with the same force that i pull on the earth. my mass disrupts space time. carl sagan once told me through the clarifying prism of the television screen, that we are all stardust, collapsed suns and black matter. we belong to no place. i belong to no place. i belong to no place. i don’t cry about the microwave anymore, i don’t waste my tears on saying goodbye. i know that every thing and every one has their time, and sometimes that time is brief. it’s a hard pill to swallow, ultimately my favorite self descriptor is ‘infallible’. but somedays, i fall just to stand up and see: the sun still rises, the earth still turns, the microwave still makes bomb-ass chicken nuggets, and i am still here.

0

Nov 16, 2016

Nov 16, 2016 at 11:28 AM UTC

civil-cataclysm

chicken nuggets

two days before we loaded the car with what seemed like the entirety of my heart and belongings to move me across the state to attend college, my baby brother found me on the kitchen floor, crying about the microwave. well, not just the microwave. he found me in a crumpled up heap, sobbing that this day would be the last i had to microwave things in this particular microwave. i couldn’t justify my lament then. my dad chalked it up to *** my brother called me a drama queen, and my mom told me i needed to eat less microwaveable things. but i think i might’ve figured it out now. five months later. y’see, i grew up an ARMY brat. attended five different elementary schools, two separate middle schools, one high school, and two colleges. i was never good at saying goodbye, but i’m a pro at walking away. i found out quickly that while the faces and names of my friends and classmates change from state to state, the character tropes stay basically the same. people and places become such replaceable things. i worry, a lot, about being a replaceable thing. there are talented people in this world. people that can divine the past and future from coffee grounds and tea leaves. but can anyone here tell me what kinds of awful things my footsteps say about me? there are boot marks, with my name on them, in places i know i should never have been. and clumps of dirt stuck to my heels that have been with me longer than some friends have. i sat on the floor last night while my love explained physics to me. he told me that gravity is a constant force, and of course, the earth’s gravity affects each and every one of us. but our individual gravity affects the earth as well. according to newton’s third law, the earth pulls of me with the same force that i pull on the earth. my mass disrupts space time. carl sagan once told me through the clarifying prism of the television screen, that we are all stardust, collapsed suns and black matter. we belong to no place. i belong to no place. i belong to no place. i don’t cry about the microwave anymore, i don’t waste my tears on saying goodbye. i know that every thing and every one has their time, and sometimes that time is brief. it’s a hard pill to swallow, ultimately my favorite self descriptor is ‘infallible’. but somedays, i fall just to stand up and see: the sun still rises, the earth still turns, the microwave still makes bomb-ass chicken nuggets, and i am still here.