Friday, April 27, 2012

to live.

i am dying.
 
and it's not in the metaphorical way that leads to
suicide
or depression or withdrawl from the world,
 
i really am dying.
 
my hearbeat is faint, feeble, and my lungs
refuse to give me oxygen and my muscles
are slowly ceasing to respond to my frantic requests and my eyes
won't let me see and my ears
don't let me hear and my body
is done fighting, it is letting itself slowly
die
and there is nothing i can do.
 
dead at only sixteen, seventeen,
if i'm lucky
and a whole life to live taken away before i could
take the time to live it and i wonder
how my little sisters are going to react when
my parents finally decide to tell them that their
older sister is dying and that she is past saving and that
she can't live much longer.
 
i wonder if anyone at school will miss my presence, will they
notice that i'm gone when my legs will no longer carry me
to school and my lungs will no longer work on their own
and i am stuck in a hospital bed instead of the one at home
with the window and the sunshine and the partially transparent purple curtains,
or will they all be shocked when my obituary is in the paper and my funeral
is planned for a bright spring day and my coffin is slowly lowered into the ground?
 
there are so many things i will not get to do, so many
places i will not get to see, so many
people i will not get to meet, so many
books i will not get to read, so many
words i will not get to say.
 
i am dying and it hurts and i'm scared and i just want to
 
live.

Friday, April 20, 2012

swinging and burning

i profusely apologize for how dark and semi-disturbing this is, i just finished reading 'Night' by Eli Weisel and was inspired.

i hate them for what they've done to you, for the
dark look in your once bright blue eyes, sparkling with
innocence and joy and youth
now dark and old and empty from seeing them
swing and burn
before your oh so young eyes, persecuted for
a belief that they held so innocently and so strongly, a belief
that you believed too.

and i don't understand what made them do it, or why
they chose you even though you were so very young, why
you were stolen from your innocent
runningthroughgreenfeildsbarefoot stage
and thrown into a world that was all too cruel to you, making you
watch their bodies become flames and spew black smoke, watch
them swing from the gallows for crimes they did not commit
while trying to hold onto something, anything, that would
explain why your young eyes were forced to see what are my
worst nightmares,
the dreams that made me scream were your piercing reality
that seemed to endure forever and never seemed to stop.

so when you come to me with tears in your old blue eyes
i don't know what to do or what to say
because nothing, nothing that i could ever say would ever
make what they did to you make sense,
you didn't deserve to watch them die anymore than they deserved

to die.

Friday, April 13, 2012

they heard her scream

i.
it was a boy and a girl in an alley with cigarette smoke
late at night on a friday
and they heard her scream.
 
it was her mother, her cries of mourning, her screams
for her youngest daughter that echoed
into the rainy morning and pierced through the
people clad all in black and made the priest momentarily
lose his words, caught in his throat, as he heard
[and saw]
the mother in the front row with her husband and children, yelling out
to God for her daughter.
 
ii.
it was his left hand that griped her throat and held her
against the cement wall, covered in graffiti, as she
pleaded and cried
as he pushed closer against her and reached down.
 
it was the barman in the back corner of the reception who felt
like he shouldn't be there, but had been asked by the parents
of the girl whose body he had found
in the dirty back alley behind his bar, late at night
when he heard her scream.
 
iii.
it was the force of him going into her that made her go limp, hoping
and praying that it would all end soon, that the pain
would just stop as he looked at her with an evil grin,
cigarette held between his lips.
 
it was her older sister that stopped eating, stopped
talking, stopped attending college, gave up on life
when she heard the news via a late night phone call and came home
to find the boy, who became obsessed with the idea of revenge
because the police weren't doing enough to find him in her mind.
 
iv.
it was the scream that echoed through the night
when he pulled out the knife, glinting silver in the moonlight
and she became afraid as he held it against her throat
that they heard and sent them running to the abandoned alley, empty
except for the body of a young girl,
throat slit.
 
it was the ones who heard her scream and found her
that never forgot.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

finger fountains

she can't think straight and the words refuse
to flow through her fingertips that she once thought
were never-ending fountains of thoughts, but now
she can't seem to get even a trickle to even moisten
the blank paper in front of her and her brain feels like it is
screaming to let things out, but she just doesn't have the words
for some strange reason and she doesn't like it, doesn't like
not being able to write and she longs to unblock the fountains
in her fingers and pour words from her mind into the world via
a white, blank piece of paper.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

her invisible footprints

she was looking up at the sun that was just slipping away
behind the mountains and she wanted to follow it, she wanted
to chase it and see where it hid so she could hide there too
where nobody could find her,
not that anyone would care, but she was
bound by her mistakes to the earth so she couldn't go
run away with the sun and dance with the moon, she couldn't
hide behind the mountains where nobody would find her.
 
and the worst part wasn't that she was stuck in the middle
of somewhere that she wanted to leave, the worst part was that
nobody seemed to notice her straining against everything she had ever
done, said, written, read
and nobody seemed to care that she just wanted to run away and hide
behind the mountains she would look at late into the night, wondering
if she could only slip behind them how her life would be different, if she
could only tip top out of her room and down the dirt road and disappear
late one summer night and join the stars and the moon up in the sky
because that is all she has wanted to do these last few weeks;
disappear.
 
sometimes it even feels like she has, feels like nobody
even notices that she is struggling to make ends meet and that she
is trying to run away, that she is trying to make herself disappear
because she knows that they look at her without seeing her, they look right
through her like she is invisible and it breaks her heart everytime
and the people she used to call her friends
now act like she is nothing to them and she ends up in the front
of the classroom listening to them talk while she works all alone
on the lab that they just completed together because she can't change
lab partners this late in the year and its not like anyone would take her anyway.
 
so she lays in the long grass and cuddles with her old teddy bear
as she thinks of how she could just slip away in the night, leaving nothing
behind that would tell where she went because she is only a shadow
anyway and stopped leaving footprints a long time ago.

Monday, April 9, 2012

a shy boy with his ukulele

there are so many things i haven't done, so many
things that i haven't said, so many
secrets that i haven't shouted from mountains
like a love-sick fool.
 
i used to want to travel the world, i
wanted to see lovers kissing in France and a shy boy playing
his ukulele in England and girls dancing in Italy and, most of all,
i wanted to see you.
 
i wanted to tell you that i loved you, i wanted
to kiss you under the stars and smoke on an abandoned
street corner next to that shy boy playing his ukulele, i wanted
to hold you in my arms and be held in yours, i wanted
to make you smile through your tears, but now
i can't because i am slowly slipping away and you are too blind to
see, too caught up in your own world to see that mine is falling
apart.
 
there were so many things i wanted to do, so many things
i wanted to say, but now time is running out and i don't have enough left
to let you know everything that goes through my mind when i see you
and i know that you have her, i just hope that she can keep you sane
when i'm gone, i hope that
she can hold you and make you smile through your tears, i hope
she will kiss you in France, she will smoke on street corners in England, she will
make you smile through your tears.
 
i hope that she can make everything okay when i'm gone,
because you don't know this; but i'm dying darling
and i will never be able to get better, there is this monster
inside of me that is slowly, quickly, tearing me apart
and i can't fight it much longer so i'm using the last of my strength
to write you this poem and i hope that you can read
this illegible handwriting because my hand is shaking
and i'm tired and i'm dying.
 
so when i'm gone, please go to France and kiss someone under the stars
and smoke with that same someone on street corners in England by that
shy boy with his ukulele and learn how to smile through your tears, please
live the life that i never had because i know you want to travel
the world, like i once did, and please don't stay behind for me.
 
leave me some yellow roses,
for friendship,
on my gravestone and then go and travel the world and bring me back
some postcards.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

tremble

i used to be able to fly, soar
up into the sky and be free,
 
but then i fell.
 
hard.
 
now i'm to afraid to take that jump that's really more of a
small, little step over a semi large crack in the pavement
filled with a pool of water from the tears i rained down
on it as i shivered, trembled with fear
because once i fell i became afraid of falling again.
 
and it's cold and i'm shaking, but i can't tell
if it's from fear or from the cold that's piercing my bones, shattering
them like they did when i fell and i wonder if maybe
i'm just remembering what it was like on that day
when i was soaring high and i hit a small, barely noticeable
bump in the air drafts and i plummeted
down
down
down,
screaming all of the way but nobody could hear me
as i fell, nobody was there to catch me and so i
shattered.
 
i broke into a million tiny pieces and it took
a whole year of sterile hospital rooms and expensive bills
to fix me again, but then i found out that it was useless, it was all nothing,
when i stood looking down at that small crack in the pavement
and i found myself unable to make that jump that was more like
a semi large step, but was so close to flying
that i trembled.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

finally together

wearing a faded, well worn hat, that i stole from you this morning
and a flannel shirt that i bought last year and for some reason
i feel strangly beautiful for the first time in forever.
 
and when i walked downstairs you smiled, you saw
your hat still on my head and my smile and it was like i was 6
again and we were close again and there was no pain, no tension
between us, like the past was the present
and you loved me again
[not like you don't now, but sometimes it feels as though...
well you know.]
 
for the first time in a long time i felt connected to you again, i felt
like falling into your arms and giving you a great bear hug
while we make cheese burgers together out on the deck, shivering
because it is cold and the wind is whipping around us, but the grill
is keeping us at least semi warm
and i want it to be summer and i want it to be forever
because this moment in time is one i have long for, have wished for
late at night after we would fight and i would cry myself to sleep.
 
for the first time in a long time i was close to my daddy again
and i don't ever want it to end.

Friday, April 6, 2012

what makes a writer

i was told that writers are all brave, and the ones
that aren't face their fear with an awe inspiring
courage that i don't have, so i guess
that means that i'm not a real writer because
i'm not brave, i don't have awe inspiring courage.
 
yet, i can make words bend around me in ways
that some people just can't and i can
weave a story using only a pen and paper, i use
my thoughts as a many colored thread and my pen
is the needle, the paper is my canvase.
 
i paint mind pictures and i like to think that sometimes
i make questions, that i
create a thought in someone's mind that grows
into something that they can't ignore, something that
becomes more than just a thought.
 
i make dreams come alive, i make the chaos
of the inside of my mind real and i
tell the truth as i see it, not as
people have told me to see it because i don't conform
to that kind of thinking.
 
i'm not brave, i don't have awe inspiring courage
and you tell me that means i'm not really a writer, but
i think that there might just be more to it than that
because i may be afraid, i may not be confident
but i can sit down and twist words around me like thread,
weaving them into poems and stories.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

to become something

he told her that she was nothing
because she said that she didn't want to be what
society called a 'something'.

he gripped her arm and turned her face towards him
and he said that if she wasn't something, then she
would always be nothing and that next morning
she woke up with bruises where his fingers
had been and a determination to become
something,
for him.

so she began to starve and cut and repeat until
she was skinny and beautiful and he could
look at her with pride in his eyes, look at
his eldest daughter and stop hiding the fact that she does
[in fact] exist.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

i am not american

i am not american.
 
i refuse to be held down by a name that refers
to the country that i was born in, the country
that, yes, i live in, but i do not
associate myself with.
 
[i do not associate myself with anything]
 
i refuse to be told that i should be, that i am,
something because of where i was born
or what color my skin, hair, eyes are
or what religion i was raised in
because i do not want to associate myself with
the history behind those names that have been pinned
down on me, a 16 year old girl, who hasn't gotten to yet
see the world and make judgments, make my own history.
 
[i do not agree with society]
 
i am not white. i am not a red head. i am not christian.
 
i am a girl with pale skin and hair like fire, i believe
in a God that doesn't care what you look like or where you were
born or what you believe in and i believe
that there is more to my hair than just the fact that it is "red"
because there is a history to my hair, it was
the hair of my ancestors who survived famines and wars and
passed it down a line of strong-willed people to me and i am
proud to have this hair and i am proud of its history, but i am told
that it is just "red" and that i am just a "red head".
 
[there is more to it than that]
 
and my skin is not white, it is pale, it is not as dark as some
because my ancestors came from places where the sun would give them
little kisses that they called freckles and evolution
didn't give them the ability to become dark, so they became red
as they worked hard in the fields and in the factories and made
a life for themselves.
 
i am proud of who i am and where i come from, of the people
who lead up to me, the ones who make up the history i don't yet have
and i do not think that the words that are so forcefully pinned on me
are right because they can't ever begin to portray
the past, the present, and the future that lays
behind me, next to me, and in front of me.
 
i am not american.
 
i am just a 16 year old girl with fiery hair and pale skin who believes in God.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

her father killed her, society destroyed her

only 16.
so young and yet so old,
scarred by razor blades and words and the fists of a father
who was supposed to love her, but only wanted a son.
 
she should be living her life, smiling and laughing
with her friends that don't exist, wearing
shirts that drop a little too low and short shorts
instead of long sleeves and jeans in mid-summer.
she should be happy, should be
so much more excited to wake up in the morning
to a whole new day, but instead
she just groans 
because everynight she secretly hopes
that she won't wake up in the morning.
 
it was a sad day, the day that
her father killed her and society destroyed her
and she stopped fighting for the life that she should
treasure and look forward to, but all she looks forward to is
death.
_____________________________
sooooo sorry that everything has been depressing recently, i've been going through a lot of stuff and i can only get it out when i write!

Monday, April 2, 2012

undefinable (dedicated to a close friend)

in 35 minutes i'm going to be standing in front of a crowd,
talking about you,
and i don't know what to say.
 
you are the one who comforted me when i wanted to die,
you are the one who stood by me no matter what,
you are the one who defended me and cared about me,
you are the one person i've looked up these past 3 years
and i don't want you to graduate in a few months and leave me
behind when you go off to college.
 
[i'm going to miss you too much.]
 
and i don't know how i'm going to get my feelings into words, i don't
know how i can possibly sum up who you are in only a few minutes
because you are so much more than words can say, you are
undefinable.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

what was left

she thought that she was alone in the world, like
the rain was pouring on just her, just her and
nobody else, like the
whole world had come down and was laying
on her frail shoulders that were weathered with
age and misfortune, but she was only
16.

her family had left her alone, alone and afraid
when she had reached out for them, when she
had needed them more than anything
and they just sat there and laughed at her bleeding wrists,
her tear-stained pillows, her broken heart
because they didn't care that she had gotten hurt, only that
she had hurt them in the process and they couldn't handle
the pain that she was holding on her shoulders.

they were surprised then, surprised when
the daughter they thought was perfect, perfectly
destroyed herself and finally succeeded in something
that made all of the pain of the world lift from her shoulders.

because when you are dead, there is no more pain
and she was dead, she was gone, they said
that they had missed the signs and that they hadn't expected
their perfect daughter to perfectly destroy herself, leaving
the pain of the world behind to sit on her mother's shoulders, her
father's lap, her younger sisters' hearts.

she left the guilt to rest on them and weigh them down, the guilt
of a dead daughter who was killed by suicide, swallowed too many
pills for them to save her from.

and she didn't even leave a note.