Tag: poem

To drown.

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Today is heavy.

My skull feels full,
like an overflowing fish tank.

Akin to water spilling over the glass,
I feel something seep out of my ears, my nose, my mouth;
the substance trickling down my neck to soak my sweater.

I wish to rest my head upon your chest, to
breathe in the comfort of you in hopes it would stop
the war waging between my head and heart.

I know that won’t happen, both the resting and stopping,
but maybe six seconds would ease my affliction.

*This* is hard.

I have no timeline,
but I don’t think the pain is leaving soon.

It will continue to exist, and I
will learn what it feels like to drown.

to observe and to feel

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Human nature is to try and to fail,
to make mis-takes and to learn,
to hurt and to love.

(We use screws instead of nails.)

She shouts, guarding herself with words like bullets,
rather than admitting fault.

(We use anger instead of compassion.)

He goes silent, building walls,
layers of brick to block the pain.

(We pray to be different from our parents.)

But trauma is cycled through generations.
I feel the weight of my great-grandmother
in the movement of my hands over my heart.
I hear the last cries of my grandfather
before his heart turned sour.

(To heal is to break the cycle handed down to us.)
(To heal is human.)

The fabric of life

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The fabric of life
is sewn haphazardly.

Stitched bears dance with fairies under
starlit skies of inky blue.

Cotton geese fly west across
the woven meadows of goldenrod and aster. 

Fibrous humans gather around fires
afraid of the tenebrific silence. 

Young deers with threaded legs search for sure footing
as toddlers learn to explore the patchwork streams. 

Each quilted design blends into the next—
appearing as one scene of lush forest,
dotted with oaks and maples, and
edged by tall buildings and squat homes of grey stone.

The balance of reciprocity rests
on a grand slate table in the center,
encircled by forget-me-nots and ferns.

The Air is Heavy

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I come to you with a heavy heart.
The world is on fire.
People are sick.
Today marks the remembrance of 9/11.
My school is holding a strike.

***

I sit in a worn chair, facing
a wall of kind memories,
trying to understand grief.

Frank Turner blares from my computer
and his words are scribbled across the top
of my only black t-shirt.
Earl Grey tea swirls ’round in my mug.
I am feeling…

I hold sacred space for all those lost, suffering,
living in trauma put upon them by others.
I mourn the forgotten,
the loved,
the young,
the old.

My heartstrings are pulled by our crises.
Life is blooming, dying, trembling.