So it Seems

All the words that could be written

have already been written

with the hand of this mitten,

cold fingers snow-smitten

and numbed into repeating the same beats

over and over

like the floppy paws of a hungry-for-food kitten.

—

I keep a long document

of most every poem I’ve written since 8th grade

and last night the insomniac in me

refused to sleep without some reminder of kiddie logic,

some amateur words to guide me into vast dreams.

—

I keep a long document

of most every poem since 8th grade,

only a handful are dated

but I remember vividly what was going on in my life when I wrote each one,

I know what happened to cut me into bleeding out this record

I passed down to my future hands.

—

all the words that could be written,

I worry I already wrote: years of the same fears,

battles with sadness,

my family,

seeking after freedom, a home,

telling myself about the days I feel alone.

—

So here, in my nostalgia and fear that I’m writing myself in circles,

are some of my favorite words from middle school/high school me:

“I see, through a looking glass, lost treasures in a lost world”

“I wait for paradise, Angel.”

“Almost as if hope is required to hope”

“I’m flying. So high, deep in the ocean”

“Hide it, so they don’t think you’re insane”

“the words choked up and a flood of rain, the only way to hold it is to draw it in”

“I held out between the spaces of a word”

“keep me warm until the lights turn down and the moon is set and the stars are gone”

“emptinesses so consumed me I only felt deafened”

“I step back, step into my imagination mind, close the door so I can think, remember who I am”

“I’m here. Holding onto my daisies. Sometimes they’re the only things that keep me, me”

—

some of my favorite lines from post-high school me:

“this boat leaps and dashes on frigid mountains of waves”

“squeeze too tight and I’ll shatter, so soft you never knew I could cut”

“Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, tangled up in someone else’s drum”

“tuck me in in the dead of night, in the dead of quiet”

“if I had tried harder, maybe I could’ve touched the moon”

“and we play in a warzone, immortal”

“by acquaintance to pain and crying in the rain I became softer, smaller, sharper, stronger”

“I fear the prison of this body will become a sepulcher to my wildest dreams, before they ever have the chance to take over any worlds”

“when people sing karaoke, can you actually feel it in your ribs that you fell for the right person?”

“I am not defined by the scars of the years of a lifetime”

“a picture perfect planet in stuttering rebellion”

“go burn the obliterate moon,

sabotage the savage screaming stars”

***

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