One Day
Textbooks and teachers told me
“Hold on to everything;
Everything you write -
It will turn into something one day”
And one day became overturned boxes
Tossed around my room,
And pages of white, off-white, something in between
With scribbles in black, blue, red
Big, small, tear-blotched, ripped
Written in every direction, let me cover every inch
Like the lover from Italy that has a wife back home
And it breaks your heart more than hers
Because your fantasy just shattered
And her mirror has been cracked for ages.
You thought these pages
Might mean something one day
But as you look over teenage angst
You think,
“Child, someone needed to teach you strength.”