I am not a poet

I am just poetic,

every scribbled letter from an aching hand,

every smudge of blue ink on a crinkled page

is remembrance,

experiences of metrical saddness 

and symbolism of my existence

 

The times where I was younger and insomnia came to tuck me every night

when my mother should have

is a reason why pen and paper comfort me

more than the hugs from strangers who share the same blood as me

 

I am not a poet,

rather I am a collection

of "what if's" and "why's",

I accumlate upon uncertainty,

and take note of it,

only take note of it,

because I am too afraid to take action

 

To take action is to take liability,

and I refuse to be the host for another

unrequited love,

another,"Will he ever look at me, rather than through me?"

One thing that I can never be uncertain of is the feeling of a sharpened pencil

gripping in my hand,

the threshold of a soon to be breaking heart

that will piece itself back together with the help of a few zealous words

 

I wish I were a poet,

maybe then melancholy would become beautiful

and my ticking time bomb sentiments

would be embraced 

and glide from my pen with poise

 

I often imagine myself on stage

reciting the reasons why

I fell for the boy in blue,

plummeting for his fingertips on the small of my back,

reminding me everything I ever loved about love

and how everytime he elongates the second syllable of my first name

to grab my attention when I doze off fiddling with my necklace 

makes me a hopeful hopeless romantic

 

But I am not a poet you see,

I am poetry,

I am poetry with a name and a purpose 

the ballad of embodied pain,

I rhyme with every inhale and exhale,

manifesting the madness that self-proclaimed writers 

mindlessly write about,

for I am that madness

I am that raw emotion,

spilled ink with curves,

hardly reach 5 foot 2 inches

with a terrible habit of touching my forehead when I become anxious

 

But you know what?

That's completely okay,

because poetry is meant to be imperfect,

poetry is tragic,

messy,

hopeful,

passion,

heartbreak,

a dream and everything within the crevice of its words,

so much more than embellished metaphors...

 

Poetry is real, and she is living,

But alas,

I am not a poet

I am simply a girl with an empty archive, with a lot of pages waiting to be filled