coming of age
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The lapse is finally found...
No utterance, no sound.
What “love” there was amongst this feud...
Was sorely mistaken & totally rude.
A whisper, a laugh, a killing joke...
i met the devil last night
she wore my face
and had slinked on my body like a coat
she looked like myself,
though a few years younger
Here it goes
My name has been called
No, not by my pessimistic professors,
Not by my mother’s irritation.
It’s being called by a higher being
You see, I am but a small piece
A small brown girl sits in the middle of a poorly kept lawn, the weeds sprouting all around her.
The oak tree is shaking in the wind, and the leaves are falling.
What sets a soul aflame, is the breaking of restrictions
when one is finally tired of the limits of their own affliction
who wish in their heart of hearts to be free
We were about to move
again
And he said we needed to paint the garage
He didn’t explain why
but he never does
It wasn't a sudden realization,
but suddenly,
I didn't fit my tutus or ballet shoes,
I stopped sleeping with plushies piled on my covers,
I quit counting my steps as I walked.
When Momma told me not to do something, I used to listen.
I had been conditioned.
Conditioned to take the words she spoke as law and ignore my own supposibly inferior intuition.
She always keeps her memory in her present.
Lest she forget and all will be to no avail.
She keeps her memories in an arsenal of introspection in preparation for the battle.
Mosquitoes and boiling heat--no scalding heat.
The matchbox of a room that was now mine was just that. Smacking at my arms to stop the mosquitoes from eating me alive, I was unimpressed.
Welcome to the old me
where days of freedom were abundant
where was I free to do as I pleased
where I was enveloped in disregard
for other’s opinions
where I was more of myself than I was of them
The melody no longer rings the same,
and no, the harmony is not to blame.
It’s the years spent in an orchestrated song
filled with root beer chords, where the days are long.
He is thirteen
Navigating school hallways and people and the nooks and crannies of his developing body
But one thing he can't figure out
Is what's wrong with him
I love my mother
I love her warmth
I love her wit
I love her fearlessness and admire her endurance
I love the way she loves strangers
I love the way she loves me
In adolescence,
the biggest change happened
during spring of junior year
when i saw my father
cry
and i realized that
those who seem the strongest
are those who are most
broken
I realized that I
Drugs were addicting. I suppose I enjoyed seeing everything and feeling nothing. Though I did kind of feel alive - to be staring into the face of the Grim Reaper. He once wrapped his hands around my throat.
It was a foolish mistake to think that I could escape from you.Even if I wanted to,You seemed to lurk in the shadows.In the dark I could hear your laughter;Knowingly mocking my vulnerability.
We bat our lashes in secret
Hoping for tall, dark (black) and handsome to feel the signal miraculously
And come swooping in to take us home, nestling us in ever lasting
Lust
When you’re four, you ask your mom why a dime is smaller than a nickel
One larger than the other, yet only the worth of five pennies
Your mom still buys you matching sets to wear to school
I sit there at the lunch table with my friends
Listening and smiling
Inserting the occasional comment to make the others laugh
Never stop smiling
“Never have I ever” they began
finally found someone who makes me happy,
so why cant mom just be happy for me
she doesnt even know him and she chooses to hate
is there something im not seeing
0. Light, air, the world itself. All new.
Words have just been spoke, and movements being learned.
I’m not really sure how to start here
So I guess I’ll start with something like
Hi
My name is Jaime
I’m not really sure how to start here
So I guess I’ll start with something like
Hi
My name is Jaime
They say 17 is a number associated with spiritual growth
Next month, I advance to a new chapter, a new 18
So I reflect on what’s changed and what’s remained
I went bowling with my mom once.
It was 10 o’clock on a Saturday night in the middle of September.
I think this was the first time we’d went bowling in about 9 years, but
I'm raising my glass
I'm showing what I lack
Here's to the start of a joined era full of messes left to sort out
To sharing shocked minds and smelling our brain farts
If poems could weep
sweet dripping words that speak
the heart's pounding defiant secrets
once forced hushed to a peep,
then let my pen stir rivers and streams,
I come back to this town,
And it is not I that has changed;
But it.
The streets;
They are empty.
The houses;
They are dark.
The people;
They are cold.
Dear future me,
I hope that you're smiling.
I hope that you can say
that you're happy without lying.
Dear God,
I can see my whole face in the pupil of my eye.
I can eat a whole piece of my mom's pumpkin pie.
I can handle a handlful of the diamonds in the sky,
but why try when we're all just gonna fly
Dear Womanhood,
Thank you for your strength
For teaching me to hold my head high
For giving me the will to fight
Dear Womanhood,
You have made me cry
I stand barren until very late spring
in a yard of evergreens and hundred-year oaks
young and a stick figure,
not enough rings under my bark.
Mathaya,
I, your author, write
To encourage you for the
Coming days ahead.
My main character
Is you; you’ll learn hard lessons.
You’ll come through each one.
they say we don't write letters
but I wrote 'em
just last year
christmas alone
the only thing I wanted was to speak
but he was
cities
towns
states
What an interesting feat
to recall
What Hannah was composed of in January
of 2017
What made her tick?
What kept her going?
Junior year was kicking her butt
That memory remains
Pain in the Ass
From the moment I was born I have been
a complete pain in my mothers ass,
literally, red faced and over eager to escape
where I came from, I broke her tailbone.
Pain in the Ass
From the moment I was born I have been
a complete pain in my mothers ass,
literally, red faced and over eager to escape
where I came from, I broke her tailbone.
Dear God
I am so afraid
I am so afraid of being wrong
Not saying 2+2=3
But of being so damn wrong in who I am
So damn wrong in my choices
love to grow
i. Baby Love
When I was a child, I spoke as a child
The most musical language I’ve ever known
The testing supervisor told me
He wasn’t sure he should give me a license
But that I had technically passed.
What does that mean?
He didn’t trust me and neither did my mother
The both of them said
Three hundred and sixty five days are enough to make you a different person.
Enough to make you grow, enough to knock you down, enough to make you live. These days are filled with hope, despair, luck,
Lessons.
A rose-hipped girl with legs closed tight
Sits staunching an ochre river.
She’s sure of a weeping snake with teeth
Red sunk into her belly.
Growing alone, Behold the self-doubtThe crying, the lying, the gritting of teethWatching others ascend while your mood still depends on your peers.Fingertips brush edges where there is no apparent jail,
I’ve found my tribe
Finally, finally, finally
After years of girls with
Perfect hair, endless happiness
Look at them go, look at them
We run to the
Lies that tell us
Everything’s gonna be alright
If we use them
And that sounds stupid
But us teenagers
I was in the school library at lunchtime
Looking at a book entitled ‘When A Friend Dies’.
I felt guilty, because I wasn’t grieving at all
I just felt really sad.
'Seize the day' they say,
or else you'll fade away.
This is the final age,
before we take the stage.
The golden age of seventeen,
we dance in childhood's final scene,
PART I:
just.
one.
breath.
For that is all it takes
-In and out-
To escape the chaos
and relieve the doubt.
It started with me falling in love
No not like that
I didn’t fall in love with a boy, or girl, a moment in time
But I fell in love with words
At the tender age of three
Day 1
Trigger-happy gigglersWe laugh on instinctErupting roars around the roomlike criss-cross apple sauce trip minesToo short for ridesCondemning tattle-talesSelectively breeding kickball sides
Senior Year
17 and 18 year old punk kids
Who used to be prodigies, geniuses, beyond their years
We were told we were so smart
It's almost here
So close I can see
I'm past the fear
So filled with glee
Ready to walk the stage
So excited for a new chapter
Finally finished with an age
So filled with nervous laughter
When the universe was arranged,
All creation from a bang,
Every grain,
Every cell,
Every atom flew out.
And like all matter careened about,
If I don't know where I'm from, you ask, how will I know where I'm going?
Fair enough.
Here's my best answer:
I am from a little boy crying because I turned his amoeba of green paint into a t-rex.
She was always different
Not in the way of the kid in class whose only friend was imaginary
And not in the way of the most popular girl, with a posse catering to her every whim
Constantly in pain
My own thoughts driving me insane
Life is just a drain
But the misery is only in my brain
A family that is perfection
Offers me protection
I am the infection
Kindergarten first day I was late,
Doesn’t play well with others.
First grade Mother’s Day,
I can’t read,
Maybe I should be held back,
Second grade, JK—
Rowling lit a light inside,
I had come to realize the pattern
in which the seasons of my life came and went
and how the colors of the sky were warm and bright
each night before the dark cold breeze
came and stole it away.
Is that why they drink?
So they don't have to think?
so they can pour all of their troubles down the sink?
Is the present so rough?
The transitiion so tough?
If I could
I would write novels about this black hole in my head
about how it manages to twist every horrid thing into
poetic drops of pain.
Damn,
even that makes it seem better
Standing on our two feet
Living without regret or defeat.
We are what Rory the roman
will wait a thousand years for a woman.
We are those who will rise to greatness,
Well I live down on the beach,next to the green Florida Sea.I like to dig my toes in the sand,sipping some sweet ice tea.
My red lips can rock your world,I’ll have you down on your knees.
The first time I met you I thought little of you
Now I know you for you
I like you
It's been eight years since then,
I love you
We started as friends
then best friends
then sisters
A tattered old man from the east approached
Spouting words of a God I'd never known
12:00 , March 19, 2014
Today is my birthday.
And even though the feeling of one more year was liberating, I couldn’t help but notice
Through my eyes I see,
The angel within me,
The blood of virtue in his veins,
As he casts his divinity.
Through my eyes I see,
The devilish rebel of sin,
As his relentlessness rises,
As a baby, I laid and cried in my crib
Observing the sunlight peering through my window
There's that point in everyone's life
Where it all comes to a head
In everyone's head
We think, "What do I do?
Where do I go?
How do I get there? When is my time?
When I was a kid I was gonna be married with kids at this point
When I was a kid
I’m still a kid—still feel like one
I watch cartoons and wear fuzzy socks and my parents pay my bills
And my parents pay my bills
Me peeling fingers,
ripped from innocence,
diving into adolescence.
What is it that makes them this way?
The fall from ideals,
the way my skin peels,
and cracks and drys like never before.
You captured my heart from the start
With your sense of humor you filled my heart
Oh but I didn’t want to admit it to myself or anyone else
Eighteen is seven months away,
Each day I’m learning a little more about what adult means.
It’s the time in our lives when diapers and pull ups are exchanged for boxers and thongs.
Our sippy cups for have changed into
"End of the River"
I can’t see,
Please!
What’s to be?
It’s known, what could,
Living in the woods.
"You're Special"
That's what he said
But what you said was
that I have better things
to do with my life
But life is meant to be spent
with happiness all around
Not everyone gets this opportunity
to find someone like you
I take it all in; One day at a time
But you're always on my mind
¡Oh it's just a first love!
But no matter what place it's in
It's Love
You make me happy
And what's more important
than that
It's a fact - happiness makes
the world go 'round
That's why I always want
you around me
I dont care what they say,
Tell Me
Is this wrong
Is this typical
tested, tried, & true
It makes me blue
with fear; this tested
tried, & true
It feels so right
But ...is this wrong
Follow me back to a moment in time
A memory for me. In a crypt. In my mind.
Waiting for him, it's an hour past five
In comes Drew with his broken blue eyes.
He sits across me in a cold seat that grinds,
That feeling of uselessness
Unable to fulfill the desires of them
What did they want of a child in the first place?
A child in his teen years
Leaving a note for his mother
Ask me who I am, and I will not hear you,
for I am deep within this crowd calling out my own name.
I will not know the sound of my own voice
until it whispers back.
Until then, I will spend my hours
A broken girl you see
with a flawed family
she hides up in a tree
playing hide and seek
too old now for the games
she is consumed by all the flames
the girl she wants to be
I’m from
Six months in a clustered, condensed, claustrophobia-inducing,
Guidance office
Learning that I’m normal.
Swelling and beating when I think of you
It's as if I envision you here fingers tangled and all
My heart selfishly desires to be melted with yours
Past heartaches never mend and for a boy his heart never bends
My mind is broken full of tears a never ending storm of stress and anger. My brain a continuous rain cloud My mental and emotional state is shattered beyond repair.
Gliding along the wooden planks
As coals of emerald
Kindled his face
I caught a glimpse of a transfiguration.
Soft winds swept up my cotton skirt
Past polished shoes and mounds of earth.
Mommy, I wish you never painted my room pink.
Why weren't the walls white?
Why did you let me choose the sparkling sandcastles as my border?
I remember them glistening like my tears do now.
It happens so quickly. You go to your classes, you do the same thing every day, and then it hits you - you're not a kid anymore. You see your older friends leaving high school.
I came all this way to ask you to watch me leave through the backdoor
Of a house I call child’s play.
To hold my hand as I cross the line I call my childhood
And abandon this child like mind behind
The questions in my mind,
Answers hard to find.
If I may be so bold…
How can you be so cold?
Temperature below zero,
I’d rather hug my pillow.
Indifference cuts right through,
I once knew a child whose burden was light
With a heart so pure and eyes so bright.
They sang and danced to music no one could hear
With the voices of rain whispering in their ear.
I don’t know why
I don’t know why
I see the stars and I meet the sky
And just like that, I hit the ground
I don’t land on my feet, but I can hear the sound
