- catching my breath - 

do you still remember when we met?

it was the third day of kindergarten,

and I knew I was meant to know you

as soon as I caught sight of your grin.

remember when I chased you around the playground,

for the entire recess, I might add,

just to get your attention?

you were so much faster than me,

but I caught up eventually

and just like that we became friends.

it was always me chasing after you, wasn’t it?

me squeezing in next to you at lunch.

me playing basketball every single recess

because that was always how you spent your break.

I never really liked basketball that much,

but I’ve always liked you a lot.

I guess it was me who switched seats to be by you.

and me who stayed back to walk alongside you.

it’s been over nine years since that day in kindergarten.

I have new friends now.

you have new friends now.

but, it’s bittersweet.

I miss you,

but it was always me chasing after you, wasn’t it?

I need some time to catch my breath.

~~~ 

Not so sure about this one, but it's the best of what I was able to come up with. 

untitled

as she descends, the air is full of a bittersweet hope, because how is hope all the things it is supposed to be when it is caused by the death of a child?

but it began with the birth of a woman, too, so maybe that is a beautiful thing and this hope isn't cursed after all. she's

hardly a woman and yet they call for her to lead them, and is it an evil hope because she shouldn't have to? because she doesn't want to, because someone older and wiser should be doing this but

they aren't, because they are all gone, the way the paperwhites die by the time summer comes around and at least the winter's over but

when the paperwhites die and all that is left are the sunflowers, how can she lead with no one to lead her? they'd probably tell her she's been given everything she needs 

that this is her purpose in life, that this is her god-given responsibility, but still she'd really

rather not. often she wishes she could turn back the clock to winter, when she was still a child and the paperwhite kings and queens were still living, before the insects came and ate them alive, before

she was forced to grow up too quickly. but that's bittersweet too, because she is powerful and she knows she is powerful, and the child that died would have been weak and indecisive and this dying country would have died a little faster.

and it's for the better, that she's the same age as she would have been but her mind is so much older and her heart is dead to her, or the world would have fallen apart

and when worlds fall apart, only more death follows: so the child would have died either way.

at least this way, the her world stays on the brink of the living just a little bit longer. 

"bitter(sweet)"

all my memories

of you

are bittersweet

riding bikes

down the street with no

hands on the handlebars

(you were grinning then)

drawing caricatures

of kids in class who

hated me

(you were laughing then)

singing with

the beatles in

my bedroom

(you were dancing then)

now your

grinning mouth is

straight, blank,

now your

lilting laugh is

silent, gone,

now your

dancing limbs are

stooped, still,

and all i have are my bitter, bitter

(sweet)

memories.

i'm sorry 

i don't know how to save you

from the black hole that's swallowing you from the inside

out.

(Note: This is fictional. It's only very loosely based on my own experiences.)

Hi, everyone, thank you so much for all the wonderful poems you submitted! Remember, this is just my opinion. If another person judged, the results would be completely different. I'm hardly a poet, and I'm nowhere NEAR qualified to be judging poems, but here we are anyway, so.... without further ado....(and 2 hours before the deadline I set for myself).....

Honorable Mentions!

>Jaybells~ This poem is really beautiful. It feels so awful, so horrible. I quite feel the speaker’s pain, and the figurative language is superb. The last three lines hit me especially hard. But I’m a little confused on the relationship between the speaker and their love- I can’t quite figure out what role everyone plays. Maybe that’s the point- it’s a confusing love triangle and nobody really knows what to do, but I guess the poem was a little lost on me because of that.

>Pancake~ This poem often makes me cry/laugh out loud…I enjoy the directness of it. I love the individual lines in this one- “You will feel as light as a feather/ But you will fall once more” and “Love is bittersweet as well/ first it’s sweet/ then it’s farewell” and “Just look for it/ And you’ll find it within a clock’s chime.” These are all really dramatic in that way poets love to be *evil laughter* but I’m not sure they really work together as a poem. Any one of these could spark their own poem, and that would be great, but having them all together feels like you’re trying to cover too much and I’m not really sure what’s happening. 

>Phantasmagoria~ I liked the premise of this one. I felt bad for the person speaking, and also a little guilty because I feel sometimes I can be the person who leaves ‘for some fantastic adventure/ not thinking of who remained behind-’ to quote your poem. It does remind us to remember everybody and not leave anyone. However, the tone of your poem felt a little off. The speaker seems very lighthearted and…happy, almost, even though they keep talking about how much they miss the person who left. It sort of prevents the poem from having the impact you’ve set it up to have, and the meaning is a little lost. 

>Spellbound~ Short and bittersweet, just like the relationship between the two people. I liked 'just a twinge of regret/ every time i see you’ and ‘you always leave a bittersweet flavor on my tongue.’ The story flowed nicely and had the intended effect. *thumbs up*

>WordSong~ This poem has a really awesome message- people are who they are and we shouldn’t try to mold them to our liking, for fear of eradicating who they are altogether. Your speaker needed more from the baker’s chocolate person than they could give, and still tried to get it from them anyway, and it all ended very poorly. There’s very much a taste of regret, and self-blame, and it’s very angsty. I love the direction you chose for bittersweet- a person who has some flaws, but is also very important to this other person. That’s the whole point of bittersweet- the bitter is needed to balance the sweet, otherwise it’s just sickly sugar…*ominous music plays, then fades into background*

>peppermint~ I love this, mostly because of the character growth and development. The speaker starts out being controlled by someone else (though the controller doesn’t know it) and gradually takes back their life and learns to do things that make them happy. I do agree with you- parting with childhood friends is bittersweet, because they’ve been your friends for a long time, and you care about them a lot, but sometimes you just need room to be someone other than what they expect of you, than who you used to be. The story you told was amazing, and the ending was satisfying but still left room for more to happen- be it sever the ties more or grow back together over time. Bravo!

…wow. Truly wow. I finished your poem and I was shocked, because that ending is so tragic. It’s made worse because you have given me insight on what this person was like before they fell into a black hole, and you can’t see any way out, and it leaves me with a mountain of fear buried under my skin. I have no idea how you managed to convey so much emotion into so few words, but it is truly exceptional. Spacing and line breaks also work towards the effect- I love the sentences in parentheses at the end of each stanza. If you feel comfortable sharing your identity, we’d love to know who you are, but if not that’s okay too and I hope you keep writing! 

….Oh, how can I not love this poem? It’s so terrible and true and *pulls at hair frantically* augh. I love this more ‘free’ style of poetry, and the line breaks are amazing. I really liked how you interpreted the theme- overall I really felt the bittersweetness of it all, and it kinda tortures me how every possible outcome for the protanganist is not something she really wants for herself. It’s also just a really good read, and aside from judging this in a poetry contest, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well done, lumi, and you are our new judge!