This is going to be a poetry dump, sorry. First up is a poem I wrote about identity:

i don't resent the bold colors and harsh lines, that's just not me,

i'm the wind-blown hair and the burbling streamand the quiet smile and the soft voice and

i love the color green because it reminds me off nature and overgrown hedges and ivy and mysterious, quiet beauty and

i'm like the clouds that float and drift and

i'm like a deer sipping from a stream, but i am the stream, trickling along and dancing in the sun and

i'm the flowers, waving in the wind and i'm the the grass, suffering and dancing with footsteps and i'm the dark green ivy that creeps slowly, slowly up your fences and houses and

i'm a bird, kissing the sky, building a nest twig by twig and i'm a butterfly, fluttering and darting between flowers that look tall as trees, and i'm a rainbow that you thought would lead to gold but instead just led to

me, a kid you don't know, who sits on a rock in the burbling stream and smiles into the distance, because i finally found who i am.

This one's a redo of a poem I wrote like two years ago, so I'll put both up for comparison. It was one of the first poems I ever wrote, so it's not very good, but there's something about how I wrote when I was small that's just kind of . . . cute, even when I was writing about death and thunderstorms.

Anyways, without further ado - the original: 

 

 

Boom.

Crack! 

The lightning mirrors my anguish.

Boom.

Crack! 

The thunder reflects my anger.

Boom. 

Crack!

Why did you do this to me, Lord!

 

The lightning rips the sky open.

The thunder roars its warning.

This storm should not be ignored.

 

My father steps outside.

Into the farm he goes.

To herd the animals in.

 

The lightning strikes our farm.

The lightning strikes my father.

My mother calls for help.

 

Our help arrives too late;

The lightning kills my father.

And breaks my mother's heart.

 

Boom.

Crack!

The lightning mirrors my anguish.

Boom.

Crack! 

The thunder reflects my anger.

Boom.

Crack.

Why did you do this to me, Lord!

 

And . . . the redo:

 

the lightning rips

the sky open, and i

clutch the window, closed tightly from

rain, and

too soon, the low growl that is

thunder. this storm is way

too close. i

run downstairs, find my

mother, her mouth open in a

shocked, terrified 

stare, and i

see it. my

father, running too slowly across the

farm, staff in

hand. he only cares about the

animals, always.

 

i grasp my mother's arm, and we

wait, hopeful breaths caught in our

lungs.

 

the cows and sheep are inside when

lightning and thunder at the same

time - my mother gasps, i

scream, watching father's body

collapse to the ground, too broken to

stay upright.

 

bile rushes to my throat but

my mother rushes to the other

room, grabbing her phone, tears

streaming down her face

 

"hello? hello?" but no one on the other end for

too long, then finally

"come quickly, my husband's been struck by

lightning -"

 

but they don't arrive quick enough and

i hate it, hate it with all my

heart -

the too close storm killed my

father. 

And this one's just because I felt like it. I really like it, though.

Nothing left 

i. i

drained the

poison from your

heart, and when i

checked, there was nothing

left.

ii. you

stole the

magic from my

soul, and when i

laughed, there was nothing

left.

iii. we

grasp the

shadows of our

selves, though we both

know, we have nothing

left. 

sometimes i wish i could rip open my heart and lay it all out for you to see

because then it wouldn't be so hard to tell you how i felt, i wouldn't have to put 

the mess of tangled embroidery floss and torn out pages and blood soaked cotton balls and blank post-it notes and sharpie stains

into words that you could actually understand.

i wish i could rip open my heart and lay it all out on your yellow lemon tree table cloth and let you

draw your own conclusions, wish i could pick it up and sew it back into place with the floss you (somehow)

managed to untangle, and save the rocks rubbed smooth by the tides controlled by my breath and brain and lungs

because then i wouldn't have to type out these words for you to understand, wouldn't have to try and fail

again and again to be brave enough and composed enough and wise enough and old enough and young enough to 

put it all into sentences strung together by my mouth and my thoughts and the things i wish i could scream to the world

(only i don't know how)

i wish i could rip open my heart and lay it all out in your bedroom and you could see how much i love you

see all the things i wanted to say but never could quite

articulate them.

there aren't words in this language that would let me tell you those things and so it's all just there,

bottled up and tangled, stained with ink and blood and sweat and shot through with cobalt and violet and vermilion

in a blue glass bottle inside a muscle

that cannot be ripped open and laid out

on linoleum floors or table cloths

or folding tables.

I don't know if I've like, ever written a poem based on personal experience before... A lot of my poems are about characters. Anyways, here's a sad one for ya:

 

Seasons

Some people

Say that fall 

Is pointless,

A time filler, simply 

The space between 

Warm summer nights

And snowy mornings.

 

But you?

Oh, you lived

For the moment 

When the first leaf fell

Off the big oak tree.

You couldn’t wait

To dress up in silly 

Halloween costumes

And run through the graveyard 

Saying “it’s not that scary”

You never cared that 

Everyone told you how you

Were too old for trick-or-treating,

You would still eat your candy bars

And would loudly wish everyone a 

“HAPPY HALLOWEEN!”

 

Some people

Would argue 

That winter is just bitter

And cold,

Or complain 

About shoveling the driveway. 

 

But I know that you’d say,

“More snow days for me!” 

And laugh.

I know that’d you’d still be

Sitting under the snow tree

Even if everyone said it was too cold,

You’d just chuckle,

“That’s why I’ve got snow pants,”

And take a sip of homemade cocoa.

And when December hit,

You’d be in a Santa hat,

Singing Christmas songs all the way

To New Year.

 

Some people 

Would claim

That spring is unpleasant,

How you can never be sure

If it’ll rain or if there will be sunshine.

 

But when I hear that,

I think of you 

Making a garden that

Little critters would always

Come and eat

But you’d still smile.

“That just means I’m feeding

Those cute baby groundhogs!”

You would grin at the oak tree

As its leaves grew back,

And would climb up there

And hang from the branches upside-down,

Even though that always worried me.

You’d put on bunny ears

And wear them to school all April

Or a D.IY. t-shirt with butterflies on it

(Or both, and knowing you, it probably was).

 

Some people

Lie that summer

Is bad,

Rots children’s brains.

 

But you

Would prove them wrong,

Practice math,

Write every day,

Just to say “well actually...”

Just to prove that you weren’t 

A dumb, mindless child

(Even if you did dye your hair pink-ish purple

By accident somehow,

Which I’d never let you forget).

And you’d make a treehouse 

In that big oak tree

And paint it bright yellow

“To stand out”

Or do a blue-lemonade stand

(Which also stood out a good bit,

I’m sure).

 

And now,

It’s fall again,

And the moment

Has came

That the oak tree loses its leaves.

But you aren’t here.

Now, Halloween comes

And the wind whispers

In your voice:

“Hey, race you through the graveyard!”

Now,

I turn around

And wish all those ghost stories

Were true,

Because

My insides are screaming.

I miss you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This turned out a lot more prosey than I anticipated but I kind of like it.

My heart feels empty, like it's a leftover container that somebody dumped out and left a shell of ache, like I'm feeling it all wrong and I don't know how to feel anything anymore but

my heart also feels full, like somebody overflowed the leftover container and then smashed the lid on anyways and it got pressed down as maybe it was a little bit delicate, like a peach, and it got all bruised.

And it's not just my heart it's my head, filling up with questions I should probably be able to answer but I really can't and I feel shallow and inadequate and I have to calm myself down, tell myself I matter, but sometimes I wonder

what's the point?

I still have hopes and dreams.

Home~

Sometimes my house isn’t home

And by sometimes,

I mean always…

I’ve always felt homesick

For places lost in history

I somehow know

That this isn’t

My homeworld…

& maybe it’s because of

The pandemic,

Stuck in this house for months,

But I think not

I always felt like I’m lost,

Even though I was never

In a literal sense

& sometimes there are times

I cry for no reason

Other than it was time to

Let go

Like a metamorphosis

Isn’t life more than this?

It’s like I’m stuck

Stuck in a cloddy life

That isn’t my own

Like I’m a stand-in

Waiting for the teacher

That never came back from

Their

“Quick trip down the hall”

The best way

To describe how I feel

Is that

I’m not human…

I don’t feel human,

But I’m not anything else, either…

Like I’m just a spirit;

A forest spirit,

Who somehow lost their memories

And found themselves

Inside of a tech-loving kid who probably has too much screen time

Who writes about forests 

And escapism

And everything like that

At this point

I’m just waiting for my eyes to turn green

And my hair to feel short

Yet look long

And to have dirty feet and hands

From spells and magic

Because I think I’m a forest nymph

And maybe that’s why

I sometimes

Feel like wings

Belong on my back…

I want to be

One with the forest

And know languages no one knows

And doesn’t that sound nice?

Because I…

I think that’s my home…

And I want to go back

How can someone like me

ever be 

an artist, a writer, a poet?

 

How could I, someone who can't see

pictures 

in my head ever hope to create such beautiful things 

 

How could I be blind

yet hold

such silly thoughts and images and feels

 

All inside this dark empty head of mine.

Today the sky is beautiful

Day fades to night in such splendour

Candy-floss pinks and golden honeysuckle yellows

These coloured blooming clouds seem magical

Against the ever-deepening blue sky beneath

Just like something one would expect from summer

But I see that dark dragon circling

Coiling up from the depths of night

Looking like muddied blue-black water

Spilled haphazardly across the sheet of paper 

I see the midnight shades just across the canvas

Lurking on the other side 

It's a bit sad I think

That these clouds are so quickly passing

But alas, the light that colours them passes even quicker

And as in to my thoughts I sink

The dark crawls up and consumes it all

It only took more moments

And it is all now gone

 

Goodbye day, goodbye summer

Hello night, hello autumn 

Ooookay nervous nervous nervous didn't even write this one down on paper just gonna come up with it on the spot 

Fall is coming

You can feel it

In the air

You can see it

Everywhere

You can feel the coolness

Creeping in

Finally cool enough

To spin around

And fall down

Without getting hot

You can see it 

In the Mums

With their petals

Every which way

Like they really just don't have a care

In the world

I wish I could be like a Mum

Soon the leaves

Will be in piles

On the ground

And we can take running jumps

As leaves spray all around us

Days of the pool are gone

Hello Autumn, fun fun fun! 

I sigh at the mention

These are characters I love:

Just not together, not romantically

I grew up with them

And I love the way they interact

But you don't need to insert feelings where they don't belong

They don't have romantic chemistry, I know it

And it's usually so easy for me to say

 

So why then does it hurt so much when it doesn't work out

In those fan-drawn comics and lovingly created panels

Why does my chest prickle 

At the tired, sad feel those fan-animations stir up

Why do I long for something more

Before I see the cliff of another "The End" right before me

 

I wonder if that's why

It's an AU,

An Alternate Universe just for happy endings

Relationships that worked out against all odds,

For a Universe full of what-ifs and tweaked storylines

Where heavy consequences and accidents don't happen

I wonder if there are lots of Universes out there

Just like this one, but a little different

Maybe just like me, Lost in my Universe,

You're lost in yours too

~~~~~~~~~

Maybe we can find comfort in knowing that far away

There's someone just like you