I tried to give up
And it seemed like I was being stubborn
I can’t even give up right!

I’m a glass girl
And you can see right through
I’m transparent to you
Please don’t take advantage of it.

You can see my soul
Do you think it’s as beautiful
As yours is?
I wish I had your soul.

I was clear
But life made me stained.
But if you ask anyone who has ever seen stained glass,
They’d tell you it was the most
Magnificent thing
That they’d ever seen.

It’s okay to be stained
Color makes us
Alive.
Plexiglas
Is still and lifeless
Stained glass
Tells a story.

Be a storyteller.
Be stained.
Be beautiful.

stop
go
stop
go
go forward
go towards me
I SAID PUT ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER
AND WALK TOWARDS ME.
walk
stop
pause
LISTEN.
go

I’d tear myself apart
Just to figure out what’s inside
Am I
Out of my mind?

Can I
Take it back
Cover my cracks
And be anew?
Can I
Rewrite my song
And just belong
To who I wish to be?

If I changed all my choices
Back from when I used to be young
Who would I become?

I’m not sure I want to be who
I am, right now.
If I fall, should I stay down?

Fall, then fill it with gold
I say, fall, then fill it with gold
I say, fall, then fill it with gold
Not cracks, just beautiful.

Yes, I
Can take it back
Forgive my cracks
And be anew.
Oh, I’ll
Rewrite my song
And just belong
To who I wish to be.

To who I will soon be.

I am being drawn and quartered
By each expectation pulling away,
Tugging at my fragile sense
Of identity (if there ever was one)
Until suddenly, oh no! So suddenly
I am in pieces, and each person has only
A part of myself, that is all I can give—
I gave myself the death sentence, they’re
Only the horses that tear away my
Skin.

As they bolt away, I wonder
How far they will go until they
Realize
That I am no longer Whole.

I sit here sinking
Into the dirt,
Without feeling because I am on
The precipice of numbness,
A mere step away from screaming.

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
The words flit past my lips
Like a butterfly

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
I bid you adieu
I’ll see you next time

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
My leaving grows nigh
Goodbye!

black spores on the mildewed walls
peeling over the wood
rot that even the vultures shun
it grows in cracks and in dark places.

the disease sticks its spiny fingers
down your throat, so you can’t
scream…
silence, silence, it wants
silence.
it wants
absence,
no self left to 𝘣𝘦.

outside, it has been night for years
babes born bawling, not knowing
what stars, moon, sky, sun used to
look like, nothing but the concrete
sea.

and yet, though Purity
has her headstone with the
rest, though there are no longer
prayers
to be blessed
there is good,
there is GOD in this
God-forsaken world,
there is GOOD
there is GOD—
you.

Take a walk
Inside my head,
I’ll give you the grand tour!
Ignore the darkness
Skulking there
Behind those closed doors.
Don’t worry,
You’ll be safe and sound
My thoughts are quieter now.
They speed right past—
Now watch your step!
Once lost, you can’t be found.

Picture your world. I bet you’re picturing the big, fat, beautiful Earth right now, but that’s not what I’m talking about right now.
Picture YOUR world.
Your world is small, and mainly consists of those within your life.
You may even have only one person or only a few who are your world.
That’s okay.
Well, anyways, picture your world and those who reside within it.
Now think bigger.
Picture all the “worlds” in your area (maybe state, city, or country)
Picture all the people that mean EVERYTHING to everyone in your city.
That’s a lot of worlds, huh?
Okay.
Think bigger.
Picture all the world’s on EARTH!
We’re only ONE planet of many, yet we’ve already got a universe.
Lives sprinkle Earth’s surface like stars.
There are like a bazillion world’s, in the sense of personal worlds.
I’m not the only one that cries.
I’m not the only one that hurts.
I’m only one asteroid in this galaxy of people.
In the big picture, I’m a speck.
I don’t even matter.
If I died, most of the world wouldn’t know.
If existence was based on how many people knew your name,
I’d be nonexistent.
Now go back to your own world.
That’s not all you see now.
You see glimpses of other worlds just drifting away.
What’s the point of all this, you might ask?
The point is:
All worlds matter.
You destroy a world, you destroy a life.
You hurt somebody, and they’ll remember.
Even as itsy bitsy as we are compared to the vast cosmos,
We matter.
Everyone matters.
Small as our worlds may be,
Every single one matters.
We are not small to us,
And that’s what matters.

We live
We cry
We fall
We smile.

We topple down,
We knock others down,
But we grow
And grow
And grow
Until we tower above skyscrapers
A universe above the Empire State.

Bask in your light.
Grow.
I’ll meet you on the moon
Where we can chat with the sun,
Higher than we’ve ever been.

So excited to grow up
Maybe freedom would heal us
But when our childhood got taken away
We held on
Like it was a teddy bear
The complicated years
Of 13 and forward
Got us wishing to go back
And longing to grow up.

I feel sad
I think
I shouldn’t feel sad
I list my blessings
I think of all the kids
Out there who don’t
Have a good family
Or a house
Or nice clothes.

I cry.
The guilt makes me cry more.

People say
That you’ll just know
What you want
You will have a gut feeling
A vision
An intuition.

And I do have a gut feeling
I feel like I have been punched in the gut.

I cannot decide
If I am totally numb
Or oblivious.

Push me down thinking
That I won’t push you back worse
You are so stupid

If everyone in the world
Could be half as bright as you
The sun would not measure up to us.

If everyone in the world
Could be half as funny as you
A second would not pass
Without having a good hearty laugh.

If I
Could be half as YOU as you
Maybe I might deserve you.

It is so real
It’s almost tangible.
You can hold it
You can’t touch it.

Happiness
Does not go away
As you give it to others.

It stays
And it grows.
A garden in your heart
Spreading the seeds
To the people who love you.

Is it so easy
To be happy?
Honestly
I am unsure
How people do it.
Maybe I am just negative
Too much of a pessimist.
But seriously,
It’s like my entire life
Is viewed through sunglasses.
They aren’t rose-tinted
Either.
They are so dark
It would probably be illegal
To have that kind of tint
On the windows of a car.

Being happy
Isn’t supposed to be so hard.

I wish that my birthday didn’t
take a whole day because I
have too many things to do.
I do it to myself but there is just
too much and I feel spread so thin
like the frosting on a birthday cake.
I don’t have the time to celebrate and
what am I doing it for?
I’m not the one who brought me into
this world and now, here I am
squandering it.
I don’t know what I’m doing and
I’m wasting my time and I have
bitten off more than I can chew
and everyone expects greatness
from me.
I constantly fall apart so why does
my birthday deserve to take up
a whole day?

Love doesn’t exist.
I will never let myself believe that
Time truly heals.
I repeat my mantra:
True love is a ****** myth.
It is a falsehood that
Compassion is all you need.
The truth is
Hate is what rules the world.
I will never say
That hope emerges in our trials.
I am convinced
Life is a plane on downward trajectory.
Or
All light that once existed is snuffed out,
It is an absolute deceit that
I can chase my dreams, so they become reality.

There is a poster
On the cracked brick wall
“Have you seen her?”
A picture of me
On the flyer
Taped to the wall.

“No.”
I think
“I haven’t.”

Vengeance
Is venom.
It is in
Both the giver’s
And the receiver’s
Cups.
Revenge
Will only poison you.
Revenge
Is not sweet.
It is as bitter
As the pain
You must avenge for.

Hello?
Is anyone here?
I’m missing
Someone.
You know
Who you are.
Is this room empty?
I am too.
Like this room.

Hi, I’m back and well…it’s been a while since I’ve been on here. I won’t be as active but I will be here.

You tell me to communicate
I try but you don’t listen.

It’s hard to tell you everything
When to you I always say the wrong thing.

You always think I’m lying,
Because I have lied before.

So now I have to lie again,
I have to bend my truth to your will.

Why won’t you accept me?

I need help.
You guys tell me what to do.
My best friend cuts herself
And I can’t understand.
Make me understand.
I don’t know how to help her.
I think she needs my help.
But I don’t know how.
For all those who have cut before,
What did you wish someone did for you?
I need to do that for her.

Overhear
Do you hear
Me?
Are you hear?
I mean here.
Are you here?
Can you here me?
Hear me
Sear me
Mirror me.

He kisses her like the breath you take
After sinking underwater.

She kisses him like a forest fire—
The way the flame caresses wood and grass
Consumed in a little sunrise.

The wave crashes into the shore.

It smells like salt, blue and briny,
It feels like sand on your skin.

The gulls cry overhead, but they
Cannot compete with the
𝘴𝘩𝘩, 𝘒𝘚𝘏𝘏𝘏, 𝘴𝘩𝘩, 𝘒𝘚𝘏𝘏𝘏, 𝘴𝘩𝘩.

I just don’t know
How to live a life
Thinking that everyone
Is bad all the time.

Everyone’s wrong,
Inherently wrong,
Ever so wrong,
Then who’s good?

Me?

No, I am far
From the best person
I know.

To believe otherwise
Would be to put myself
On a very high horse
On a very high pedestal
On a very high hill
That I am 𝘯𝘰𝘵
Willing to die on.

I crave approval from everyone
Yet I promote individuals,
I want to know I am wanted
But do not want to know I am “cool”.

You keep on telling me to be honest.
I am honest.
But you don’t like my truth.
So you deny it.
You deny me.
You deny with all of your “honesty”.

Hope is when
The sun rises high
When you don’t want it to.

Hope is when
The darkness persists
But the sun may rise
At any minute now.

Every single word I say
Hurts a person’s feelings
Every single breath I take
Is controlled by inner demons.

Every single friend I have
Has never seen behind my mask
And my poor family
Has to deal with the real me.

It’s a shame I cannot be
An actual human being
For I am a horrid monster instead
With bad luck trailing where she treads.

I think it’s really 𝒇𝒖𝒏𝒏𝒚 when we ask, “how are you?”
The answer’s 𝒂𝒍𝒘𝒂𝒚𝒔 the same.
“I’m good, how are you?”, “I’m fine, how are you?”, “I’m 𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒆, I’m 𝒐𝒌𝒂𝒚!”
I think it’s funny, because sometimes it’s a 𝒍𝒊𝒆.
We have made it 𝒄𝒖𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒎 to 𝒍𝒊𝒆, to give an 𝒂𝒏𝒔𝒘𝒆𝒓 that doesn’t 𝒂𝒏𝒔𝒘𝒆𝒓 anything.
We have made it 𝒄𝒖𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒎 to 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒑 𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈, because we 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 what they’ll say.

We 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 what they’ll say.
We 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 what 𝒘𝒆’𝒍𝒍 say.

You know what we’ll say?
We won’t say 𝒂𝒏𝒚𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈.
We’ll say 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 because words are not 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒔 when they’re 𝒆𝒎𝒑𝒕𝒚.

We’ll repeat it, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵-

Can’t you see how 𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 this is?

i sit next to you
and we are silent and
i am scared but
you are more scared than
i am and when i
look at your eyes i
see a burning man
being stabbed from the
inside out and
i do not know what to say
because some things are
just not built for poems and
this is one of them.

How dare you call my best friend a thot
What a demon your father begot

Why? ‘Cause she was your ex?
Bruh, that was in SIXTH GRADE!

WHAT THE LIVING HECK?!

Hate
Is undeniably
Unjustified.
There are so many reasons
Not to hate
But we still do.
Even
If we are confronted
With solid EVIDENCE
That we should not hate
A person or a group of people,
We turn a blind eye
And we IGNORE the truth.
We always treasure the truth.
We dislike liars.
But it’s all hypocrisy
Because we lie to OURSELVES
And we lie to OTHERS.
We are liars.
We are liars,
And we project our
Inner turmoil
On people who do not deserve it.

How far
Humanity has sunk.
We lost our humanity,
We are ferocious animals.
We are animals
Tearing at each other’s flesh.

I want our humanity back.

It’s so loud
Silence is scarce
So much sound
Thinking about it makes me hoarse.

There’s only a few sounds
The buzz of humanity
Yet it is so loud
I’m bound to lose my own sanity.

Silence still stifles me
And yet I still long
For both sound to leave me be
And to hear humanity’s song.

Fly away my hummingbird
That I might hear
You chirp another day
That your colors bright I may see again.

Come back for the spring
With the blue buds blooming
After hard cold winter
Will I see you again?

Nevertheless, if you leave
And do not return
I wish you well
Stay free, my hummingbird.

I am not one
I am made by my experiences
I am not me
I am what happens to me.

Yet
I am the only one
That is
What I am.

HP decided it wouldn’t work
Which is like being thirsty
But having nothing
But mud and murk.

I need these words to survive
I need to know I am heard.
Like any organism
Needs water.

So when HP decided it would start again
I overindulged a little
And made like, 10 poems in a span of ten minutes.

Just like a dehydrated person might do
After they find water
Drinking until they feel like they’re about to explode.

I really hope I don’t throw up.

In my bones, I am a poet
And every word I trail shows it
Like a fingerprint to trace
Conjures an image of my face.

Any essays, I might write
With golden flourish, thrilling heights
With wide crescendos, rumbling frisson
Soft like silk and smooth like ribbon.

So when my teacher does request
A lab report or written test
I may bring tears to their eyes—
Still, I did not get it right.

I spill over my skin
An over-emotional mess
I am a puddle
You are a stone
I feel so much
That I overload and forget how to feel
But you are a stone
I don’t know if you’re sad
You wouldn’t tell me if you could.

I spill over my skin
So messy, so messy
I am a puddle
You are a stone.

As you 𝒄𝒓𝒂𝒔𝒉
Into me,
It ripples my entire
𝒇𝒂𝒃𝒓𝒊𝒄 𝖔𝖋 𝕓𝕖𝕚𝕟𝕘
All while you can’t
𝓕𝓮𝓮𝓵 𝓪 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰

You are what you eat
And you write what you read.

I have never read the greats
Except an occasional poem for class,
And I feel like a heretic for saying that.

I’ve never willingly
Read Shakespeare or E.E. Cummings
But instead:

I read the words of online poets
Consuming their ink—
Or should I say pixels?
I graze their crimson lining as they
Turn themselves inside out to
Let the whole internet see.

I rise with the wave that they weave with their words
And then when it crashes, when it crashes down
I go under as if drowning was velvety soft and I
Let it wash me onto the shore.

You are what you eat and
You write what you read.

Rarely do I read stilted lines and perfect form
So I write like a mess and a surge and a storm.

Give away
Give away
What I found
For myself
Today.

But hey, that’s okay
Brightened up somebody’s day
Which darkened mine
Candlelight burns low.

Nevertheless I give
And when I have nothing to give
I give myself away
Disintegrated
That’s what I am
I am
No longer.

I am not afraid of new places and things
I am not afraid of the unfamiliar
I am not afraid of change
If anything, I am afraid of staying the same.