The Spoken Word

Poetry
Words on paper
Ink on prose
Ink on a canvas
a Painting
not paint but lead
not images but Imagery
not seeing but
Feeling
Feelings
Spilled out on lines or
an empty space
filled up with
Words
wind, whistles, worthless
stories
striving
standing and expressing
every thought that flows from your mind
through your pen
and creates a
story
a story
full of love and life and loss
and Reality
Real people
Real happenings
What's happening?
to the written
word.
words
writing written for rights and
wrongs
twirl your medium on
an empty space and draw
with vocabulary and metaphors
instead of shapes and colors.
Sing your story or
yell from yearning
just
get
it
down
and out.

A Friday in April

Sunshine and new pencils,
your hair feels clean and healthy.
Blue skies and blue jeans,
your blue eyes hold worlds within them.
Fluffy clouds and a bright smile,
laughter infiltrates the warm air.
Fresh tulips and pink lip gloss,
a soft kiss placed on your rosy cheek.
These are the days we live for,
the days filled with comfort and familiarity and sweetness and color.
Seeing the world one day, one minute at a time through the two green frames of your glasses is simple and smile-inducing.
Feel the warm rays cut through the cool breeze and caress your skin to bring out the strategically placed freckles spotting the bridge of your nose and your forearms and everywhere else.
With a nude colored journal and a yellow pen,
under a big, motherly tree a sweet, sweet tune lulls you to rest.

forever is scary for a lot of reasons

I was fourteen years old, completely innocent and lost and struggling.

I was in a dark place literally; emotionally and physically. I still am sometimes.

Chronic means never going away, it means always, it means "sorry honey, there is nothing you can do about this for the rest of your life."

I am not my favorite subject to write about. My illness is not my favorite topic. But it's easy for me, all the things I dare not talk about easily flow from my pen.

I'm having a hard time writing today. I keep forgetting that this is a journal, not a final draft.

In some ways, I try to find the beauty in my defective colon and my body that hates itself.

And my in some ways, I mean that just now, I am trying very hard to find the beauty.

The beauty and uniqueness, not the tragedy or romanticization of it all. I'm looking for the practicality in it, the okayness in the words "forever" and "sick." I think the beauty and saving grace don't lie in the illness itself, but in remission. Remission and hope and normalcy, all foreign words any chronic disease sufferer longs for.

And I hate that this comfortably ends in a preposition.

To Each Her Own

Here’s to the girls with a pencil in their dyed-dark hair

With messy pieces falling, nearly blocking their vision

Sitting quiet in that too small classroom, scribbling in their golden notebooks

Desiring to catch every precious passing moment

Desiring to create a new world out of the one they already have

But nothing appealing or worthy of note is happening

Here’s to the girls with expensive socks

Nobody asks, only assumptions

Are you okay? How do you feel today?

Trying to fit in and eat less and silently screaming in the mirror, “you’re not good enough

Unless you wear Nike”

Here’s to the girls walking home in the rain

Feeling powerful and nostalgic all at once

Because for the first time in a long time

He’s gone and she’s okay

Letting the heavy drops drench their curls

The puddles reflect their mascara stained faces

But the storms don’t reflect what’s in their hearts anymore

Here’s to the girls with their noses in textbooks

Skipping out on teenage euphoria

Studying Spanish and symmetry about the origin

But they've forgotten their origins

Sacrificing social acceptance for college acceptance

Letters

Here’s to the girls with chalky hands

Pushing and pushing and pushing

Pleasing parents but perishing internally

How long until your bar routine begins to waver

because the bar is set too high;

How long until you don’t stick the landing?

Here’s to the girls onstage

Refusing to hide behind the grand drape

Creating characters in the spotlight

Memorizing so many scripted personalities that it’s hard to keep track

Claiming it’s their passion

But forgetting how to act like themselves

Around the people who know their lines better than they do

Here’s to the girls who have absolutely no idea

Their infinite worth

More than silver

More than gold

More than those Marchesa F/W 2015 heels

Here’s to the girls in the waiting room

Who know what they’re in for, but don’t know how to get out

Who have learned to call a needle a savior

And eleven pills in the morning a few friends

Who notice the carpet matches the walls

And refuse to be defeated by their own bodies

Here’s to the girls with smeared lipstick

Who constantly have that one boy on their mind

Who pretend not to care about what people think about them

But inside they’re dying to know

Here’s to the girls who can’t sleep

But can’t stay awake either

Here’s to the girls driving alone at night

Blaring their music because they don’t want to admit they’re still afraid of the dark

Here’s to the girls with messy hair and a messy mind and a messy room

Sometimes messes are beautiful

But sometimes they need to be cleaned up

From the 8th Story of Chicago

Who am i

Am I denim shirts and converse
And eyeglasses and half buns
And leather backpacks and mascara
And confidence and skepticism
And me

Am I a hospital gown and a blanket
And dirty hair and tearstained eyes
And an umade bed and my special baby
And pills and shots and pills
And me

Am I sundresses and sandals
And rosy blush and lipgloss
And blonde curls and bubblegum
And spinning and giggles
And me

Am I a tshirt and barefoot
And a fresh face and a smile
And an open yet silent mind
And braids and macaroni
And carefree and small
And me

Who am i

That’s the trick. I am everything. I am everything and anything and there are people
telling me that I can be whoever I want to be but I cant change who I really am. So
what happens when I used to be nothing but now I am everything but I realize now
that I never really was nothing I just never saw myself as I really was. As I really am.
What happens when im sitting in the car ten and a half hours away from home
listening to a sad song except im not sad. I am changing but I am me. So if everything
I come across changes a part of me, yet I still remain myself in every situation, am I
really changing? Or am I just becoming who I am meant to be? Does this even make
any sense? I promise I’m not high im just sleep deprived.

People are beautiful and complex and no one is one dimensional; it’s special to get to
see all angles of one person.

Welcome to Creative Writing

"That's not the essence of free-writing."
Structure.
Poise.
Sit up straight and end your sentence with a period
No.
The whole entity of a journal is to pull from the depths of your mind, no your heart and soul, to pull from inside you and sometimes it doesn't need to be pulled, sometimes it
just
flows
out.
And you can't stop it.
But don't try to stop it!
You already know this is what makes you feel better. Let the thoughts and feelings and precious moments be poured out from the tip of your pencil onto the blank page like words from your mouth only this is easier for you. The permanence is comforting and you can't stop it. Throw out the perfection and let your handwriting be sloppy, oh but it's too late. Your hand is cramping and you can't remember what is written in the rest of these old pages but it doesn't matter because you are here and it's okay to spill and scrawl and breathe.
Breathe.
One entry turns to three pages and you don't want to stop.
Stop the real world for a moment because people will come looking for you and when they find you crumpled up between the pages of this journal, ink-stained and grinning, they will whisper.
And not the good kind of hushed voice that lovers share, oh no. You can't stop them, but you also can't stop from retreating to these endless lines and binding.
The very essence of freewriting-- is it writing freely, or is it writing that sets you free?

Nov. 3rd

I've started over. Here I am, sitting at my desk with my hair up and his jacket around my shoulders. I've started over. I'm finally writing in this notebook again. But this time, I'm not crying and I like this pen. I'm realizing the reason I never say my subjects' names is because I'm not writing about a specific boy, I'm writing about how that person made me feel and what they did. I'm writing about Love. The concept of love, personified. So past poems or prose can be interchangeable with future instances, or vice versa. I haven't reflected in a long time, and it feels nice. Is it weird that I miss writing essays for school?

Oxytocin

Teacher turned the lights off
Rain droplets on the windows
Dark clouds turned the sun off
Calm and drowsy eyelids
Blink slowly on this November
Morning, stuck in this cold classroom
Rather be in bed, snuggled up with
Our minds turned off

They sky is crying and
My cheeks are rosy
The clouds are sighing
But we are cozy

When Suddenly, You Become the Beholder

You know,
I've never seen eyes that color
The way the light reflects
Blue fading to brown fading to gold
I could stare into them all day
Mesmerizing

You are important
Your eyes and your heart and every part of you
The way your arms hold me so tight
And your mind holds hands with mine

Your eyes are the colors of October
Those quick responses and your brand new jersey
I see you and I'm okay
With the changing leaves and their changing minds

You know,
The beauty of it all
The light and blues and browns and golds
I'm looking at your eyes
And I see you
And the best part is
You see me too

jenna & braden & riley & me

we were at this lame high school dance.

the music was cliche and we were vulnerable.

it’s these kinds of moments that are so hard to describe because there were no words, just feelings,

and love is such an intangible thing

but when you have it in your hands, you know and you hold it so gently,

like how her hands were around my back and his were around my waist and i was looking into his eyes but it was so dark and all i could hear was her laughter and his awful singing and the too loud bass.

the lights and sophomores danced around the four of us, and suddenly it was just the four of us.

at the top of our lungs, every single lyric, swaying to the rhythm, embracing our clumsiness and lack of dance classes.

all eight eyes lit up and all four hearts happy and pounding, and i don't even care to remember anything else about that night.

me and him and her and him and having a crush is like being embraced by the three best people ever, not caring about what your hair looks like or how awful your voice sounds intertwined with Ed's angelic notes.

it was like realizing that life can feel infinite and crazy and wonderful, and even though we're stuck in this high school for the next eight months, we can still find special minutes like this that might freeze the time but make it move faster too.

the slow ballad was supposed to be romantic for those young lovers, but for us, oh for us it was drastically different.

it’s not that we were making fun of the pathetic excuse for romance, no, we were creating fun out of it, we were making it our own.

and i can only attempt to describe that moment

because words suck at their job sometimes.