15th Birthday (a reckoning of self)

7.

and if i knew the way my life would pan out would i be more or less terrified

of the breath i take the step i take

and if i knew the answers to my questions would it stop the racing beat, the tiptoe of my heart

the trip, the drip of fear that feels like something caught in the back of my head, the base of my neck

the pit of my stomach laced in the tears i can’t cry is that right?

cause the tears line my stomach not my eyes, they can’t cry

and my stomach rises and falls with my breath

badum badum

like the beat of my aching heart

i didn’t used to feel this way

like every moment was a moment lost

i can’t stop feeling the breath i breathe out instead of the one i take in

the time isn’t yet here for me to feel like i am racing with time

i have always been the brightest but that has always been amongst lights not yet fully turned on

what if all this has been wasting, not amongst the greatest will i fall behind to the place of only better than most

i look forward to life, the way a week from now i will blow out fifteen candles, the way the windows in my college dorm will cast sunlight at 12:51 pm, the way my lips will form names i have yet to know, the way the rain will smell on my 45th birthday, the colors of the sea after the salt has stung my eyes when i am 75

and yet (and death)

the taste of it burns my tongue like acid from an unripe orange

sharp like the glass i stepped on one night when i was 5

i feel it in the back of my mind, soft and suffocating my ears with only the fears

and what of how my body feels, the way my stomach folds as i bend my back forward to type

6.

5478 days until i am 6 days from 30, and isn’t that the break into old?

i am young based on the softness of the skin on my cheek

and yet and yet and yet (my eyes are stained blue, it has dripped now under them)

i woke up at 6:17 a.m. according to my alexa in my room

for once i didn’t wake up at 2 a.m. 

i have been thriving (i flower but don’t fight for the light)

how can i be loved if i don’t sacrifice for that love?

(can i yet bloom if i don’t cut the ivy?)

the air is humid in the school like water dancing on my skin

and circumlocution is the word of the day 

meaning to use many words when just a few suffice 

isn’t that my life, overtalking, over doing, writing too much

is this too much?

5.

and some days i wish i read the news

just so i could carry conversations like an adult in coffee shop

“Did you hear what happened in Texas?”

instead of comments about the weather as my tether to social interaction

isn’t it strange how even though i amerged from COVID unscathed and with my family intact

i can still feel the loss in place behind my ear (can i keep blaming it on the sickness?)

today i will run in a gym

my legs turning red as i chase back and forth on a basketball court

i will feel the weight of my lungs, my heart, my right arm, and my left foot

my hair is braided by my own two hands (my arms are still sore)

if my breath was steady would i believe in my lungs?

4.

i can trace back the scars in my mind to the place where i was told who i was was too much for them (is this why i have so much armor?)

how come the birds sang so early this morning?

i find myself to be a therapist but i have no answers to my problems (what help is a destination with no directions?)

and if this is the path i weave and will leave, is a trail of words more stable than one of breadcrumbs (will my story be lost?)

i have too many questions like a tourist in a foreign country but this is my home, my mind should be familiar like the path i tread to school

Instead i find myself in a constant question of what is my thoughts and what has been placed and persuaded instead (this is what manipulation looks like)

is my skin yet the color of joy?

can i yet breathe, can i yet speak and not worry for the reckoning that follows my words?

and as these letters mark a path of black down this page like a song that sings more thoughts than i can speak

i find my heart to be a place more silenced than i realized

if i were to unmute it would my world come crashing down (how would i handle the vulnerability of my age?)

3.

glass is supposed to reflect us

a rebound of self

a vision of our own pupils meeting each other

and yet it is the disruption and separation of self for most of us not the meeting of our echo in melted sand to that of our soft flesh in perfect union

if i stare long enough in the reflection will i see more wrong or more right?

let the light dance on my skin like it does on the glass of the buildings around me, reflecting my soul not the meandering of my hips

and can the acerbity of the letters i type give hint to that of my cheekbones

(if enough people tell me my eyes have light and grace will i believe they say that for more reasons than magnanimity?)

will the colors of the city at night fuse with me in the way that they fit into my heart?

can i quell the fear in and of my incarnate

can i silence the cacophony of reverie in my mind

like the muting of a single microphone in a room full of speakers, i can only quiet one of the masses

is this all of my sanity or only that which i can unguard

with further exposition will someone tear the curtains down and reveal the madness?

with further exposition will someone take a match to that which i have built inside me?

2.

If i lean over someone’s shoulder will they smell skin or vanilla?

there is a candance to the steps i take and the pace i run at

how can my breathing not waver in these moments when colors flash in my eyeline

can i be a good person while i want for nothing?

i tread these city streets and worry about the cold on my neck as i walk from store to store

while those sitting on the ground don’t worry about what food will grace their lips but whether any will

i fear these places where people don’t care because who could care when life is so filled with dread?

and can i call myself an activist when i make no action?

and two days until the clock strikes 10:23 on 4.23

when i will be old enough sit behind the wheel of a god damned car but yet here i am locked in a box others made in my mind

like i can keep blaming the ache in my throat on others and not my own curtained heart (this is the mark my armor leaves)

perhaps i am ahead and simply feel as if i am being lapped by those behind

or maybe i am stunted in this connection

1.

my skin is split like the cracks in the sidewalks

but isn’t breaking open the same as beginning

susceptible to pain and yet so much to gain through this hail that we will heal from

can this ending become my newest beginning as i walk this path home for the last time at 14

why must we say ending when at all moments something new is beginning?

and in this unfolding that is this poem

the unveiling of the colors of my lungs

because this is what i breathe, these little words catching in my chest

stuck until i allow them too to breathe

and by now one may have realized that these are not in the sequence of days they were meant to be contained and yet i find myself seeing my life in a more objective path like a photo that has at last been focused

can i now find the token of this ending?