Poetry

"This is America"

you told me 

when I was too young to understand

what you even meant

"This is America"

the land of the free

I always come back to

the synchrony I find in the wild 

The insignificance I feel

when the rain pours down

Giving breath to growth

The birds are all singing, differently

from one another

I learned to cry without my eyes turning red

Letting tears run down my face

Silence can be agony

I cover up my tears with a smile pasted on for all to see

But no one sees me

I put on a mask

My tears turn into snowflakes 

Cold and so complex

Freezing my skin black

For the sin of feeling sad

The cold is punishment

a few days ago

i ran home from the bus stop

soaked through and shivering

under a thunderous sky

my thoughts dissolving into rain

lightning pulsing in the air

threading through the coarse strands

Dear Younger Me,

I don’t have some wise advice

Although I suppose I’m supposed to

I don’t

There isn’t a grand password

What are leaders?
They are the ones who bring change.

What are leaders?

They are the ones who stand up for their beliefs.

What are leaders?

They are the ones who cause movements, make people think.

There's a dog that sits at the end of my street, 
He snarls his teeth when we walk, 
He barks with his eyes wide open,
With his eyes full of rage and love. 

new beginnings abolish limits;

the sullen clouds draw back from the sky,

liberate your ambitions that rise like cotton candy balloons

to bob among the earnestly returning birds

I have a pen

By my bed

Stuck up with

A pad of empty sticky notes

And behind

A drawing my mother gave me

Are sticky notes 

Upon sticky notes

Full of words

And ideas

Is the first to go.
Bedtimes grow later and later
And then we show up at different times.
We are given to-go boxes even though we don't really want to go
But we do anyway, smiling our superficial smiles.

I am just a girl

Who sees the weight of the world

& wonders if there is something she can add

To make the dazzle of the sun’s reflection a little brighter.