Poetry

I sit down with a bowl of soup,

take my spoon, and begin to scoop.

My mind spins as I go through the motion

for it knows no rest.

I hear no commotion

as I slurp and digest.

My heart is being overtaken on the wrong lane-

I stand like a deer in the acid-yellow headlights, wondering if I'll die on this

Street of run-over roadkill. I can't stop for wishing that-

In the shadows, rights once won,
Begin to fade like setting sun.
The banners raised, the voices loud,
Now muffled by a growing cloud.

In a world of screens that never fade, 
A voice is found, yet sometimes swayed. 
In every swipe, a new facade, 
A life lived fast, but still feels odd. 

I knew it was bad
when you didn’t even have to say it,
when I saw it in your eyes,
when I knew it in the way you folded your arms
and turned away when I spoke.

Democracy isn’t a mother 
who shields you from the storm;  
it’s the ghost of a father 
who leaves when the lights flicker,  
and promises turn to dust 
in his palms. 

When I was younger 

Not yet a teenager 

I was

Unprepared and fragile

I had no armor

No ammunition

And yet I was put into

A battle

Me against

Every single person 

Two doors, both locked, neither mine.
Two names, one I gave up.
Two voices, both demanding I choose.
A home is a shelter. A home is a question.

There’s this song,

Slipping Through My Fingers.

By ABBA. From Mamma Mia!

That's how I see it.

Our rights.

“I try to capture every minute.”

There's a wasteland in my throat,

a desert of ice and snow

frozen over and stealing the sound,

cushioning it in its soft blows

of white cotton clouds.

Shut down the vocality of my vice

imagine this:
us, walking barefoot through the wreckage of melted roads
the sun carving epitaphs into a sky too scorched for rain.

They say the world was once wider, 
measured in scraped knees and firefly nights, 
in the space between streetlights, 
where time was counted in the hush before dinner.