Poetry

i can be good.

i won’t ask to be forgiven

for the nature of my narcissism

when i’m the one most affected by it,

living in my own body,

tolerating my own soul.

what if apologizing

i can focus.

i can hone into every texture

and let my skin absorb it all.

if i focus

i won’t despise myself in a matter of envy

i won’t cross my fingers and toes

for everyone i try to love

I'm a poet,

I'm a writer,

I'm a sister.

I'm outrageous,

I'm silly, 

I'm weird.

I'm also not special

I'm not better

or the best

But I want to be.

When I open my window in the morning,

it's the same thing every day.

There's almost never anything new.

And it's kind of boring.

And it's not boring in a good way.

*lines in italics are from Jane Eyre

Are you apprehensive of the new sphere you are about to enter?

Because I fear

For the warm skin

It always seems that 
In the unruly depths of each Alabama winter 
I long for summer 
For campfires and S'mores 
And laughing louder than the cicadas 

broke out a pen, not a pencil

i usually use pencils for english homework,

mechanical ones,

teal or purple.

but i guess it's different

with forgotten homework,

either rushed or

completed by chatgpt

I lay beside you 

Your head next to mine

Only inches apart but some how you still feel so far

Like inches are oceans between us

subjugated to solitude eternal,

only perceiving and watching love,

maybe receiving it but never understanding it

never internalizing it

it bounces off. Doesn't stick,

unkept and unruly and unclean.

I don’t want
the hair tie on my wrist 
it’s just a reminder
of how easy I was to keep.

I don’t want the flowers.
They died
doing exactly what I did:
staying too long.

We didn’t break, 
we thinned out 
into quieter sentences. 

You can walk as far as the map will go. 
You can swim all oceans, seas, and lakes. 
You can drive every winding road, 
Bike each cracked and uneven sidewalk.