I Am Someone Who

I am someone who is waiting on a dock in the middle of the night. There is a gross, green electric light shining on me. There is something out in the waves. 

I am someone you pass in the hallways daily on the way to one of your classes. It is so late in the day that you can only think about getting home and sleeping. I am neither ugly nor pretty enough to grab your attention. 

I am someone who takes a nap after school. I have homework. It wouldn’t take me long, but I don’t do it. Instead, I take a nap after school. Pages are hanging on my bedroom wall, right above my headboard. They are pages from a book I haven’t finished. I didn’t forget about it, I just didn’t finish it. I keep the pages up as a reminder.

I am someone who keeps pages of an unfinished book on my wall as a reminder. I got a few chapters in. My character had some wooden conversations and wandered around the story a while. My character was me. I am someone who has wooden conversations and wanders around. I stopped writing because my character had nothing to do. He had no attachments. I didn’t know anything about him.

I am someone who is leaving town next week. I will abandon it in my mind. I will not forget it, but I will abandon it. It will not be my town anymore. I am someone who has to stay moving.

I am not someone who cries. I am someone who wants to very badly sometimes. I am someone who sits and waits for the tears to come and never feels them. I am someone who doesn’t have the strength to get up and move.

I am someone who is sitting on a dock in the middle of the night. If I hold still long enough, the motion sensor in the light turns off, and I am left in darkness. Unmoving, unblinking, I look forward at the waves. 

They are beckoning me, taunting me, waiting for me; dancing around the line of time that weakly binds me to myself.  The line is not something that flows on its own. It needs me to pull it, but I'm not strong enough

Right now, I am someone whose present moment is out in the waves before him.

wph

VT

16 years old

More by wph

  • Poetry

    By wph

    Misfit Kid Summer

    I look at the empty kiddie pool in my backyard

    In the Midwest summer

    My friends used to come to my house

    So they could all get in it,

    But they don’t like to swim much anymore