last year,

I did a school debate 

of why 

trans athletes should be able to play in sports

I lost

and I cried

because my teacher

let us pick topics

no person that age should have fought over

it was too overwhelming

that overall

the idea and the 

subject

lost.

I am nonbinary

genderfluid

flags and pronoun pins

swirl for me

too confusing

in waves of rainbow and black and white

no one passed to me at lacrosse,

no one patted me on the back at field hockey

and they still

judge me

for being a human being.

I write longhand.

Journal, pencil, print.

Letters melding together in a harmony on the page.

Graphite scratching the paper, pencil sharpening every 5 minutes.

Lined paper, perfect for doodles and random thoughts.

Neat and pretty.

No flowery handwriting, just the necessities.

Thoughts flowing onto the page like water.

Brain humming faster than the pencil can write.

Mistakes fixed later.

Spelling near perfect.

The sound of pencils on paper filling the room.

Clickety clack of keyboards around me.

But I'm perfectly happy with my hands on my pencil and my pencil on the page.

The red bike,

It just sits,

No one ever touches it,

No one ever claimed the bike,

After years in the park,

It lost some of its shine after tons of storms,

The rust comes and covers the beautiful paint,

The weeds begin to wrap around the wheels,

The bike doesn't look as beautiful as it used to,

But now it's a part of people's memories,

Just yesterday an little kid climbed up and pretended it was his own bike,

That's why it was placed there,

 I placed it there, 

All those years,

And after all those memories,

My wish finally came true.

i write poetry on lined paper

in class & only half pay attention, rounded letters

barely containing all i want to say. i use green marker

& stare dreamily into the yellowed margins,

romanticizing, as poets do, the weight of my handwritten words.

i write poetry in a black notebook

sometimes, eking out the line breaks with a nearly dead

V7 blue roller ball pen. it comes slower then, & in starts,

and i can only assume the poems want me to think

in between inspirational bursts.

i write poetry on the notes app on my phone

about the moments i see that don't need

paper or pen, only a line sprung from poetic depths

& recorded in that almost formal sans serif font.

i write poetry

in the create section of YWP, and lose it, often,

when the words spill & tumble out of me & i forget

in my haste to copy it down

somewhere else. probably there are dozens of poems

lost to the abyss, but what is a poet

if not their forgotten lines? their unvoiced stanzas?

what is a poet if not one to write?

We read poems on printed white sheets in english

Cover them with highlights

And words like freedom

Are covered in pink.

And a hundred years ago

People wrote for freedom

That they could taste on the tips of their tongues,

And then they grew up,

And soon they were able to swallow it

And feed it to their children.

I know from venn diagrams

Of walt whitman and langston hughes

That history moves forward,

Some begin singing

And everyone else will fight to get a voice

A place

In the chorus

And someday they will have it.

It’s not supposed to go like this,

We’re already singing,

You can’t take us away.

We’re singing this song

And it’s messy and no one knows the rhythm, 

Like prayers at hanukkah

But you’re not supposed to take us away

Now that we’re here.

The song’s supposed to get louder,

Prouder.

Instead we’re trying to sing as we read headlines in notifications

On our friend’s phone

Who subscribes to the new york times

ICE granted more powers

Minnesotan murdered in the streets.

And we have to remember

The america we’re singing for,

The americans we’re singing for.

love cannot be created or destroyed.

like energy 

it shape shifts

following those filled with passion

and hope

but appearing to leave 

at the slightest touch of pain

guilt

and heartbreak 

this love

first occupies the body of a young girl

when she feels the warmth of the summer sun on her skin

at the beach on the first day of vacation

her eyes light up at the sparkling turquoise water 

of home

it strengthens as she begins to trust 

and care 

for family and friends 

and begins to take new forms

as a glimmer of romance appears in her heart

showing her that love can feel like euphoria 

it fades in and out

flickering like candlelight 

as a boy turns 

from crush

to boyfriend

to someone she used to know

when she's alone, it dims

but never dies

like a silent secret

a beacon of chance

for a dream

that feels like heaven to touch 

tastes like candy on her tongue 

and looks like pure magic 

and some days

it feels as if love has left her completely 

to rot with pity and regret

but love knows when to stay

love doesn't leave someone 

who was born

to love. 

Taking down for now. Revision in progress!!

Click

Click

Click

I push at the eraser

of my mechanical pencil.

Watching the lead peek out to say

“Hello!”

This one today

happens to be yellow.

I turn the pencil around in my hand.

Erase.

Turn it again.

And put it to paper.

Grinding up a stick of lead 

into a grey smear across the page.

The pencil is my voice.

A voice that can say more than words.

It says doodles.

It says little patterns I draw 

in the corners of my books.

More than my still hands.

Less than real doodles.

Stripes, dots, and swirls.

It says the faces I like to draw.

Made accurate 

by the real ones in front of me in class that day. 

Sometimes sad.

Sometimes neutral.

Sometimes joyful.

Always a reflection of my own mood.

It says:

English journal entries,

math problems,

Latin declensions,

Spanish compositions,

and all these things wouldn’t be the same in pen or marker or wooden pencil.

They wouldn’t be mine.

Pens are for grown adults

who don’t make mistakes when they write 

and thus don’t require an eraser.

Erasable pens are for people who think they are 

adults who don’t make mistakes when they write

and thus don’t require an eraser.

Markers are for kids.

Bad for detail.

Colorful and attention seeking.

Wooden pencils are for school kids.

Sometimes very

sharp.

Other times very 

dull.

Replaced often because no one has the energy to keep track of them.

But a mechanical pencil is for me. 

Always sharp.

Or at least most of the time.

Replaceable erasers.

As many as I need.

Colorful, or gray and serious.

And perfect

for standardized tests.

It says everything inside my head and makes it real.

A thought only means something to me.

A spoken word only means something to those who were there to hear it.

But something written down

is forever, if you take care of it.

Who knows?

Maybe my notebook will fossilize 

and humans 

thousands of years in the future 

will read my journal and know all sorts of things I was thinking that day. 

And while that chance is very small

I can guarantee that the thoughts in my head,

on my computer,

spoken aloud,

will certainly not fossilize.

My mechanical pencils 

dump

out

my

brain. 

Make it something that can be picked apart.

Studied.

Examined.

Appreciated.

Like art.

My mind is a work of art.

I am the artist

and mechanical pencils

Click

Click

Click

are my medium of choice.