There's a kind of love

And it's like hide and seek

An endless chase

Of shadows with flowing hair

Whispers of names and delighted laughter

Out of sight, whistling around you

Darted between trees and weaving through the meadows

Chasing, chasing, chasing, obliviously

Running, jumping, flying 

A sort of calculated play

Dancing and flirting and tempting

Hurling each tension into the wind

A mirage

You fill in the cracks until you're convinced you can feel his presence

Until you believe that you know his next move; because you know him

So it's another lap around

But each time it feels heavier and easier all at once

And surely enough, one day,

Your arm extends, and reaches out to grab onto this person, this idea

And you've finally won

But the prize isn't what you were looking for

In the end it's just someone you've made in your head

Who has the image of the boy that sits beside you in math class

You know nothing real about him

The only way to truly get him is to end the game of hide and seek

Red

White

And Blue

The colors of America

We parade down the streets

Covered in these colors

I wonder what our parade will look like

This year

Will we parade with joy

Celebrate tragedies

Celebrate the inhumanity

Red

Red for the blood that spilled

On the streets

Where children played

And people protest against

The cruelty of our president

Of our government

White

White is for the color of what he wants to be America

It is the color that he longs to see

Anyone else

Even those who have lived in America

For their whole lives

Even those who are American

He discards them

As if he is more important

As if they aren't actual people

As if this isn't the "Land Of The Free"

As if our ancestors didn't immigrate

To America

Blue

Blue for the tears shed

One by one they drip

Leaving trails down the cheeks

Of Americans

Red

White

And blue

The colors of America

I need pretty things; 

I need the Lumineers singing 

about flowers on vinyl, and 

I need stained glass bubbles twinkling 

in the window, and 

to see my poetry scrawled in 

my messy yet fairytale-like cursive; 

I need delicate words and 

watercolors on thick paper, and 

roses red and beautiful; 

There are so many problems 

with our nation, our 

world, and 

so many people lie wounded in their 

hearts and their bodies in 

the streets we have left them in, and 

there are eyes that shimmer with nothing 

but the all-consuming loss of hope, and 

at some point the universe is destined 

for destruction, with 

humanity crying out for forgiveness that 

we'll be gone before we ever 

receive, and 

yet 

I need pretty things; 

Perhaps that is what 

we all need: to 

listen for beauty in 

every heartbeat of life, because 

it lives within our 

every moment, and 

we just need to listen. 

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?