Reid@YWP

[Alone in] Laughter, lamenting the lost light,

you don’t want to be the forgotten, the lost cause, the missed flight. 

Reason runs thin when your sadness is bountiful,

When I think about tomorrow, 

I see the calculus test I have not studied for 

and the five overdue assignments with long-received 

I hang candy necklaces from the tips of my fingers

All the way to your reaching palms.

We smile like we're kids again. Maybe we always were,

But who realizes that anymore?

I don’t know if we’ll ever be whole. Not that we ever were in the past. It has struck me, though, recently, that, while we, or at least I, frequently discuss, and, indeed, logically understand that our rights are not our own an

I am eleven years old. I think freedom isn't what they say it is. 

I live in the land of the free. I am free 

in most ways. 

I can be a black belt. 

I can be a published poet.