I’m seventeen.
I have not smoked.
I attend my classes regularly.
I still haven’t gotten my permit.
I’m unattainable, and slightly unattractive.
The smoky fumes of the cigarette surround the air;
not from my mouth, but rather my mother’s.
She looks stressed as she puffs in and out the concentrated smoke.
Her forehead frowns beneath a soft smile.
I have not lived her life.
She has not lived mine.
I feel her frustrations now
and worries.
My lips now touch the same burning cigarette.
Soon after I reached adolescence,
my father gave me a brief advisory
on the pitfalls of feminine “geography”
based on his personal experience.
Dear boy, he began, if at all possible,
keep your eyes pure and blind to all
facets of a woman’s embodiment
in particular her two most prominent,
and unless you’re blind, I mean her breasts
more so if they compare to Mt. Everest.
Any attempt to scale such breathless heights
to achieve near-unconscious delights,
you risk an avalanche of such a scale
you’ll surely die by asphyxiation,
comparable to a guppy’s suffocation
under tons of blubber of a whale.
There was a lamp post, just one,
in the middle of a field at night—
no road leading to it,
no fence surrounding it,
just light standing there
like a question no one asked,
glowing for no one.
The ache in my chest opened wide
when I saw it—
a hollow, bottomless thing,
like longing without direction,
and I fell in.
I thought:
If that’s the light, then I must be lost
in the outer darkness,
and didn’t even try
to move toward it.
Sleep claimed me for nearly a week,
dragged under by a gravity
no one else could feel.
Until one day a song
on a distant radio broke through—
The Eggplant That Ate Chicago.
It was so ludicrous
I snort-laughed—once—
and the dark cracked slightly,
just enough for air.
Then I unwound my grave shroud
and breathed.
Once, colours bloomed beneath my fingertips,
A world alive in every waxy line.
With careless joy, I painted paper ships
And skies where suns and silver moons would shine.
Each shade, a song of summers never gray,
Of laughter loud, of barefoot, grassy trails.
But now those hues have slowly slipped away,
Replaced by ticking clocks and grown-up tales.
The red of courage fades to aching rust,
And blue now weeps where wonder used to live.
What age has gained, it took with quiet trust;
A trade I made, too blind then to forgive.
Yet still I dream in crayon-coloured light,
Of days unspoiled and hearts that held me tight.
It was the first time
I heard the dove’s low call—
three minor notes
stretched thin across
a motionless prairie
on a shimmering hot afternoon,
the kind where even shadows
try not to move.
I felt like I should be
in mourning too—
but for what, I didn’t know
or had forgotten.
Black Cats and Roman candles
found no customers that day,
just heat, and a solitary girl
trying not to feel too much.
And later that same afternoon,
bruises of unknown origin
started blooming on my heart—
tender without memory,
as if the heat itself
had pressed something into me
I wasn’t ready to understand.
bursts of laughter
in the playground
where the inner child
of grandparents on a high
ignores age restrictions
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
She'll be the queen of my decrepit ridgeline,
Her crown, heavy with my wasted want.
Never knows best, a fault of design.
Her tensions a dagger, a cunning divine,
A soul-bleeder, god as a vaunt.
She'll be the queen of my decrepit ridgeline.
The arson of anger will never confine,
For the plaid that’s been woven, I a gaunt
Never knows best, a fault of design.
I check the guest list for a name I can’t find,
A ghost of a promise, a lingering taunt.
She'll be the queen of my decrepit ridgeline.
I hate sour drinks, but I chug it all in time—
A golden apple; a jaunt.
Never knows best, a fault in design.
As the season passes, with its cruel incline,
I swallow one more time; her shadows daunt.
She'll be the queen of my decrepit ridgeline,
But never knows best, a faulty design.
Notes app poetry
Easy to write at 3 AM in bed
With a bowl of Cheetos balancing on my stomach
Notes app poetry
Harder to convey
And say
Your juvenile heartbreak
In a way that lets others respect
Your words and your rhymes
Notes app poetry
Fun to write
But never fun to publish
Do you want people to mock you?
The verses you worked so hard to handcraft
Read like teenage angst
With arbitrary line breaks
Instead of a serious confession to the person who sits behind you in 2nd period
I write with a pen
Because ink is permanent
Instead of the fleeting emotions we have
During the night
Love, do I know you?
Then why can't I recollect
A single time I dared to say
I loved someone
With no trace of my family in them?
Sometimes, drowning
In the rabbithole,
I'd wonder, and then realise
I'd never admitted to myself,
That I too had my dose
Of crushes and elusive love,
The usual spice of adolescence.
I loved adolescence, it is the time we get witty and bright.
If we are lucky, and I was, it is the time we feel pretty
And come into our “own right”.
I remember thinking how much fun life was, in the days I felt cute.
People were nice to me, at this time, I had never met an
ogre, the big bad wolf, or any other brute.
Life was easy, carefree, and I had a thin young lovely waist.
I was not rushed to do anything, but still, I ran around with haste.
As if I might run out of time, and I wanted to enjoy every single second.
Adolescence is a time I look back on fondly, thinking every moon was crescent.
My tender youth
Untouched and fragile
Unfazed by the ticking of time
Challenges
Behavior and rules
Eventful and demanding
Thoughts and reflections
Milking the cows in the barn
five o'clock in the morning
before breakfast
Physical stimulation
through play and work
No phone or internet
Facebook,
instagram or
snapchat
The future
is created
of the past
Focus on dreams
set goals
We are taught not to like ourselves,
from a young age
it is a shame to know you are beautiful,
yet beauty is in everyone,
why can't we see that,
see our worth,
without seeking validation from others.
one day you will shout it from the rooftops
you are beautiful.
after years of not feeling worthy,
you will realise you are.
One day, the boy becomes a man
When it happens he hardly knows,
It seems to have been a noble plan
Some say that’s just how it goes.
For oft he’d heard, “Boy, grow up!”
Followed by this, “Act like a man!”
First, he noticed a strange hiccup
Then, he sounded like a frogman.
He outgrew all of his favorite jeans.
They said he was all legs and arms
Fast approaching his middle teens
Other signs set off anxious alarms.
He began formulating his life plan
And making decisions on his own,
He becomes certain that he’s a man
When he takes out his first car loan.
Written August 5, 2022
I am wiping every tear of my younger self in this reality
She cries near my window every night
I bring makeup wipes for her because her mascara always ran
I bring water for her because I know she's been chugging energy drinks to stay awake because of what's been happening at home
I bring our Nona's hugs because of what he was doing
I bring her boxing gloves because she's packed all of her stuff to leave home
I bring her love because her tears are the force of what moved mountains
for without her
I would have never found land on the other side of the thunderstorm
I emerged from the chrysalis
of childhood and adolescence
birthed once again
into this world a woman
beaten, battered, and sore
cold and confused
Nothing was at all what I’d been led to believe
that I’d been promised by people in the past
who would say with confidence
with wits like mine I’d go far
Colors faded from the resplendent hues I recalled
into dreary shades of dungeon gray
Surrounded by securely locked doors
Unworthy to be granted entry
Feeling like a virgin whose first lover penetrates
only far enough to break the barrier
making her bleed before withdrawing
leaving her lying there longing for more
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