Poetry

Swirling fields of yellow

The paint sticks out from the canvas

An ailing impressionist’s mark

Crows flying out of the field

Into the darkened twilight sky

Heralding the end of us

Tormenting us, yet saving us

From the calamities to come

Three paths extending out

Are they false,

Taunting us with the thought of incompletion?

Or had he finally taken one

And will I do so someday?

Is it despair that crossed his mind

As he bled his remaining life 

onto the canvas with his brush?

Or was it his crow song?

A knowing grand finale 

to an unrecognized legacy

This painting has brought a thought

Which feels so far in time

Right up to my eyes

Confronting me with fate

But the awe its beauty makes

Holds some anguish at bay

Although a vision of somberness,

It was completed

No error, no mark of abruptness

A work of beauty and preparedness

Of acceptance.

I hope we have been consoled.

I remember the day that I told you piping plovers
Pecked at that pile of shells that smelled
Of dead ocean and the tears of creatures already succumbed to the salt of the sea.
You cried

At dusk, when the skies were violet and volatile. Sour

Tears of vinegar

Fell down your cheeks Now just a name keeps

You quiet in the upset of the night

It was broken by words and wet lightening
Close enough to taste the electrified ocean

Motions of thunder ran through our fingers
As the sea wept for itself.

To share in the grief of the sea is to drown

The life of a teenage girl knows the delirium and misery of the earth’s breaths in its finest form of wedded poetry.

Ⅰ. Stray Piano Keys left Afloat

Woven along every ventricle of their swiftly beating hearts are the eloquently placed words of their many lovers. 

An homage to the purgatory that shadows the daze of the skies rosy pink cheeks, bashfully burning to the words of our eyes. 

For the eyes speak of a language ancient to the heart. 

Its scriptures remain hidden behind pink fluffs of the clouds that serenade the dreams of us teenage girls. 

Along the distant horizon, shades of blue waltz in, 

making love to the sky, 

birthing the foam of the sea, 

soothingly crashing along the shore. 

And from the foam is where girls are born, 

from the very sea that’d eventually drown them with no remorse. 

It would catch us in ambush, 

an attack to our perfectly poised and practiced character, setting fire to the admirably curated scripts we’ve worked our entire life drafting. 

Set ablaze, us girls simmer among the flakes of fire engulfing us in our shame. 

And it is not long before we wilt within life’s garden, 

dusted with the ashes of our sisters as we wait to meet the same fate. 

Motionless we wait amongst our graves, naked to the world, vulnerable to your judgment in its harshest form. 

For our skin, 

is the world’s canvas, 

bare to bear the truth 

and your tongue, 

the brush, 

smears our innocence with every word. 

And it is here where poetry dies. 

Left to the whispers of the wind, the beauty of the teenage girl’s poem becomes one of the relics, forever forgotten. 

How could you forget me?