“The poem is due Friday, this week.” The teacher announced on Tuesday.
“The topic of this poem is your relationship with anything.”
I, master procrastinator, scoffed and smugly thought,
“Hey, I still have four more days!”
Well, on Thursday, my Google™ doc still stared blankly at me.
“Shit,” I thought, “What do I write about?”
Should I write about the fig bars I constantly eat in class?
‘The sweet smell of the fig
The processed sugar
The soft whole wheat cover
It brought a tear to her eye as she gleefully devoured’
I carefully scrutinized the sample poem, the imagery was not vivid enough.
I frustratedly clenched my fists. The tears and glee didn’t go together
So I scrapped the draft, disappointed but already lured by new ideas
Grades? School? A serious poem?
Should I write about the severe lack of snow days this year?
‘A young girl
Sadly stared at the her computer
The 85{8f8d4e344c8a972b8e97d55fa7ec8be4d5f796681e06b247e4219849f812f758} chance on snow day calculator
Just went down to 50{8f8d4e344c8a972b8e97d55fa7ec8be4d5f796681e06b247e4219849f812f758}’
I carefully scrutinized the sample poem, not thrilled by the wording.
So I scrapped the idea, negativity starting to drip into my mind, panic lurking in the background
That was when I struck gold
Meta gold
“I’ve made up my mind!” I declared to my friend in the whimsical green dress writing her own
poem.
“I’ll write about my relationship with the process of writing a relationship poem.”
And so I wrote,
‘“The poem is due Friday, this week.” The teacher announced on Tuesday.’
Round, protruding eyes
Peering out at the world
Where she will never be
Able to brush her delicate fin upon.
Dragging her heavy, dress-like tail
To all the invisible barriers
That restricts her within her cell.
Her mouth opening and closing,
Uncertain of what to ask,
Maybe just curiosity and a million unanswered questions.
Light, darkness
Repeat
Waiting…
For food, water,
Or perhaps,
A purpose.
Alive, yet not living
Waiting…
In a storm of sounds and siblings,
Underneath a silver moon,
She crawled over glistening grains
Towards the broth that would swallow her.
In a whirlwind symphony of color, she thrived.
Blades stroking in cycles towards home,
Where to hundreds of souls, she would give life;
Their mother forever unknown.
In her old age and wisdom,
She was draped by wrinkles and items obscure.
An abode that was no longer hers,
Yet still on her shoulders she bore its weight.
And at her final resting place,
She lay strewn at last;
To where she had crawled for eternity –
A landscape littered with trash.
Long and thin
Sharp on one end
But soft and forgiving on the other
Dull
Until sharpened like a blade
Always
Moving, scratching
Along a blank surface.
Filling the page with dark marks
That fade over time
Never permanent
But always powerful
The turtle crawls back
Into it’s hard shell,
Fish pass like bullets,
Day turns into night,
Night turns back to day,
Children’s feet sound like
thunder… on the floor,
Turtle knows some but not much
Of what’s happening above,
Back rigid like a mountain,
Head wrinkly like an old witch,
Teeth hang like a vampire,
Simply just misunderstood.