Poetry & Prose
Below is a small collection of the poems that I've written over the years. Most of them are untitled, as is largely typical for my poems. The subjects of the poems are varied, with the topics spanning identity, mental struggle, and general esoteric commentary.
The poems below can be moved at your discretion. If you click on the poems themselves, there are typed versions available for you to read. The prose is further down on the page, and is presented alongside the typed versions.
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Journal 6
I need to write. I need to write and write and write and never stop. I need to speak my thoughts in my own words and not through a song sung by another voice, or a poem carved by a stranger's hand. These words---these very ones from my mouth, at this moment, in this time, on this page---will be remembered. Long after my lips no longer yearn to spin stories of women I will never become. After all my metaphorical mental ink has run dry filling up pages with my brief history. And so I will keep speaking. Because nothing, not even death, will keep me from speaking my mind. And my dying breath will fill your lungs each time you find me as you read aloud to yourself.
Journal 6
What's always confused me most about love is how easy it is to give away but how rare to find truthfully in the wild. I love in the same way that I breathe---habitually, honestly, and wholly. When I was born I received my official family jacket; forged of heavy jean, soaked to the bone, and bearing a bright, red, grotesque and bloody heart on the right sleeve. While completely metaphorical, I've found the sentiment to hold quite true. The contents of my heart have always been more readily accessible to the people closest to me; namely my family.
Journal 8
I want to get to a point where I can get lost in a book again. A point where I can glance at the flowers paving the sidewalk and bask in the process it took for them to be planted and grow just in time to meet my eyes.
Journal 8
Something changed recently. I've gone from looking forward to going back to sleep once I wake up to looking forward to doing things throughout the day. I can feel my medication settling into my system—making a home. There was a time where I wasn't sure I would ever feel okay again. Days felt long, and the motivation to even get out of bed had escaped me. The weight of my existence bore heavy on my chest; I sank further into the mattress each minute I lay awake. But today I woke up at 7, then I stayed awake once the clocked showed 9.
Journal 8
I turn 21 in 4 days. That's absolutely inconceivable. I've been writing in these journals for 11 years now. Where did all the time go? When did I grow up? When did I stop worrying about things like what to pack for lunch or making time to practice trumpet before sectionals. If I could go back for just one day I would in a heartbeat. No one told me to savor the moments while they lasted. I spent my childhood trying to escape, waiting for the day where I would be free to be happy, only to find out that happiness is made every day, consciously.
Journal 8
Mania is the White Rabbit, running, trying to catch time yet somehow the more you run the farther you are from the finish line. It's hearing the neurons firing off in your brain like a heavily armed militia. It's feeling the universe stop and start and stop again. You feel it in your toes and your eyes—wider than they've ever been. You taste it on your tongue, smell it in the air. The body is much too under-evolved to handle the experience my mind was having. I understood the fourth dimension.
Journal 8
I want to see the world and have unforgettable experiences. I don't want to have a "favorite" anything. I want to try new things so often that having a favorite would be impossible. I never want to be a regular. Discomfort should be my homeostasis. Sylvia Plath was onto something when she wrote about the fig tree. I, too, can feel my future extending beyond myself in an infinite number of directions. I could stay in school, I could be a copywriter, marketing professional, writer, data analyst, traveler, research assistant, professor, and the list goes on and on.