Small Voices

 Small voices,

even smaller secrets 

hidden in constellations.

Short stories,

of an unknown past,

one that’ll lead us 

to a future

none of us

has yet matured enough

to be able to claim.

Sacred poetic poems

all captured in the eyes 

of the starry night skies

bestowed upon one special person.

Last night’s whispered words

left me saying prayers 

like a child making wishes

blown into the wind &

on the backs of dandelion seeds.

Sometimes,

nothing feels real

a daydream 

you take part in,

while the truth is

others testify that life’s a test,

make one wrong move & 

there’ll be no recovery from it.

Take things in strides, but 

don’t forget to read the fine print.

Make a mistake, but

remember to learn from them all.

Small voices speak wisdom 

into the air, you breathe,

don’t regard it for the air full of pollution,

with the gibberish, 

your peers advertise to you as knowledge.

Remember it’s a life we all take part in.

Small Voices of Elegance

I guess you can say 

I want to be like her,

my mother,

fill in all the gaps in my life 

she wanted me to fill,

put my foot down & 

try as hard as she always 

wanted me to.

I guess you can say

I’m the result of all her prayers,

the dreams 

she always had, but

never got the chance to see it happen.

My mother, 

the author of

every poetic piece of wisdom I have & grew up

repeating like mantras,

all short stories mirroring 

the light of mother’s poetic poems

lives on while I stand in the mirror 

reciting them like chants,

cheering on my favorite team.

I guess you could say

that I was always the team 

my mother cheered for &

that I was her favorite,

so therefore

by cheering myself on 

using her own words of wisdom

I’m still able to root for the home team.

I’d like to think

that someday

I could be more like her,

someone who showed pure elegance,

intelligent beyond her years,

an ability to forgive and forget

while not forgetting where she came from &

being proud of it,

all of which are qualities I lack.

Small voices whispering

secret constellations,

her sacred jewels shining brightly

to remind me she’s never too far away

always & forever in the night skies.

captured in the eyes 

of the moon’s daughter

mental polaroids 

forever cherished in the keepsake 

my mother had always held dearest,

left here saying prayers 

like princesses making wishes on the evening star or

when I was a child frolicking in a field of dandelions

whispering all my wishes that were too heavy

for the stars in the sky 

with even the strongest glow

blowing them into the wind

hoping their seedling angels would

hear & grant them.

I guess you can say

because of her

my mother

I’m able to see the world

as it could be,

a daydream 

that she took part in that & 

I am taking part in,

that you can take part in.

 

A Forgotten Queen, That Wears no Crown

She has the devil inside of her,

her anger would be

a taunting red fire

leaving no room for any other emotions

to extinguish the flames,

leaving the anger to consume her internally.

She holds herself like a queen,

a forgotten queen,

but she wears no crown,

the respect she craves

with no real reason why she needs it

if she feels better off alone,

looking at the world

from the bottom of a spyglass,

all held in the palms of her hand.

The she, we see

gets us running for the hills,

the fright of the type of fear

she bestows upon you almost 

like a random gift she won’t later 

try to steal back.

Pleasant from a distance,

do not mess with her in her natural habitat

in the back of the classroom,

far in the right corner

with her face deep 

in what’s not a notebook, but

a cell phone suffering a notification drought.

She’s a predator,

who wishes to be apart

of a pack.

The forgotten queen, but wears no crown

To The First Man Who Called Me A Queen and Meant It

 I assume you never knew how powerful words can be to a once lonely girl. A once lonely girl whose only friends at times were her thoughts and the words that those words invoke.

I guess you really knew what it meant to me afterward when I brought my general reaction up in the conversation days later, when I told you in that split second the red sea of my life parted and all I could see was the final destination of a home was right there in front of me. All I had yet to do was build a bridge so I could cross before I could finally get there.

I could only assume your reaction from behind your mask, from behind the screen.

I could only assume what the story you pasted together in your mind of me and why I could have gotten as excited as I did. My message to you would only you probably didn’t even scratch the surface,  or have even dug deep enough to reach the casket that I’ve buried myself years ago that is now the final resting place of who I once was.

The girl who has seemed to have been drafted in a war that she wouldn’t just be the battlegrounds for, but both of the rival armies. 

A girl who when she looked in the mirror all she saw was the hurricane that still hasn’t hit yet and the war that was, and the war that has yet to have been decided to take place.

The girl that knows for a fact that when she is looked at she is being looked upon with the eyes of a sheep, but that was before you.

Cause now this same girl sees you and sees the little slice of heaven, the little cut of the “American Dream” everyone keeps bragging about, that health pack that everyone keeps saying is right there if you just look for it.

To the person who called me a Queen for the first time and meant it, before you could have to swear that the health packs tt I’ve found are all just disguised grenades ready to blow up in my face. Before you, I thought the best way to survive without giving up first was to go along the path solo, to define myself in front of a jury without a lawyer.

If only you knew how much you have changed this changed that woman she became and how much you hanged the woman that the two have yet to become.

“Why Are You Acting Like You Don’t Wanna Make Eye Contact With Me?"

 Because you know me. You knew me all too well, every bit of me and I think that still kinda scares me about you. How I could ever be as vulnerable with someone as I was with you and for them to just leave me. Yet you took all of my fears and exploited that knowledge, discovered all of my weaknesses, and then turned around making more to add courtesy of your ego and my willingness to give you the whole self, I didn’t even know I had in my possession.

Because you knew me and it didn’t seem to have taken long enough to know all the right words to say to me that wouldn’t set off any red flags and yet when you did, you always had something up your sleeves that made convincing me to ignore them and to go against my better judgment easy.  

Because you had ways to turn those red flags into roses before my very eyes, later offering them to me as id supplements to yet another apology, to make up for sending me to yet another automated voicemail box “Where the ‘user’ you are trying to contact can not come to the phone at the moment, please leave a message after the tone,” as I always do, but you never listen to them even if I call back to back...What’s the point? You told me to use my resources and even listed yourself as one of them...Where are you now?

It’s because you knew me,

You knew the ghosts of the past that still followed me.

It’s because you swallowed them whole, leaving me with no more than the memory of them, no more than what you left me with the memory of who I was before you.

It’s because when you devoured them, you left me with nothing more than your words in their place and 

It’s because of your words are still what keeps me up at 3:47 in the morning, wishing that the part of me that still exists, the one who wants you to be in bed beside me, to give me something more positive than my two cats to wake up to, would die off and get cremated.

So if I saw you again and I don't look in the same eyes I used to get lost in to escape my reality, but now not looking in them would help to escape that reality you’ve seemed to become.

It’s because I know you and I guess I know your eyes not only knew me too, but also saw depths into me I wasn’t willing to let others see.

It’s because looking into your eyes, now, could somehow conjure up who I used to be, then, and she wouldn’t have a body to come back to. She’d already had a funeral for and has been buried.

It’s because of you. she’ll have to retreat back into the shadows, right where you first found me, but somehow,

you still knew me.