Short poems aimed to describe the feeling of losing someone without really losing them, but yourself. And how painful it can be to discover that even to your own self, your past version will never come back. All that's left is the current version, l...
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Yellow stains the edge of every thought Like pages in a book aged by time Like beauty papers, I never asked to hold And maybe I am Karen Dancing too fast to stop Chasing a dream I swore was mine They want me to march To take my fists and make them tools for a nation But what about the tools I shaped in my hands? The words I stacked like bricks The dreams I threaded through fabric The stories I bent to my will? What about those? I am not brave, not in the way they need I am brave in the way I stay up at night Fighting a battle no one sees My mind waging wars against the silence Brave in the way I still dream Even when the world tells me There is no room for people like me Do you understand what it means To want something so much it aches? Fifteen years of holding my breath For a chance to touch America Not just as a postcard dream But as a place where I can be Fifteen years, and the air grows thinner I am around the pain of eighteen to twenty souls But the weight of my own existence Makes me feel ancient My little self would cry for me now Would hold my hand and ask Why couldn't the world couldn't be softer Why dreams had to feel like red shoes I can't take off, even when they hurt And maybe this will never be read Maybe I'll be someone's memory by then Married, children pulling at my skirt Telling them the story of how I once fought For something invisible Would I laugh? I don't know how to stop wanting more I don't know how to quiet my heart The part that keeps yelling "This isn't enough!" But is it wrong to want to rewrite the rules? To not want a life that feels Like a duty, like a box Like a script someone else wrote for me? Tell me, have you ever wanted something So bad that it kept you alive And killed you at the same time?
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The red shoes are heavy Not for dancing But for carrying dreams That no one else believes in Each step feels forced A duty stitched into the fabric of my life And I wonder If I took them off Would I be free or just lost? I've fought for dreams that grow heavier Fifteen years of wanting a life Beyond these borders Beyond this place that calls me back Its weight pressing against my chest They say I should be grateful And I am For food, for shelter, for surviving But does surviving mean I should stop dreaming? Somewhere, my younger self is crying She wouldn't recognize this person Her feet bound to shoes She never asked to wear She'd ask why I don't run Why I don't scream louder And maybe I should But even voices crack under the weight Of all that could have been And yet, I want more Not out of greed But because these dreams are all I have I've been waiting to breathe Somewhere I don't have to fight the air itself Somewhere the red shoes can finally come off.
