Poems

I am from...

This is actually an exercise from my Creative Writing class...

I hope you enjoy :D

Let me know what you think!

I am from whaling ships and tribal wars and boats to Ellis Island.

The slightly over and up from the belly button birthmark my mom and I share,

Only mirrored.

I am from my mom’s chicken rice soup,

Its curling steam and scent vanquishing all miseries.

The small, black hairband

Wound anaconda-like around my dad’s pinky.

The raspy, wheezing croon of his harmonica,

As he drives with his knees.

I am from these moments with my dad.

From the green beans in my aunties garden,

(Two for the belly, one for the bowl).

I am from boisterous family reunions,

Where love,

Love of each other, love of food, and love of cribbage are all that matter.

I am from my mom’s broken neck,

C1, the same Christopher Reeves broke,

And being so terrified, so terrified.

I am from love lost and a broken marriage.

I am from strawberry wine, Deana Carter, my mom’s voice,

And dancing in the kitchen until I fall asleep, fragile in her arms,

As hot tears dripped into my hair.

Worn thin cardboard boxes with stills of time,

Moments before me and when I was still pink-faced and new,

Stashed away with urgency, too painful to look at.

To remember, she says.

I am from seeing my dad twice a month,

From wondering what dinner would be like if we were a family.

I am from my dad’s things hurled in anger and betrayal on the front lawn,

Piles, like skyscrapers to three-year-old me, I can still see out the bay window.

My earliest memory, but don’t tell my mom.

It would kill her.

I am from an irrational phobia of unlocked doors and windows

Waking up scared and crawling in with my mom;

She would hold me tight until the tears dry

 And I would be warm next to her in my feety-pajamas.

I am from tick-bites and disease,

But not anymore.

No, not anymore.

I am from will I ever be enough,

The doubts, the toxic ideation.

The loneliness.

From unbroken, repeating chains,

And pestilent step-fathers.

From one-too-many times hurt,

Where sorry  holds no weight.

I am from fighting,

Oh so much fighting,

Drowned and flushed away with music.

It’s still there, behind the singer’s croons.

Spitting fire; destined to destruction.

I am from the stars and the moon and the planets

Far far away.

Like I want to be.

From thunderstorms;

I feel as itchy reckless as the pulsating currents and booming claps

And I want to run, run, run away.

To find myself free while waterlogged and gasping for life.

Wet hair constricting around my arms and face.

Clothes clung, holding to me in desperation.

I am from can’t breathe, think, cold air whooshing in my window,

Stopping before my lungs, hands shaking.

It’s too much.

And it’s too much.

I am from a pepper sprinkled nose

To a pepper sprinkled body.

Strange shaped knees,

And a strange shaped nose.

Poprock joints and torn cuticles.

I am from the stories I now tell myself to fall asleep;

Adventures and magical lands and perfect days to keep away the nightmares.

I am from the world behind my camera.

And the glossy prints icky-sticky tacked to my leaf green wall,

The photos hung by clothesline, crisscrossing my ceiling.

From charcoal dusted fingers and paint-covered legs.

Late night reading by flashlight,

Those I’ll-stop-at-one-more-page moments under the moon.

I am from lost things and collecting them

And putting them together into something that makes sense.

I am from sewing machines and hand-stitch,

With needle pricked fingertips.

I am from the cool, ashy dirt in my garden

To the wild raspberries embracing my yard.

I am from car rides and don’t touch me’s.

From no-shoe summers.

Long nights by the campfire;

My toes nestling into the hot sand beneath the fire pit.

Running on storm-wrecked jetties.

Twirling in the light of the great moon,

On empty, quiet beaches.

The same moon that peaks through pine trees,

As I sit in the snow on the edge of a mountain,

My ankles trapped by my snowboard.

This is where I am from.