Poems

It's the empty seat next to you
on the school bus, while other kids
laugh and play and sing and whisper secrets
across the aisle.

The sharp edges of schoolyard cruelty,
hallway chants of "freak",
and lunch tables that always seem full
when you try to sit down,
the quiet ache of knowing
you are not like them
and never will be,
and stinging laughter behind you
as you walk toward the door
pretending not to care.

It's hollow echoes
of what happened after the school dance,
the sound of your childhood
shattering in a way
no one else can hear,
and prayers whispered
into your pillow that night,
Please, God,
turn back time
and undo what was done,
and let me breathe before I break.

It's sitting by grandpa’s hospital bed,
his hand cold in yours,
watching his chest rise and fall
until it doesn’t anymore,
and the helplessness of love
collapsing against the weight of time,
the silence that follows,
and the unbearable truth
that love can’t keep a heart beating.

Or standing on a bridge
under a full moon
on a cold December night,
wondering how long it will take
to hit the rocks below,
and a stranger who breathlessly cries Please don't,
and teaches you that no matter how dark the night,
the sun will always rise tomorrow,
and bring with it a new day,
a new chance to live and breathe
and think and feel
and laugh and cry
and hurt and love.

It's all the quiet wreckage,
forgotten spaces,
things that broke you
and things that made you whole.

These are all seeds
that take root in your heart,
splinter and bloom,
and one day grow into poems.