When Driving in Fog — Poem

I can feel it
seeping in through my ears,
swirling around my mind, threatening
to coat my eyes.

“When driving in fog, do not turn on high beams.”

But the lever is right there;
light is right there!

“They will only reflect off the fog and make it harder to see.
Stay on low beams and drive slowly.”

Click, lever on.
Click, lever off.
Debate whether to switch lever on again.

“If fog gets too bad, pull over and wait for it to pass.”

But while I wait for it to pass
I will watch the world around me
pass as well!

 

But
I will watch

And maybe, for now,
that is enough.

 

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Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

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Idols/Favorite Authors — Poem

I build a home in your words

Sink into the comfy armchair of your thoughts

Prop up one of your pages, a mirror in which to do my morning makeup

I strap on your sentences, ready to face the world

With your paragraphs in my pockets, I am safe

They are not a helmet or a shield, but the ability to bleed

I press them against my heart, wishing I could push them straight through my chest

But I can’t. And that’s okay

Because I will grow up in the home you have built me

And then I will build one of my own

 

Photo by Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

Quiet Girl — Poem

Quiet girl,
I know it’s taken you a while to uncurl
lips that twist and turn between teeth
that test and taste each word before creating
a carefully considered sentence you hope will meet acceptance

Quiet girl,
I know how out of character it is for you to share
just a couple spare words that you didn’t prepare to share
hours before you got to where you had to pretend to care
about the kind of hors-d’oeuvres each partygoer preferred

Quiet girl,
Do not hide how your cheeks flush as people rush
to tell you how quiet you are.
Your silence is not a license for people to assume
this is a crisis.
When they tell you who you are, you are not obliged to hide behind
“Oh, I’m just tired.”

No, you are quiet.

Quiet girl,
Whose eyes hold the vastness of the stars in the sky but is asked why she is so shy
by a man whose only try at getting her to talk more is to say
she’s quiet.

Quiet girl,
No, you do not have “resting bitch face” unless
the boy standing two paces away who has said even less today
and could go hundreds of miles without a single smile
has it, too.

True, you are not the life of the party.

You are the ears,
the eyes;
you are the scribe.

You are not hiding, you are writing
lines and lines of humanity behind your eyes.
Let your lashes rest against your cheeks and read
the seeds of life that have blossomed into a book
only you can see.

Quiet girl,
While you can define anyone with lines and lines from the encyclopedia behind your eyes, they
can only find one word in their minds to describe you:

Quiet
girl,

Close your eyes
and read.

 

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Photo by Xan Griffin on Unsplash