Another student at MSU did a YouTube video reading a poem about 2016. So, in the spirit of the video, it inspired me to post a compilation of my works throughout the year to list the things I learned.

Spring Semester: New Year, Same Dark Place

1. Infidelity is never the right way to feel beautiful.

I used to be textbook ugly
but then I was blessed with beauty
a late bloomer bloomed beyond their sight
but she gave her light to the first lamp in the road

darkness replaced her eyes
and shadows haunted the space below

her body became a temple of pleasure
fueled by her personal torture

never fully consenting
but never fighting their urges towards her

their advances became like a game
then she would open her legs

~

2. Depression is not a joke.

she could do anything she wanted and the world would have allowed her
but her depression kept her in bed.

she procured faces of the porous bricks
and fell in love with what they did

Never did she take the time
to see that every face was a lie

and that the solution to her madness was to remove their disguise, close her eyes,

and sleep

~

3. Erasers are for wrong test answers, not for parts of yourself.

You find yourself

in stories they tell

so you block those pieces out

in excruciating detail,

they map out their hatred

allowing you to tiptoe about

but when months go by, you forget where it was

you lost the pieces you lost

that’s why more is lost when it is love that is lost

because the lost lovers forget

that the pieces of your jagged heart hidden in their skin

beat bruises into your eyesockets when you see even a hint of them

~

4. Keep your pants above your waist in order to keep your heart in your chest.

Her floor was littered with quick goodbyes

the heartache was so thick some days that the sunlight through the window barely cast a ray on her bloodstained carpet

Her feet became accustomed to walking bare on the shrapnel they left behind.
so much so that her callused soles could soar over blades of glass

she had mistaken numbness for resilience…
and until she was alone,
she never looked down to notice the bloody mess she had made of her feet.

She had forgotten the nerves subtly intertwined with the bodies that ran out the door-

severed and misshapen, who knows if she'll feel anymore?

~

5. Don't write someone unimportant into permanence.

6. Don't be afraid to go home.

The mountains over her shoulder sighed in delight at her slight glance back

For none of the faces on the mountain recognized the face they saw

But in her backward glances, she wasn’t smiling back at the mountains,

but at the pale parcel she left at their base

Her frequent returns to the mountains grew colder with the seasons,

but the warm welcomes she received were worth the journey.

the source of their delight was her sense of reborn joy

and the Mountains knew it had something to do with the parcel she had left behind

No one had ever cared to look at its contents.

if they had, they may have not questioned the dullness behind her outwardly bright eyes.

For she knew she had left her dignity in that parcel in exchange for a slight sigh from the mountains and a plethora of moans from the hills.

~

I don’t know where home is

I don’t go back because I know what the walls will say to me

Find freedom
Run from your inhibitions
Run from them

Who am I supposed to go to in a drought?
When my dry skin needs water
They say your parents should lift you up in the desert sun

But honestly I’m not sure they have the strength themselves

I’m scared of that door
Because the walls scream failure
And the floor reeks of adolescent mistakes

Tongue lashings
On topics
I was too angry to recall
Fighting over nothing
Fighting over nothing

I always had aimless passion
I needed an outlet but only saw my parents standing ahead of me

~

So they became my outlet
Screaming fights
Woke up the whole neighborhood

I know of my mistakes
I know of my mistakes
I know of my mistakes

And so the question remains

In this drought

Do I go to higher land where I can see the closest water source
Like an eagles eye

Or do I let my porcelain skin Crack
And let winter freeze my passion
And let winter freeze my smile into wrinkles on my face

Before I find that place

Home is where the heart is

But my heart remains with you so where do I stay?

~

7. Distance never works (for me).

She could have had the world
but she chose a sandbox
because the warm sand was soothing to her aching soles

And as she played in the warm sand, the sun began to sink below the horizon and so did her ankles
the suffocation was disguised as affection to her lonely legs

When the sand began to graze her knees,
She caught a glimpse of her friends chasing the sun with joy in their eyes.
but she became deprived of such gems.
because the sand gripped so tightly to the legs she stood upon, like concrete it caged her in

Suddenly, she felt a sucking sensation on her waist
and she reluctantly fell what felt like a lifetime, one with a steady stream of sand.

the landing was eerily soft and she looked around herself to see she had drowned in a sea of sand
she was a fish and he had no water to offer her

so she began to run, yearning to escape the desert she had succumbed to.

In the distance she saw a meadow trimmed in gold, with grass as green as her envy for their smiles.

her determined face met an invisible border
the hot glass assured her that the meadow was unreachable

and along with her friends prancing in the meadow, she began to see what she had been missing

that while she thought she was happy, she had trapped herself within an hourglass of his affection.

And when he finally ran out of sand to pour on her dehydrated skull, he, and his blistering sand departed and left her to build up the strength to break her glass prison

with nothing but her cracked, dry fists.

~

Summer Was Hot but Not Steamy

8.But you will always love again

Take me with you
next time you dream

cocoon me in your deepest desires
and coat me in the syrup of your subconscience

smother me with the dust of your lovers
and drag me through the treacherous mud of your hatred

I want to see every inch of your psyche.
I want to swim in your mind

Take me with you
next time you sleep

run your warm hands down my silhouette,
drench my spirit with your affection

pull the breath from my lungs
and rob my lips of speech.

bruise my hips with your passion.
Occupy the space between my thighs and fill up the cracks in my heart.

Take me with you
Next time you breathe.

Let me be your oxygen
so that you may never leave.

~

9. Love, Lust, and Fascination are three different things.

they always come in hungry

like “oh my god I’m in love with you ”

and they taste the cake and it’s just the right amount of sweet

and they drink the coffee and it’s bitter and bold

but they get fat from the cake and tire of the same coffee every day

and one day they look at you and resent the love you gifted them
they resent the softness of your thighs because
you trapped them

and so they leave
eyes dead
and cold

and you wonder where that love you tasted on their lips went as you sink your teeth into the next

~

10. When you say things you don't mean, it never ends well.

it was always
“we need to talk”

with radio silence buzzing in my ears

you never had much to say

but no matter how many times I screamed “I love you!”
begged “I want you”

you always looked okay

you cried once at our funeral but for me we died so many times my eyes began to dry

Every time I shattered you glued my pieces back

But there are pieces stuck in the carpet
…

I’m a wasteland of shrapnel
with an oval of glue forced into a crevice
shaped like a healthy heart

and if you thought before I wasn’t good enough for you,
You should see the mess you left for the next.

~

Fall Semester: Reconstruction

11. Don't take friendships for granted

Today I saw you for the first time as a stranger.

I no longer recognized the face I saw

for it had aged

the creases I had left in the corner of your eyes
had shifted-
with the weight of another smile.

~

It was as if you were someone I knew
from a single encounter

it was as if you weren’t a part of me.

Years-
erased by
silence

erased

because when we reached
the fork in the road

I slipped in the mud
and-
lost which way you went

Today I saw you for the first time as a stranger.

and I could see in your eyes that you felt it too

~

12. Don't make time for people who don't treat you well, though, because you will always find those who will.

At which hour -
did I become a stranger to you?

Which day -
did you decide I was trash?

At what moment -
did you realize you could live without me?

When did my words condemn me
to the past?

I was never anything but blood to you,
Until you sterilized your heart

On which day-
At which hour-
At which moment-
When-
did you decide to negate MY part?//

Of you that I knew went deeper than the surface

I delivered you to your future

But
BANG-
Shoot the messenger,
For she has no further Use to us!//

I died the day you left me.

Why did you turn your back?

Best friends forever -my ass
I bite my thumb at that

13. You really will

for the rest

of our lives

beyond the sadness that permeates our horizons.

we will look back on those nights

as a reminder

of what true happiness feels like

what friendship feels like

I have so much love

for the nights where
my mind was absent

for I shared a love- a life-
with these people

who catered to my happiness
who were the first to strike gold
in this mine

that is my scattered mind

I am beautiful because

of people like you

~

14. Being poetic doesn't always help you in the end.

“A man will not buy what he gets for free”

what a stupid cryptic

thing

to say to a man with shaky knees

his knees were occupied by god

and you asked him to raise his eyes

and walk a mile

a mile in pinched shoes

to him would be a nightmare

and so she said goodbye to the guy

that for a year

she had held hostage

at her side

and he never shed a tear

~

15. Inner Happiness is the only kind that matters.

Step 1.

Apologize

Forgive the glass for the cruel things
It coerced your mind to
Tell you

Speak to yourself

Tell your inner being to catch on fire

Tell it cleanse your palate so that you can taste more than your self-inflicted wounds.
Tell it to souter them shut with positivities

Step 2. paint your mirror black for 1 week.
Forgive your reflection I swear she doesn’t
deserve your cruelty

Let her rest
Without picking at the scabs on her skin
Without picking out the flaws on her skin

Without badgering her bright eyes
Without bullying her bright smile

Step 3.
Recognize that you are a person too

Fight the abusers
And tell them to fuck off

Allow yourself to have your weight in cake and eat it too

But 4.
Don’t let that lifestyle rule you.

Give back

Let the world know of your beauty inside

~

16. You can always improve your talents