School is out and summer is here, but that doesn’t mean that we’re all ecstatic! For some of us, the initial joy of finals season being over and getting back to our home lives subsides within the first week. Being back home can be boring process, getting back into the routine of having adults in your life that tell you what to do, old friends with new personalities, and whole world of new responsibility. We’re at the brink of adulthood but we’re hanging in limbo. As the days go by, I’ve actually begun to feel campus-sick, as in I actually wish I could go back. In my sorrow, I’ve collected a few of my poems that I feel reflect the summertime sadness that some may be experiencing. It’s okay to not be okay.

“Upon meeting an empty fridge”

I love it when hunger runs so deep through my belly

That the pain hollows me out to the corners

Scrubs me from my depths to the surface

And washes over me like a spring shower.

I wander through my hunger like it's limitless

Like there's no end to the empty space inside of me.

An open field for open fire, I can shoot but never score

Food pops up in my mind like a gazelle in the field

But it runs away faster than I can think to reach.

I'm captivated by the hunt, yet I'm addicted to the loss

In memory of its absence I crave fulfillment beyond matter

I eat things beyond meaning, consuming life love and deceit as if it will nourish my very bones

And I lick the plates clean as if they hold the sweet sauce of success

My body trails on, hard yet hollow, wrapped in the shield of my bulletproof vest

I wrap myself in the void and I dwell in it's open Chambers

I embrace the dull pain yet I hurt the same what is stranger?

Can I quell this dark hunger, what can fill this pounding emptiness

Searching for something to hold, yet losing my sense of the grip

Reaching into my jar of thoughts, I seek sweetness

But even the best cookie crumbles before I can eat it.

“3 a.m. thoughts”

I’m blank and purely broken

Please need me, please knead me, mold me into something new

I’m breathing, yet I’m bleeding and I can’t escape the doom

The moon shines its light on me like a sad reminder

That the things that I crave will only wander through the night

The dark air, the thick mist, clouds all of my blanketed judgement

I could give them lies or love or trust

It would make no difference cause there is no “us”

Only dust, only triumph, I lose the bet, yet I’m steady denying

My constant loss, my constant revival

I wake from the dead, to see a life so idle

Just when I think my life couldn’t be further saddened

The world tips over the jar till it pours

And when it comes down, it streams like rain

It pours over me like an acidic stain

I am burned yet I am marked

My body is in the light yet my soul is in the dark

Now I am lying, while I’m steady lying, a sad soul curled up on the floor

No blanket can warm me

No man can conform me

No person can comfort the pain that thorns me

I am empty and nothing more

“But alas, a moment of hope”

Everything effervescent

Sunlight dances over wispy grass

Wispy yet lush, so green and pleasant

Smiling at me with stars in their eyes

While the wind hugs my legs

Heat seeps into my skin with the deepest hold

Not only washing over me, but flooding into me

So warm that light rushes into my face spreads across my cheeks and shines through my eyes

Laying across these soft blades

Wrapped in this warmth

Life is a series of surprise