11-12-2024, 04:00 PM
I worked on my poem a bit, and wanted to share the finished piece. I changed some of the wording, and tried to be a bit more intentional with the ones I chose. As I loved the conversational quality of the first draft... it definitely needed bolder word choices at times... as some of you mentioned. It may still be a little wrong, but I think I'm pretty happy with it. I'm constantly changing my poems all the time. I will probably come back to this one in a year, and see a million things I would change. But that's growth I suppose.
Empty
Curled away,
In a cave of blankets,
Cocooning yourself from the freezing summer air
That penetrates your skin and coils around your frail bones.
Fingers snaked around your wrists,
Or laid directly on your hips,
To ensure the coffee you had earlier didn’t make you bigger.
Because the barista definitely put whole milk in it.
You don’t know for sure,
But it only makes sense because it was creamier.
Wasn’t it?
You continue to wither—
Listening to the clock tick by,
Anticipating the moment you can prowl to the kitchen
To pour another glass of diet something
And satiate the empty abyss eating at your core.
Because you swore
The day before
That you would do better.
It’s all you think about—
When you’ll be able to put something else in your mouth.
But you pretend you’re fine,
When in reality, you’re only thinking about the next time
You can switch out your gum for a fresh piece.
And when you're done,
You’ll open up your bedside journal,
Not to lament about your day,
But to calculate the way
You made yourself bigger.
10 + 5 + 50 + 100 =
Too much.
You should have just skipped lunch,
Because at this rate, you’ll fail.
Who cares if you’re frail
And covered with hair?
Your entire identity will come crumbling to the ground.
Because this is what you're good at.
So tomorrow, you will do better.
Tomorrow,
You’ll be in the hospital,
Being wheeled into your room because they won’t let you walk.
A hanger for a smock
That obscures what you've done.
They tell you to eat your food,
Or they’ll resort to the tube
And that if you had gone on longer,
Been a little bit stronger,
You would have died.
So you chose to thrive.
You looked into the eyes
Of this heinous monster
And survived.
Empty
Curled away,
In a cave of blankets,
Cocooning yourself from the freezing summer air
That penetrates your skin and coils around your frail bones.
Fingers snaked around your wrists,
Or laid directly on your hips,
To ensure the coffee you had earlier didn’t make you bigger.
Because the barista definitely put whole milk in it.
You don’t know for sure,
But it only makes sense because it was creamier.
Wasn’t it?
You continue to wither—
Listening to the clock tick by,
Anticipating the moment you can prowl to the kitchen
To pour another glass of diet something
And satiate the empty abyss eating at your core.
Because you swore
The day before
That you would do better.
It’s all you think about—
When you’ll be able to put something else in your mouth.
But you pretend you’re fine,
When in reality, you’re only thinking about the next time
You can switch out your gum for a fresh piece.
And when you're done,
You’ll open up your bedside journal,
Not to lament about your day,
But to calculate the way
You made yourself bigger.
10 + 5 + 50 + 100 =
Too much.
You should have just skipped lunch,
Because at this rate, you’ll fail.
Who cares if you’re frail
And covered with hair?
Your entire identity will come crumbling to the ground.
Because this is what you're good at.
So tomorrow, you will do better.
Tomorrow,
You’ll be in the hospital,
Being wheeled into your room because they won’t let you walk.
A hanger for a smock
That obscures what you've done.
They tell you to eat your food,
Or they’ll resort to the tube
And that if you had gone on longer,
Been a little bit stronger,
You would have died.
So you chose to thrive.
You looked into the eyes
Of this heinous monster
And survived.