I'm 19 and I stand in my room. Have you accomplished anything if you spent the year running just to end up back in the room that saw all your tears? Isn't the point of running to slow down somewhere else? But then I hear my mom chuckling at a joke I sent her through the door and remember that she didn't do that. Then
I am 18 and I am standing in my room. Sometimes I have to remind myself of how i carried so much stress in my neck then. I sat perched on my bed like a stranger too polite to mention the unusual offered seat. I had slammed a door behind me confident the next one was already open. The dread when the knob doesn't turn. I escaped through a window just to end up on this carpet again.
I am 19. I carry less stress in my neck. I devide friends into neat piles; healing and burning. Like an acid drip working unstoppably through your jeans. It doesn't actually hurt yet but god chemistry was your best subject. I see the acid on her jeans but we're adults now. Adults don't grip each others' arms until the circulation cuts off to keep from the cliff. I can make you a tea.
I make tea. I've always made tea. Perhaps that's the beauty of 19. The only novel thing in this poem, the oldest of all things. It's called an adventure at 8, a hobby at 15, a habit at 19. Hello. Would you like a tea. I was making one anyway. Really, I'm quite good at pouring it now.
sometimes you are 19 standing in the kitchen wondering how you forgot to have breakfast and lunch today, how you will exit the teenage in 47 fridays, how you used to love watermelons 4 summers ago and now you can't even stand the sight of it, how there were floors that saw you wipe them clean off your own tears once, how you changed your favourite coffee recipe last summer because your bestfriend liked it and you guys haven't talked since then, how the new book you're reading was never really your type but you love it, how you hated your hair for 9 winters, how the windows of your new house are bigger, how you feel bad for hurting them, how maybe making mistakes is okay, how maybe you don't have to not eat that cupcake when you go out today, how the wind feels too right whenever you snuggle into your bed, how you were 17 and all the winter ache wanted you to open your kitchen drawers and look for warmth. how then you didn't know someday you'll be 19 standing in the kitchen wondering if you forgot to put sugar in your coffee again.
I want to go home. I just want to go home, I just want to go. Home.
So come home, said the voice from the stars.
Writing is from Grace by Kae Tempest
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Harry, Ginny and Lily Luna!
Oh my god I'm listening to California Dreamin' with headphones and. Did you know it's one of those songs that are hardcore spliced up between headphones. Like the female and male voices are mostly coming from seperate headphones.
This makes no difference except for a cool listening experience unless. Unless you take one headphone out.
Ohhh, there's still the faintest echo of the female voices in the male voices' headphone, but half the instruments are missing. It's haunting. It's majestic. It's Denny in a old rehearsal room. It's not really a designated space, it's the backroom of their bar. They jokingly used to call it the backstage area. It's wooden panels that were never glossy. It's Michelle and Cass on old stools with cheap cider. It's Denny alone. It's Denny's guitar, with John's handwriting on its side. It's an empty room that's not used to being empty. You know when rooms sound the most loud when there's supposed to be a hundred sounds and you know every one of them? You think you can hear it out of pure fate.
He can only play as many instruments as his hands can hold. But he plays them as well as ever. There's no tremble in his fingers. He can definitely hear Cass. He can almost see John. When he closes his eyes, he can believe they're through the door, in the bar. Hearing him play. Singing back to him.
California dreaming. On such a winter's day
Kiss Andrea
I have a friend, let's call her Soft and Safe.
Let's call her that because it's shorter than Fluttering butterflies and excited hands waving, lilac purple capris and silk blouse, also soft ripped jeans and oversize hoodie. It's shorter than the Life of the party, social butterfly, but also sleepover deep talk.
She was the first one to fully support me when I came out as bi. She's still the one I feel most comfortable telling my insecurities to.
She's physically beautiful, yes, with brown curls and doe eyes, but more like her soul would make any body beautiful, you get it? It really doesn't matter how she looks. Does that make sense?
I know Soft and Safe doesn't see herself this way, so this is my way of telling her. A Tumblr post she'll never see.
Because all Soft and Safe sees is her flat chest and her acne prone skin. All she sees is that she was asked to the ball last in dance class last year. She was recently told she has depression, and she said "yeah, checks out." I don't think she sees how much I admire her, and want her to stay in my life forever. But I never told her.
So, how can you be sure you're not someone's Soft and Safe?
"Greetings to the Universe in 55 Different Languages", a poem compiled out of messages from the Voyager spacecraft
every time I see some bigshot scientist revealed as a fraud my knee-jerk reaction is "hell yeah elisabeth bik got 'em good" AND IM RIGHT
USA please listen to me: the price of “teaching them a lesson” is too high. take it from New Zealand, who voted our Labour government out in the last election because they weren’t doing exactly what we wanted and got facism instead.
Trans rights are being attacked, public transport has been defunded, tax cuts issued for the wealthy, they've mass-defunded public services, cut and attacked the disability funding model, cut benefits, diverted transport funding to roads, cut all recent public transport subsidies, cancelled massive important infrastructure projects like damns and ferries (we are three ISLANDS), fast tracked mining, oil, and other massive environmentally detrimental projects and gave the power the to approve these projects singularly to three ministers who have been wined and dined by lobbyists of the companies that have put the bids in to approve them while one of the main minister infers he will not prioritise the protection of endangered species like the archeys frog over mining projects that do massive environmental harm. They have attacked indigenous rights in an attempt to negate the Treaty of Waitangi by “redefining it”; as a backup, they are also trying to remove all mentions of the treaty from legislation starting with our Child Protection laws no longer requiring social workers to consider the importance of Maori children’s culture when placing those children; when the Waitangi Tribunal who oversees indigenous matters sought to enquire about this, the Minister for Children blocked their enquiry in a breach of comity that was condemned in a ruling — too late to do anything — by our Supreme Court. They have repealed labour protections around pay and 90 day trials, reversed our smoking ban, cancelled our EV subsidy, cancelled our water infrastructure scheme that would have given Maori iwi a say in water asset management, cancelled our biggest city’s fuel tax, made our treasury and inland revenue departments less accountable, dispensed of our Productivity Commission, begun work on charter schools and military boot camps in an obvious push towards privatisation, cancelled grants for first home buyers, reduced access to emergency housing, allowed no cause evictions, cancelled our Maori health system that would have given Maori control over their own public medical care and funding, cut funding of services like budgeting advice and food banks, cancelled the consumer advocacy council, cancelled our medicine regulations, repealed free prescriptions, deferred multiple hospital builds, failed to deliver on pre-election medical promises, reversed a gun ban created in response to the mosque shootings, brought back three strikes = life sentence policy, increased minimum wage by half the recommended amount, cancelled fair pay for disabled workers, reduced wheelchair services, reversed our oil and gas exploration ban, cancelled our climate emergency fund, cut science research funding including climate research, removed limits on killing sea lions, cut funding for the climate change commission, weakened our methane targets, cancelled Significant National Areas protections, have begun reversing our ban on live exports. Much of this was passed under urgency.
It’s been six months.
(She/her) Hullo! I post poetry. Sometimes. sometimes I just break bottles and suddenly there are letters @antagonistic-sunsetgirl for non-poetry
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