xi Entries of 2024

i. Sitting with Silence

Only when you sit in a quiet room after listening to chirping

birds do you begin to miss their song

ii. Rejected Reflection

I stand looking in the mirror

The cracked, broken, placed-together pieces that make me

The mirror reflects the gaps between the broken—

That ooze the secrets of my past.

iii. June 15, 2024

My life is like some sick, twisted paradox in which history

unironically repeats itself.

iv. Where’s My Blue Genie

If I were handed three wishes, they’d all be to help you

I would give you a new life, even without me, if it meant

you were happy

I can never forgive you—

Magical wishes are only in the movies we watched growing

up

You’re still playing the piano in an alternate universe, and

I’m dancing along.

v. Insomnia

My thoughts dance around like musical chairs

Who will sit with me tonight?

vi. Barred Mail

The sunshine suffocates against the plastic sheet stretched

across the window pane.

Plastic to keep out the leftover winter breeze.

I sip at my bitter coffee.

Just how I like it—

A cup of bitter coffee in the morning diminishes one’s

expectations of the day.

I stare and sip.

An envelope with the address 700 Charlestown Rd,

Springfield, VT 05156, handwritten in the corner, stares back at

me—Southern Vermont Correctional Facility.

It arrived a month ago.

I still have not opened it.

I contemplate whether the words filling the paper inside

would also fill the hollow pit settled in my heart.

I always decide against it.

Opening the letter.

Instead, drink bitter coffee rather than bitter tears if today

is not the day, possibly tomorrow, as I said yesterday.

vii. Why Try to Change Me Now?

I sat with my sadness,

long enough that I did not notice

I drifted to sleep against her warm chest,

into a longing rest.

viii. Morning Chore

There is a hole in my heart

Though I don’t think it will ever heal—

I put a stitch through it each morning in hopes for it to

mend

Without fault, it reopens again.

ix. Withered Time

I have lived only 21 years

Yet I feel as if I’ve lived many lifetimes

My siblings lifetimes

My parents

As though handed years for each

My mother gave me years added by doubt and overanalyzing

My father gave me caution and anger that is older than me—

that I struggle to suppress

My brother gave me years after leaving me alone

x. Weighted Emptiness

Sometimes, I get a sudden feeling of weight in the center of

my chest

A suffocating hollowness with no end or beginning

I can feel it grow into my throat and leak into my stomach

A weighted emptiness

Intertwining with my beating heart

Has it always been there?

Will it always be there?

It disappears as quickly as it came

Leaving me with phantom space.

xi. Repurpose

I’ve currently been avoiding my reality.

It is not what I imagined when I envisioned my future

young and doe-eyed.

Full of imagination, I created fairytale stories in my backyard

with my mother, father, and brother inside.

My life felt so vast. Pulsing with hope.

I am still young. Eyes sunken, imagination withering,

transforming into matured belief.

My faith in my future will help me persevere through

my hardships and grief.

That my life will begin to feel grand once again.

Everything happens for a reason.

My life has not been this way, just to waste away in the

current fog I reside in.

That I will find reason within my trials and emerge, ending

up where I must,

with purpose.