J-i-poetry - Simple Poetry Blog

Drown In It

Mostly rice with a bit of chicken

It was only a few weeks,

Shopping at the local

Asian foods store.

Getting used to having

No car to shop with,

Packing a week's worth

Of groceries into a single

Backpack.

We ate mostly rice and

Vegetables with a bit of

Diced chicken for a bit of

Protein, once a week.

Bone-hungry and sick,

Despair set in.

"I want my mom" I said.

I didn't want her often,

Or even at all since leaving.

But after a few weeks of

Rice with nothing,

Anything seemed better

Than waiting for the anemia

To set in.

P.S.

(I didn't call my mom. We relented and subscribed to Walmart's delivery service and now we're doing okay)

Scaffolding by Seamus Heaney

“Consider this: we fuck with the lights on. You trace the flat shape of my breasts when I lay down. We keep the windows open because the rain smells like the closest we’ve ever been to Heaven. We watch the ferns drip like they’re heavy with honey. I cut red peppers in the kitchen. You put on every song we’ve ever fallen in love to. I’m beginning to lose the difference between our skin. I’m cold when you’re shivering. I ache when you’re lonely. I can feel the warmth in your pink, fluttering heart, and I hold it in my hands.”

— Schuyler Peck, On A Long Weekend

One Day Here

As a child I used to pray that I would get cancer

What my young eyes saw as an illness of honor

An illness that people rally behind

I wanted to have people who were proud of me for putting up a good fight

I wanted my suffering to be visible, less shameful

I yearned for someone to see me and know that I was hurting

I wanted doctors, church goers, my family, anyone at all to try to save me

So I prayed

And prayed

And prayed

I never got cancer

And I spent years saving myself

Now I’m an adult with a graduate degree and a mission

I will be the person who sees the child who is silently begging for help

I will be the one who tries their hardest to offer treatment

Because no child should suffer in silence

Praying for a death sentence so they can be seen

What are the laws of nature? Can you tell me? I can only think of one That energy cannot be created Or destroyed That it can only reconstruct One form into another

So what makes a flower bloom? Did I give the blossom My energy? I assume it comes from somewhere Within the soil, the stem But let me believe I can transform Into a beautiful thing too

affirmations

i am a complex organism brutally engineered by uncaring forces of nature

i am a product of billions of years and trillions of deaths

i am building a machine greater than myself

i am able to make phone calls and appointments