By Mo Fowler
beat up by a girl
Image courtesy of shawnzrossi (flickr.com)
“I still think about you!”
He shouts off a cliff of
Self-doubt,
The wind grasping at his fingers,
The waters beg for him to leap down.
“I haven’t moved on!”
He whispers into the folds of sheets
With threadcounts
Higher than his salary
In the bed of another woman,
Another number,
Just another one this week.
“I still don’t know what I did wrong!”
He sobs at the hard porcelain
Walls of the shower as water
Streams down and embraces his
Tragic form with silken
Guilt.
“The breathing is getting easier”
He admits to a stranger pouring
him musty alcohol in a worn-out
bar far from the places he used to
take her, but closer to the memories than he’s allowed himself to be.
“My heart got beat up by a girl once,”
He tells the woman with blond hair and
A purple umbrella who will hold his hand
When she drinks coffee and smile
Widely at him as she walks down the aisle
“but I’m mending it.”
old photo albums
Image courtesy of spelio (flickr.com)
I wander through
Old photo albums
As if they’re graveyards
Of ribbons and stuck-out tongues,
Memories attached with
Used bubblegum.
Staring at the faces of all the
People who used to care,
I’ve never felt more alone
And if I cry it’s because you
Aren’t there
When I look around
And god it just isn’t fair.
Because, you see, I don’t
Know what I did,
Don’t know what drove you all away,
But I know that you’re what
I needed
To avoid ending up this way.
I flip through photo after photo,
Always searching for the
Same thing:
That I fit with these people,
that this person’s really me.
You all say you want to know
Where you come from,
But knowing that
The horrible little things
You hate about yourself are
Natural, passed down,
Doesn’t mean that you can change,
And even if you see the sadness coming,
You can’t always stop the pain.
Because is there a difference
Between tribal masks
And photographs,
When it’s all worship in the end?
And do the albums tell the truth
When I’ve scribbled over them in pen?
this is breaking it
Image courtesy of Eero Sarkkinen (flickr.com)
And they clearly don’t make promises
Like they used to,
Because you broke ours
With a twitch of your little finger.
Any trust that we had
Off like a roof it blew,
And you still haven’t told
Me what I did wrong –
Just shut me out and
Ignored me all month long.
You came through and
Shook my life up, just
Burst right in,
And the candle of your touch
Burnt my skin.
No one knows where to begin.
With you I realized
Why love is so hard to define,
And also why everyone will keep trying,
Or just continue faking it.
You were my entire heart,
And this is breaking it.
Mo Fowler is a sixteen-year-old junior at Mira Loma High School in California. She is the vice president of the school’s literary magazine, enjoys writing poetry, and has a finished novel she is looking for a home for. She loves driving, frosting, and soundtracks.
Wow! I really liked “old photo albums” and was impressed. Thank you! Finally some decent poetry.