By Rebekah Jacobson

Manayunk Pavement Poem

“shadows” © mary abq (https://www.flickr.com/photos/30353259@N08/6182817822/)

Shadows lull across the street,
a melted pavement dream.
The slowing sun sleeps over the rooftops and the empty fields
and the pavement singes through our thin skin
as we sit on the narrow curb.
Through the heat, it seems the road begins to blur
smudge into itself where our vision ceases.
Church bells chime
throwing rhythm into the air.
Houses in the distance slur into all of the same colors
as we look on, unaware.
And still,
though time has passed,
shadows lull, still, across the street,
frozen in this pavement dream.

Blue Guitar

You sit, nestled in the blue …
where are all of the people
who were supposed to love you?
Wrap your ice cold fingers
around the stone guitar
pray to God that one day
you could go away, far.
The instrument plays a noise of gold
a stream of the very sun itself;
So you release the strings you used to love
And place the guitar on a shelf.

Junior Year

“Window Blind Portrait” © Sean O Riordan (https://www.flickr.com/photos/114717511@N02/36616784655/)

I’m a lot more tired these days
I’ve been opening all the blinds
watching the sunshine slip
into all of the dark places

We punch against the darkness
It punches back
It’s a fair fight
that we know we can win

And so now
we feel like forever
electrified immortality
buzzing against each other like charged up atoms

Screaming out all of the car windows
Dreaming of meeting strangers
Forgetting the definition of danger
Zipping across the map

Worlds don’t end, they just explode
Combust into millions of layers of dust
But not us.
Not us.

Rebekah Jacobson is a high school senior living in Pennsylvania. She is currently in remission from Ewing’s Sarcoma, a cancer of the bone that she suffered from, along with an amputated left ankle, in eighth grade. She is looking to major in Political Science with hopes of becoming a speechwriter in the future. She loves poetry because she feels it is a way to express, in words, feelings that are wordless.