To Live

i am falling

and i am lying

broken on the shore

like a ship

dashed on the rocks,

like a fairy

who lost their wings

mid-flight

i am smiling

and i am lying

beside you on your couch

like a person

and their best friend,

like a human

and someone

they trust

i am screaming

and i am lying

on the dirt beneath a mountain

like a bird

that tried to leave the nest too soon,

like a doe

that was forgotten

by her mother

i am leaping

and i am lying

on the hard, wooden floor

like a ice skater

that did not make the jump,

like a dancer

that could not learn

how to stand

i am cold

and i burn myself

just for the warmth

i am on fire

and i drown myself

just to stop the pain

i am reduced to ash

and finally,

i mourn

i am writing

and i am lying

on the blanket my mother crocheted for me

surrounded by stuffed animals

and the steady hum of the crickets

outside my home

(like a crane

standing in the water,

like the sun

slowly rising over the hills

at dawn)

The inspiration behind this was primarily drawn from my struggle to let myself move on from my memories and live. The first few stanzas each introduce a past emotion or feeling – physical pain, love, abandonment, failure – while the last stanzas introduce the concept of coming to terms with those & finding peace. I think that, as humans, we have a natural compulsion to try to lock the more negative parts of our lives deep within ourselves, a tendency that often does more harm than good. I’ve recently been working on identifying when I’m putting my own emotions on lockdown and trying to understand what those emotions are. In a lot of ways, this poem was a study of that.

Editors: Joyce S., Anoushka K., Nadine R.

Cover Source: https://pixels.com/art/crane