Ever felt suffocated?
You open a window,
and still the air refuses you.
The walls feel like they’re closing in on you,
drawing nearer with every breath,
and you can’t breathe.
You stare at the ceiling,
but it becomes a mirror,
showing everything
you’d rather forget.
You want to cry,
but even tears are too heavy to lift.
Something is eating your belly button,
pulling at you from the inside,
but you cannot speak it.
You’re the one they speak to
when they have problems,
What does a sapling need to grow?
Is water, sunlight, and soil enough,
or does it need something more?
An ungrateful sapling—
it does not grow.
At what unfortunate hour
did I choose this seed to sow?
What does this sapling need?
An adversarial being.
I wonder what kind of fruit
its ominous seed will bring.
The sapling whispered to itself,
Maybe I need love,
love that doesn’t judge,
love that does not keep score.
The whisper faded into silence.
Maybe I need freedom.
Freedom to remain fruitless or fruitful.
Freedom that feeds the soil
without binding the roots.
The leaves wilt and droop.
The stem begins to peel.
Leaves curl inward.
The sapling can no longer name
what it feels.
It yearns
for what it desires but never receives,
its stem turning brittle
for daring to want.
The sapling no longer feels
anchored to the soil.
Roots that once dreamed
of reaching far and wide
begin to coil.
One day, love will set, suffocated by the hatred that begs for mercy,
Drops of tears of regret will flow, guilty it will forever remain,
Because it was alive, because it was always there,
Because it held hearts in its palms with the utmost care,
Its whole life was a silent service, a dance of conquered freedoms,
Battles fought with unseen wings, but now, on its deathbed,
You cling to it desperately, as if your hatred were not
Enough to tear it apart, to suffocate it in its cold embrace.
But behold, love has paid the price of its sacrifice,
Watching as it fades in the arms of hatred, again and again,
Like an echo of a finished song, of a story that repeats,
In a universe where love becomes just a lost shadow,
And yet, even in its twilight, love rises,
From the ashes of regrets, from the depths of broken hearts,
Seeking to find a new beginning, a new place to rest,
In a world where hatred can no longer be its master.
Break your narrow, thought cage..
Don't suffocate soul, with wrathful rage..
Keep yourself calm, always up to sigh..
Don't prison yourself more, than your zealous age..
Grasping the forest so tightly
A thick mantle of layered breeze
Whips into rows and rows along aisles -
Coating the trees, suffocated
From a blanket of dry frothing .
The clouds pass by, unconcerned
As jays and ladybugs are silenced
While creatures of the meadow grow restless
And blossoms sigh listlessly -
Waiting for dewy October's rainfall.
Early October Premier Contest
3 Oct 2017
My biggest fear is to be alone with my thoughts,
To be surrounded by the past,
Swallowed whole by my mistakes,
Stalked by what could've been, what should've been,
And being eaten alive by the insecurity I mask day by day,
I guess it can be said that my biggest fear is myself,
The person that hides behind the red lips, the soft brown eyes,
Who smiles when internally she cries for help,
The person who is suffocated .
these thoughts have been in my mind
for 39 years
they have been
sequestered
submerged
suffocated
inside desks
inside books
inside traffic jams
that’s where they’ve been
they are coming out now
capitalism’s crisis
is drawing these out
like wildfire
and waterfalls
Suffocated.
My air line had been cut.
My heart pounding,
blood racing through my every vein.
My hand stiffend,
mind blocked from all other thoughts.
Gasping, grasping,
i fight my way back.
My eyes blood shot, exhausted.
Finally, a breath,
one inhail was all it took.
i can still feel his hands,
groaping my neck
reaching for the control.
A single inhail was all it took,
enough to run away,
his handprints remain,
staining my neck,
a reminder of past times,
to learn
a caution sign
never to return.
I can still see the imprint he left,
the thumb that once grazed my collar bone,
nails digging into my heart.
Scarring my soul.
I feel suffocated
By the bounds of a
Chainfilled marriage
Even though I am not part of it
But a product of it
Every pain
Every shout
Every scream
Every fight
I feel it as if it were me
I feel its heavy ness
I feel its depression
I feel its walls closing in on me
And I want to be free
It's the end of the line now.
No more feeling.
No more wishing
that I could be
your perfect little girl
all over again.
No more dreaming.
no more hoping
that I would turn out to be
a daughter you'll be
proud of.
No more thinking
that everything's gonna change
and go back
to the way things were
it's not.
I'm putting up my walls again
to disappear from view
to block out the world
to pretend I'm not here
'cause it's so much easier
than trying to feel everything.
'Cause I don't wanna be
so
damn
suffocated.
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