ACCEPTING REALITY

Traci Grade12 CityNeighborsHigh

My heart races so much, I sometimes think it’s about to explode out of my chest. My lungs are full of smoke, yet I hope that one day the race car will just stop and finally be done with pushing on its last engine. As I look at myself in the mirror, messy hair falling down past my shoulder as the dark bags grab at my eyes; I can’t help but think “Where do I belong?”

In the wild like a lion, hunting for food, fighting for shelter, changing who I really am for dominancy and respect. Or locked away in a cage like a parrot. Forced to dance for others' amusement and only speak when spoken to, I leave the cage just to be met by a bigger cage, but this one has a bed and a refrigerator. I want to be a lion. Free from the unfairness and harmful doings of the world. But I also want to be the bird. I can be protected from the toxins being spread outside. A poisonous gas that is killing people by the day. But there’s one certain blanket that allows me to create my own person all the while protecting me.

He treats me like a lion and a bird. He’s my escape. The person that opens up the gates and lets me be the free, independent lioness that I know I am; but also the shy and quiet parrot that is frightened of the thought of the world bringing her to her end.

My blanket is one of a kind. It warms me when I’m cold, shields me from the toxicity of the world, and soaks up the water that floods my cheeks repeatedly.

He acts as my heart when not enough blood is flowing to it. He holds me as long as my body needs to return to normal temperature and prove that there are kind people in this toxic world. The world is a dangerous place filled with hate, violence, and negativity, but he shields me from as much as he can.

And if I get caught in the crossfire… he will nurse me back to health with his soothing voice and lovable embrace.

MayaWalker CollegeFirstYear ChathamUniversity

“They sat there, feeling happy together.”

- Arnold Lobel, Frog and Toad are Friends

Because sea is only a shelter to those afraid of love,

I cry crocodile tears for the first frog to break my heart. They say I’m over my head in water, that all I need is a good cry, for my tears to touch sea, but I know better, know these lilypads like the back of my webbed feet.

On land, someone tells me not to kiss a toad, that if I do warts will erupt from my mouth and I want to tell them how toads cry the same salty brine of the ocean, how when I say I cannot love again, what I mean is I cannot love yet. I want to tell them that if desire means warts, perhaps we all deserve to be marked by love. Toads know what it means to be marked, and perhaps that is why she loved me. We are surrounded by rain, under shelter despite our skin when she first kisses me, and I discover what it means to be amphibious, to exist in two places at once.