When You Ask Me Where I'm Going: Young Adult Prose Poetry on Trauma, Feminism, and Empowerment

brother when did you forget that the walls of a woman's body were once a fortress protecting you from a world you were too fragile for? she has been defending you long before you decided that she has no place defending you.

Depression is this ghost that looms over my shoulder & nobody seems to believe in spirits.

in case you were told otherwise allow me to make this as clear as distilled water it is never your fault. their hands are only their hands. they are not trip wire that can be set off by your tongue. or your actions. or your mistakes. their bodies are only their bodies. they do not disobey their owners or forget to follow orders. their decisions are only their decisions. you did not make them do this.

in the end, it is not the smoke that we all suffocate on but the silence

there is no way to live in a body on an earth in a universe this complex and not carry questions in your pockets like accumulated change i have come to fear my lack of answers far less than humans who claim to have them all.

sometimes family doesn't fit within the lines that are drawn for us.

for a moment, someone hears and this is enough.

the next time you ask me where i'm going please recall that i am three parts indecision and one part reckless abandon that i have seldom bothered to look back at the wreckage i've left in my wake and will never be bothered to master the flames at my fingertips anyways

scream so that one day a hundred years from now another sister will not have to dry her tears wondering where in history she lost her voice.

you are light and even the shadow you cast are warm

of course they're drawn to your magic you soar far above their heads like peter pan but that doesn't mean you need to be a refuge for all these lost boys

they say lavender softens anxiety and i wonder if i can plant a garden so dense in your mind that the knots in your chest unravel and never tighten again.

some poems are water some poems flow only from the eyes.

Tomorrow would come and we'd figure it out when we had to, Right now, however, there was only light.

how do you feel today? like my lungs are not collapsing. like everything is not a mistake. like i am not a mistake. like i do not need to erase myself to fix myself. like i am not a single branch floating in an upset sea. like there is something bright out there. that maybe. just maybe. it is for me.

an ocean pours from her red-rimmed eyes

the trouble is, there is no way to preserve life in a photograph.

do you remember the night i left all my tears on your skin?

i wonder if it is true. that things can get better that my mind can will itself in a new direction. that i can go as far as i take myself. i am cynical but i am also desperate.

i am told to stop thinking so much and i wonder why it is that in order to survive in this world i must not use my mind.

because minds like these are not easily stitched back together when torn at the seams

i have often known the heaviest hearts to recite the lightest words and the burdenless do not understand that to dive headfirst into oceans like ours is to surely drown

fold the unfinished poems of our people into paper lanterns and release them let light fill all the spaces where words cannot yet go.

i am not your poem. i was never your brushtroke. i am not your tragedy or your failed attempts to find meaning.

am i meant to burn my bones in guilt? am i meant to douse myself in shame? am i meant to apologize for the way you could not make me love my own oppresion?

don't get me wrong. forgiveness and i are well acquainted but just because she had good intentions it doesn't mean she ever kept me safe.

you encounter flowers scattered across your skin for the first time, you stop to sit among them.

I'm trying to settle into my body feel comfortable inside its walls