This month we’re looking at growing up, but more importantly, we want to focus on reflection, perspective, and progress.
Birthday Party
All you are
And all you are yet to be
Bound up in this little girl
Small frail figure
Hunched over
Eyesight fixed
Just above the ground.
I hope you grow up
To not tiptoe ’round people
Who stomp over you.
I hope your mother tells you
That she’s not just proud of what
you’ve done well
But everything you do.
I hope you learn and love
Every single subject
Savour it like fresh ripe fruit
Learn at your own pace
It’s not a race
I wish I had done
And not just skipped
What I did not understand.
Not slept in the night
And in the day not stayed awake
Not wanting the day to end
Proceeding a day I did not want
To face.
All the didn’ts and the don’ts and
The won’ts
I hope they don’t exist
For you
Emanuela Thackray
Tess
“Vitality, warmth, incarnation”
How one would describe you; but you yourself cannot seem to
See. for it is not in your nature to know such qualities:
Such feminine beauty, you are too
Meek, (so mild) and deep beneath
Like a virgin: you are too weak
to see such signs (the predator) as he watches, spies, your
soul beneath that
Thick hair. That bonnie face, blue twinkle eyes;
mouth as red as the red red rose- (unsleeping)
‘Maddening as Eve’s’ who charmed a snake: it came
As you dance to the May day break
a warm spring day.
Untouched: out of sight, out of mind- all before
Her eyes so wide, “deep” with souls of a thousand days– old before
Tears; splashed, still, but could not dry.
Old souls- absent, can’t help beside her; they could not guide her,
So shy of a stranger:
Discovered in a manger, so young
….wrong place; wrong time; wrong man; one crime.
The young and fair, no longer there-
the ghost of her: white with shock; crossed with shame:
the stop of the clocks of
the young and the tame.
There’s no one there who
really cares- or share what she feels, a put out flame;
the face of an angel in the devils
game….
Tricked from the stir- too late to change the
stars from her line in the sky: the lie laid
cruel and bare, a chain. A heavy weight he was on
her. No line at all…
a whirlwind swirl, sharp edges, that have no end..
Wrong was he who had forgotten, abandoned, he turned out
Rotten;
like the apples she picked off the country grass long ago
no need to pretend: still preserved
Looked up to the sky
she was robbed of seeing…..
In death till she should part
Her bruised heart breaking.
what became was a lateness
Too late it was when he found her:
unable to save so many mistakes, mistakes before that
he did make. Ruining and destroying her: a miserable fate.
An unfair game, it’s all too late
… Watch darkness appear-
It all ends here….
Olivia Morel
Hide-and-Seek Reflection
When I was six years old
I stood in front of my parents mirrored cupboard
I stood
And looked at a green-eyed,
Blonde curly haired reflection.
Who was she?
I wondered
It can’t be me…
But sure enough
When I picked myself up
She followed.
And when I looked around
Shuffled my feet on the ground
She did too.
So me and her
And our head full of stars
Dawdled along
Always looking up
To the Cedar trees
And a well-to-do breeze
Helped us through the ages.
But when I was fourteen
She ran away
Leaving me there
My reflection altered
As I blankly stared
Then gradually
I remembered how to be me
And she came back in glimmers
A glance over the shoulder
Like sunlight trickling through trees
It turned out
She was just playing hide and seek.
Esther Kearney
Growing up
It’s time I grow up,
And force myself to change.
How can I feel better,
If my actions stay the same?
Get anxious over small things,
But I don’t even try
To overcome these fears,
So all I do is cry.
And then I feel so low,
Ashamed of myself
For not giving things a go.
It’s hard, but it shouldn’t be.
I need to develop,
Change the way I think.
It will take time,
Won’t happen in the blink
Of an eye, but that’s fine.
Not taking the opportunity
To help myself.
Being positive just isn’t me,
But I wish it was.
Can’t be a passenger,
Can’t be passive, because,
Then I’ll remain as I am now (dissatisfied).
I avoid things, procrastinate,
Push them aside,
Because they make me anxious,
But I don’t want to hide.
I long to grow as a person,
Can’t let these thoughts win.
I’m capable of changing,
They aren’t forever built in.
Accepting your flaws
Is part of growing up.
And striving for more,
Though it’s easier to give up.
Emily Patel
Kitchen Table
The need to hang off your neck,
close to your breast,
in an effortless comfort that doesn’t require words.
Just the heat of your skin as I stare out,
face tacky from tears, as you talk to the room
and laugh at their replies,
stopping only to whisper secret insights into my ear.
The chuckle from your chest soothes me,
I am passive in this closeness,
sat on your lap with my face semi-buried
in a linen button-up shirt.
And you smell like home, that’s where I press my nose, 
into you to fill the hollow childish sadness in my heart.
I sniff to encourage a squeeze from you,
the warmth of a surrounding arm.
And you trace circles with a large thumb into my arm,
grounding me in a moment of gentle security.
The need to hang off your neck often returns,
mostly coupled with an ache in my legs
and a hollow in my chest that no longer feels childish but
all surrounding and cold, iced wind in my lungs.
I am too grown to perch on your knee now,
So I press my nose into pillows and pretend to hear your heart.
I graze my own shoulder with my thumb,
and ignore when the spread of tears patterns the linen pillowcase.
But when I am home, in a room of laughter that smells of you,
I feel the creep of soft security again
and know that if I asked and admitted I am not yet grown,
I could hang from your neck still.
Holly Wilson
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Featured image courtesy of Georgia Butcher.
Article image 1 courtesy of mae noelle, image 2 courtesy of ~Pawsitive~Candie_N, image 3 courtesy of Housing Works Thrift Shops and image 4 courtesy of Axel Naud all via Flickr. Picture 5 courtesy of Holly Wilson.
Image use licence here.
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