Praise for
Tinted Weather
"A collection of poems careless in every way poetry should be."
–Tyler Michael Jacobs, 5th year SHP Creative Writing Instructor
For every notebook whose
first page I left blank
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Contents
Four Steps Gray /3
The Pond /4
Silver Creases /5
painting the bricks gray and plastering over the windows /6
June /7
Beads /8
Empty Tupperware /9
Beauty /10
Cement Blocks and Sunflowers /11
Broken Bricks with Garden Gnomes on Top /13
Cold Sheets /14
Tinted Weather /16
Sleeping in the Grass /17
He Jumped Over Dirt /18
Acknowledgements
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Four Steps Gray
Stumbling into dandelions that burst to spread his
wishes. Gray seeds may be bigger than his words,
each one stuttered over and spat alone into
empty space, the dead man only wishes to be
heard before he drops his cards. He prays someone
will ask to hear him before his hair grows moss
and mouth turns marble. If all was done only to carve
his name and neglect his work, I shall hold silence as he
becomes no more than thoughts exhaled into soil.
The Pond
The carpet squares between our circle blend
Like waves in a dark green pond.
The surface of the water is too stagnant
For anything to escape, but sometimes the
Ideas are heard softly. Our thoughts now
Skipped across the top of the water
In the way a friend taught me just the other day.
This is our pond. We thrive to create and
Wake up to revise our words once again.
Sharing a particular fondness for our art brings
Our minds together. They push off each other
Like waves gently blown across the pond.
Silver Creases
She broke the pop tabs off cans to scrap them over her wrists.
Looking up, now his face seemed to cure all sweet pain.
This time was of celebration yet lines grew peach and pink.
Tracing over the creases on her knuckles, she watched his eyes.
painting the bricks gray and plastering over the windows
In this room a woman glances at you over her desk. Her eyes reveal neither kindness nor disdain. Throughout the day her words will change. She will embody her own fear through control and spill her own anger into the room.
In February the sergeant, a leader, just a man with a thinning facade over his mind, watches the library.
A hundred people pass through everyday. Some work, some play, some rest their minds, some rest their eyes. Many of them have never stopped to watch the woman behind the desk. Many of them have never seen the judgement with which she looks at the walls.
In April he moved the TV. The woman speaks of how beautiful the library will be when they repaint the walls. In May she moved the couches. In June they placed drywall over the windows. Thank you for painting the bricks; I don’t like the view
June
His hair’s longer now. Fallen forward like it used to when he wasn’t trying too hard. It was the first thing I noticed when we met, and when I thought I recognised it again. That first glance of how it glistened under the sun. There must have been some memory of how much I loved his hair buried in June. I had forgotten, maybe forced myself to let go of his eyes.
When I saw him that day there was a moment we shared before the shock settled. This connection was just for a second with a tight breath held between us in surprise and what I can only hope was joy. I was embarrassed by how I craved to look into his eyes until we seemed to remember again, but neither of us were strong enough to look away.
It reminds me of the weeks when we didn’t appreciate our limits of time. We never knew which day would be the last we looked at each other, the way I’ve held clear in my head this past year.
Beads
Collapsed on the ground I weave each one of my fingertips around the strands of carpet.
I believe I have a goal in this calming ritual.
My eyes are forced dark to hide from anything apart from the beads beneath me themselves.
I remember I have a goal in this calming ritual.
Empty Tupperware
I only ate cake waffles for a few months. Eventually my mother began to grow angry at me. I was eating; I didn’t understand why. I showered twice a day, usually at about six in the morning and eleven at night. The water was too hot, but the towels were nice. I looked directly down at the scale twice a day. I would always step on and off a few times at once just to see how low I could make it register. That was around the time I began spending lunch in the band room. I always did my homework, proud to be such an intent student. I sat on the floor enjoying the feeling of something colder than my body.
Beauty
She watched as
pale fingertips
caressed her face and
the mirror covered
her in smudges.
She watched her hair
fall blissfully
off to the side;
her knees were
burning into the carpet.
Cement Blocks and Sunflowers
My first thought now is that I don’t remember how to spell your name. We were too young for that to be of any importance. We were only 12 that year, laughing at each other and making faces in the school’s bathroom mirror. Group photos were the best because they weren’t meant to be taken. Breaking this little rule for the joy of it brought you into our hearts.
When we were 13 our team was connected. Playing volleyball on the left court, we were just there to have fun. This group of six was the middle school C team. And then, we were just young enough for that to be of any importance.
We were mostly 14, and it was your birthday. That week had been the hardest for your closest friends. They were begging the middle school principal to recognise your birthday the same as all the others over the morning intercom. We were all comforted by that small sweet thought that he would still say it for us. Then, for a reason we couldn’t understand at the time, he never did.
A few of us were now 15, and your chair still sat empty in the back of the band room. It was a rough black, and clean, and plastic like all the others, but no one ever dared to move it. I remember watching others gaze up at it a few times a week; I suppose I did the same.
I’m not allowing these memories to pretend I was as close to you as many others, but we were all haunted by how out of place we had become without you.
I sometimes remember when my friends told me. It was a day I had stayed home sick. On the phone after school had gotten out I was told: “She passed away.” For a quick moment I had wondered why my friends would tell me that. Not a good joke, and kind of messed up. That was the denial. I could only bring myself to say “really?” Your fate was confirmed and in that moment I stopped breathing. Standing in our office at home alone, I stared at my phone. I told my friends I loved them and hung up. Standing there in sickly silence I threw my phone and hit the ground. As my body lay on the carpet my heart evaporated into the room. Released: a scream and sobs never to be heard for anything else. There was never a more earthly feeling than crumbling beneath the truth of mortality at such a young age.
Now we are 17, and I fear that your memory has been erased from our minds. I’m no longer embarrassed by the strained words I first tried to speak for you that night by the lake. In front of what felt to be hundreds of people I only wanted to express your value and your endless love of our team. I’d never known how those words would shock and haunt me in the nights of the next few years.
It would only be a disservice to honor your name with my memories of when our young lives were most intertwined, but those nearest you will understand.
I always fear it’s not poetry if it’s too raw, cut directly out of our hearts and dressed up on a page. But what’s the purpose of emotion if we are not meant to remember the truth of our futures now without you.
Next year we will be 18. We will graduate high school without you in our rows of purple robes. I wonder how many of our classmates will remember that there was supposed to be another here. How many people will think about our old teammates at that moment. I’m sorry you cannot stand with us on that day, but you have forever changed us.
And with no worthy way to end this I just want to say, we miss you.
Broken Bricks with Garden Gnomes on Top
I see the strawberry patch
of my first home. They were never
very sweet, but they had this distinct
mix of sourness and time that I will
forever be able to taste. I know now
that if I were to go back I would
sit looking over my shoulder.
It grew smaller. The grass is sharp
and the berries are gone. I know
white paint is peeling off the
southwest corner of the house.
If I were to see myself there now,
I would be alone. I can still feel
my knees in the grass, but now their
sharpness isn’t as sweet. The dirt
is cold and my eyes are lost. I don’t
know how I am ever to still in this grass
without waiting for the future to arrive.
Cold Sheets
I fell down the stairs a few times.
Not quite sure if I was dizzy or just
tired. The stairs themselves were rather old,
the paint was chipped and the wood was
splintered. There were these little strips of
grip tape, but they were mostly torn off.
Black crickets hopped around the edge
of the room. There were so many.
Eventually I got used to sleeping beside them.
Many nights I simply passed out on the couch.
Clutching one corduroy pillow from the 80s.
Jenga blocks scattered on the floor.
A half-empty yellow red bull can on the glass
table. The drum cases were empty and the
snare strings were snapped. In a way I suppose
I did feel safe. Not from anyone important and
not from myself, but from everyone else.
There was something so peaceful about
the silence and something so calming about
the depression.
Nearly every evening my little brother
came down the stairs. He sat on the couch across
from me and we set the Jenga blocks back up,
trying to keep them from falling through the hole
in the table where it was missing a glass pane.
Each time they inevitably came crashing down
the wooden corners splintering over the glass
rang in my ears for the next year.
He loved to make waffles out of boxed cake mix
from the dollar store. They usually turned out
pretty well apart from the bits spilled and
burnt on the coils. The iron was rather old.
After a couple weeks we had made a little ritual
out of it. I think it helped cure bits of our loneliness.
Tinted Weather
Raindrops on this window roll down
Like ink from a blue ballpoint pen.
Each one, a crown for Earth herself
Their fall, for men deemed unworthy.
Sleeping in the Grass
I run, breathing in cut grass and
feeling the wind. I wish to grow into
the sort of girl who doesn’t care
how bad the wind messes up her
hair. I want to see through each
strand as if my own golden brown
is as insignificant and overlooked
as the dirt hidden under our sight.
I can smell the dirt more than
anything else. I now smell more of
God’s grass than of my own perfume.
That might be the best way to exist.
He Jumped Over Dirt
He had believed in a destination
Until the warmth of the path crept up him
For each step after realization his eyes
Ventured further from the door
And nearer each softened pound of his
Steps as they began to silence all else.
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Acknowledgements
“Four Steps Gray” debuted as the host’s closer of the SHP Poetry Slam 2024. It was also later featured on KUVR radio station.
Thank you to my classmates in SHP Creative Writing and all of Summer Honors this year. Many of you have been my friends in years prior, and I hope many more will be in my life for years to come.
Thank you to Claire Hudson for always believing in me.
Lastly, thank you to Tyler for all of your kindness and support. You have helped me grow as a writer and an open-minded person. I hope the future brings all that you could want, and good luck with your upcoming pieces.