Ororo Taylor and Naveen Rimah
“The Teen Experience Through Poetry” is a recurring column that focuses on various aspects of teenage life. This column has various student-written poems featuring differing themes in each issue. “The Teen Experience Through Poetry” is a column giving the power and the voices back to the students. This issue's topic is achieving the small and large victories we lose on a daily that shape us into who we are and how we can choose to overcome challenges or become consumed by them.
Bones By: Naveen Rimah
i wish i could go back and hold my own hand
look into my own eyes through the reflection of the stained mirror
watching myself pick apart my youth
for the lies of men
that i too, am mature like their other lover
when in reality
i was only 13
i’m ashamed of my body
ashamed of my soul
my mind
my heart
hell, how can i be proud when it's damaged like this?
nothing left but bones, a crypt of a heart, flies ruminating around the closed lid
the smell is nauseating i can't bare it
how am i supposed to build myself back up again when i am nothing but
bones
rotten flesh faded into nothingness
i am nothing it feels
Doll by Ororo Taylor
My life has been a joke,
a standup special for the world, my body is a doll,
inside of a box I watched as you all received love and all I did was collect dust,
my bones began to rot and my eyes fell out of their sockets,
there were no songs at my funeral nor a pastor my life has been a joke
a sadistic set of event, unraveling like braids into your lap, instead of holding me you threw me to the floor,
I was once a bisque doll who is now a million individuals,
the shopkeeper glued me together but now I have two thumbs on one hand, my body is a art project gone wrong,
and no matter how hard I try I know that I’ll always wait in the box for someone to choose me because I am not a person at all, I am a doll begging to be who you want me to be!
Drowning by Ororo Taylor
Once again I go home, and submerge myself in the bathtub,
I lay under the water like a fish and imagine that I am no longer,
I imagine the the anxiety is my cremation and the depression is my limbo,
I oftentimes ask myself will I ever be a butterfly or will I forever be a moth,
I sometimes ask god “why didn’t you make me a housefly so I could be smushed” I sometimes feel like I’m easy to smush but in this moment,
I am nothing, I am the water, but when I can no longer hold my breath and, I cannot force myself to drown, I must come back into my body and I am water no more,
I am now fire, setting ablaze the lives of my loved ones, setting ablaze my body, my self-esteem was the first to go and the last to return to me, and just like the Chicago fire, I watch in awe as the destruction I started began with me drowning.
Death of a life By: Naveen Rimah
when your life begins to end, it doesn’t take you by surprise.
its a slow realization, that the cycles of your own pain, like clouds, recycle old trauma into tears.
the new pain,
you would think hurts more, but instead just stacks onto the preexisting wound.
its painless really,
when you get used to it, constant and continuous, the half empty cup doesn’t sound so bad.
your life doesn’t end with death,
death is too simple.
it dies with your hopes, it dies with your heart.
slowly and steadily, until you feel like a carcass of your past potential.
left wondering where it all went wrong
Air Bubbles By: Naveen Rimah
underneath the weight of my own head
helpless, gasping for a taste
of happiness
fluctuating between reality
i start seeing stars
one, two, three
i count each air bubble as it rises up to the surface and pops
along with my hope of getting better