Poetry

A Chance of Lightning

By: Sawyer Harvey

Broken people living there lives like glass shards ground underfoot

Crushed to be spread and crushed more

Only a matter of time before they cut someone

Crushed so many times a shard is bound to be sharp

No one ever wants to pick up glass

For fear it might be be sharp

So they leave it for another

And another leaves glass for another

What could once be seen through with clarity

Is broken beaten and smudged

Like so many people

Till at long last they are but sand

Waiting day in day out

For a storm and a chance to be stuck by lightning

To become sea glass sought out by others

One in a million a faint of a chance

To be picked up and pocketed held and admired

Till finally a trinket lost and forgot

Falling again to become once more part of the rough

Like so many people

They say love is for the weak

The hopeless

The dramatic

The brainless

I have been told that that is not who I want to be

Who I should be

But who gets to dictate who we are?

Who we are destined to become?

First an amicable hesitancy

Then a blossoming emotion, slowly coming to see itself in a broader light Then

Then fear

Fear of an unspoken longing, solidifying into a truth

So

I hide

I let my fear blanket everything inside and around me

I use a false hatred as a mask

I deceive my own mind

I am a coward

But perhaps it was for the best

My love

If you can call it that

Is simply not enough for the hatred

The dogma

Of this world

It is not enough to surrender myself to a life of confinement A life without liberty

So I hide once more

From those I love

From myself

I hide away the anger

The shame

And the hope

Spewing in my stomach

Each time I feel you near me

Perhaps this is the will of those around me Perhaps it is my own

Regardless,

My truth had finally solidified

And my destiny can never lie with you

i can’t seem to find the phrase

for the time in the late afternoon

when a hole through the cloud cover

reveals the sun, absorbing everything

in its grayish white light

like the inside of a flower

where the petals meet the stem

where pigment peels, flakes away

and light enters the world

life and death, all at once

Always hoping for more and more

as joy falls dead at day‘s bitter end.

But we are children at our core.

We‘ve found it dangerous to change and explore

as fear permeates, then madness descends.

Always hoping for more and more.

While maturity and integrity can build rapport,

soon anything else only offends.

But we are children at our core.

There is no time to rest and restore.

So we make time with family and friends.

Always hoping for just a bit more.

The year grows scarce, and we ignore

how desperation and anxiety become our dens,

but we stay children at our core.

Despite everything, the day to day chore

of it all, we may see a new kind of trend.

Beginning to hope for more and more,

all of us children at our core.

oh love, what a concept.

how she can smile at you once and

suddenly you have changed

not only mentally, but physically:

walking a little lighter,

standing a little taller,

as thoughts of her consume you. and

every word she says

is like gospel to you:

there must be something divine in there.

whoever created love

must be ashamed of themselves.

how could one sentence another

to endless agony, eternal

anguish, if for a moment of bliss?

she is my center, a one-time obsession

descended into necessity.

how fleeting this happiness could be

who wouldn’t want to fall in love?

Emotion is long lost, so deeply concealed

Within wretched history of our stars

Pain was gone when they found it’s eraser

But along with the relief of hurt, gone too soon

Never has a child shed a tear since last year

But I can’t seem to recall smiles on faces I knew

When the darkest of hues became voids

We stopped finding any of the light

There was no value to the eye or to the heart

In feeling the weight of a casted shadow

But after all the light was diffused

I wonder if people see much more than haze

No tears of sorrow, no tears of joy

Without pangs in the heart the world’s so dry

If we thought that the sand was once coarse

Now no more sweetness in soft for us to taste

Gone, the harsh sounds that strain the ears

But no one’s let melody sink deeper than skin

No fatigue that overlaps the time of day

But rested comfort doesn’t calm the mind

I think memories have been lost

For no one cares what the future brings

Rid of all the clouds, rid of all the stars

Everyone lost sense of the comparative

The kids who ride away through suburbs

On hand-me-down bikes with broken bells

Hoping with any no-ones who will listen

That they escape this place in time

A good friend describes it as a fly trap

I’ve been caught

I’ll bike down to the bay and lay in the water

Contemplate drowning myself for hours

When i finally rise from my soon-to-be grave

I'll reflect to a broken mirror of a gas station

Use IOUs to pay for sour candy

Throw them at fish until i get my fill

I’ll bring my favorite books to you

Anatomy, chemistry, poetry

Help you know what you already understand

Not about the subjects

But about me

How I’m built from random chance

The melting of DNA and those who gave it

The dominant and recessive ATGC in my cells

How despite everything i am who i am

How two X chromosomes can make a man

How the inside differs from outside

How i stop myself from being free

I remember North Dakota

I know how it suffocates you

But is freedom to me

The memories of when i was there

The thought of going back

Every time you remind me i’m free to return

I sleep that much better

Grand Forks is the last stop before Alaska

On the route i'll run on a damp summer night

In a scarlet car when I deem it time

To tear music across the countryside

To live unhindered and unknowable

To finally feel alive

the world feels empty when you're not next to me

but who are you

and who is me

and i can see it

the reflection your downturned face makes in the mirror

i can feel it through the glass

the muscles pulling taught into a frown

and i know that carnivorous feeling

something clawing at the brain

a desire for freedom that cannot be tamed

and i see it and i know it and i feel it

your neck against my hand

breath picking up

then nothing more

Like it was never even there

Then i get it

The push away, subtle denial of it all

But your smile, is crooked, cocky, and kind

Something genuine, and tasty

But still bitter, like wine.

And i see how it reflects back into mine

Wildfire boys

Wandering fountains of youth

I'll hope to tumble into those waters again

Sinking in until nothing remains

But my spirit resting

Head still and clear

Besides one thought

A collage of them

Stones my river runs over each night

Until i run from it

Rebirthed in a body

That fears 4 letter words and failure

But they are still around

Walking holy grails

Stealing my breath

And letting me fall

Deeper into them