Pick up any yearbook
any place
any year.
Turn the pages,
you will recognize them.
That one:
always so friendly.
That one:
forever in trouble.
That one:
so cool.
That one:
Oh! The music!
That one:
skipped more than attended
That one:
kept you up nights,
worried about wise choices
safe places.
Any yearbook,
familiar faces,
each so unique,
every one the same.
This moonlit night,
snow glowing with
luminescent memories,
I stroll along the old paths
thinking of the mystery you
made of me.
Identity molded like play dough
childhood laughter
leaching from the cracks of yesterday.
I can’t say anymore
who I am.
.
(another character perspective poem about Lydia & Dustin)
A poem, found in the comments of NUDGE. By Shawn and Chris
.
Your mind, has to be much better.
You ‘re not getting shock treatment too?
Are you?
Not electro-shock, at least
They’re trying to make me look crazy.
Every time i go to the hospital
Strapped to a bed…
You may be fine, but
perhaps the drugs are crazy?
Drugs are how i am…
Where does one end and the other begin?
Is a place ahead
separate from that identity?
desired?
willed?
(Is this a poem?)
No,
drugs are part of the poem
Life is the poem;
drugs are just your ink.
The shape of this idea
is new,
resolving conceptually around
a
round
never-ending
novelty
what the mirror reveals of me.
The shape of this idea
greets daily astonishment
as “You can be” turns out to be true.
Who knew?
I believed me
when I told myself I couldn’t do it.
I believed me
when I told myself nothing could be done.
I believed me
when I told myself nothing could change.
I believed me,
but I was wrong.
In throes of passion
he never screams her name
and she wonders whether
he is ravishing secret loves
in his mind.
Daughter, wife, mother, student, teacher
each role I embrace in the search for myself
poet, writer, dancer, seamstress, preacher
constrained by expectations, trying to excel,
battling responsibilities, expanding my reach.
Stop.
I’m tired of being caught in this box!
I need to be free of these responsibilities;
I need to find me.
I don’t fit in this box, in this space or this place,
where I have been a chrysalis.
Now,
I a m o u t s t r e t c h e d,
gossamer wings unfolding from this abyss of my history,
from what they said I had to be–
what I thought I had to be–
I am embracing destiny;
accepting all the facets of my identity,
I have discovered
me.
