Completely Full Bookshelf

I have another original poem to share today! I wrote this on Sunday as a way to process some of my own anxious thoughts, and I think it bears noting that I'm feeling substantially less anxious now than I was when I wrote this. But regardless, here's my poem, "Soon enough": ******************** I love to tell myself that I’m in touch with my emotions, that I haven't stuffed my feelings so far down that I don’t know what I want or how to get there. But emotions are slippery. One day, you’ve caught them, shaped and sculpted them into what you need, but then they slip away and hide behind you, and when you turn to catch them, they dash away again and envelop the whole sky behind you, and even as they’re out of sight, you wonder where that shadow cast before you has come from. Maybe as I write this, I'll find the clouds casting that shadow. Soon enough, everything will be back to normal except that nothing’s changed at all, and those hours spent with my eyes spread...

During my beach vacation last week , I took the time to write some poems based on my own experience of the trip, and I figured I would share one with you all today! Just FYI, this poem has absolutely nothing to do with books, and some of the writing I post here in the future will be unrelated to books as well. With that, let's look at the poem, "An evening walk": ******************** It begins when my family is down on the beach. It’s getting dark, but we decide to stay for a few minutes. I walk away from my family down the shore. I’ve always wondered what the beach is like at night, and I want to go alone and see the beauty by myself. The waves are in a perpetual dance to my left, the water on the horizon sharply in focus, clear blue glass. My feet take refuge in the sand, sinking slowly. My shirt takes refuge in the wind, billowing gently. My mind takes refuge in the sky, and my tired eyes see a blue-gray patchwork quilt, soft to snuggle under, hazy as a dream. Those cl...

I have another original poem for you all this week! I was feeling like writing a poem in general, and I realized from last week that it's way more rewarding to share my writing for others to read than to just hide it away forever in a digital folder. So here we are! Here's the poem, "On summer": ******************** Summer, a time of overwhelming freedom cavernous as the sky a cleared-out mind now empty, filling with whatever it can find a postcard-perfect sun that singes the sidewalks and sucks your energy dry. On Monday my father and I decide to walk down to our neighborhood pool, and I attempt to set the world record, "Longest Time to Change into Bathing Suit, Grab Pool Supplies, and Tie Shoes." It is the second pool visit of our summer, likely my last summer before the terrors of adulthood take over all my free time. But for now, summer is just the opened and unopened books on the shelf, the oft-avoided to-do list, the wavering pool waters. My father an...

I read in the passenger seat of my mom's car where sometimes I rev my mental engines and race through page after page hurtling through an imaginary world as quickly as I am hurtling through a real one and sometimes I just end up talking to my mom my book in my lap, unopened but keeping me company all the same. I read splayed out on the couch in comically uncomfortable postures legs crossed, or leaning on one elbow never quite sitting still my sibling exclaiming while playing video games on the television but the only thing that distracts me is my own mind and even then, the best of books hold my attention for hours. I read in the pitch-black darkness before bed booklight shining knees pulled up toward me the night peaceful and not chilling and even though I am going to stop reading, I read a page more and another page and another until bedtime arrives just "leaning late and reading there," as Stevens said . I read the front flaps of books at the bookstore wondering why in...