Something a little different today. We just found out that my thirteen year old daughter won a prize in a writing competition held by the Knoxville Writer’s Guild this past May. I’m so proud of her. She finally let me read her poem and I thought it was beautiful. I asked her if the poem proceeded from an in-the-moment emotion or if it was a place that she stayed in. She said it started off as an in-the-moment emotion and then it just morphed into describing other girls she knew and Middle School.
She’s a Girl
by Ruth Heneise
This day
That the lord made,
She needs first aid
Cause she’s dying
Of fright
She lives in the dark of night
she lost the spark of light
And of potentiality
She no longer wants to be
A doctor, dancer, astronaut
she stopped tryin to dream, stopped tryin to flaunt
Her body and her vocals
You wonder why the locals
Don’t know she exist
Its cause she didn’t persist
They think she’s thirteen and lean
But she’s lanky and she’s cranky
Her feelins
Are wheelin
Out
And about
She’s beat on the street
Beat down she’s gonna drown
Cause she’s sinking
Cause she’s always thinking
Trapped
But overlapped
By the hope
That she could cope
With humanity
But that future is grim
As dim as
The light (that ain’t bright)
Behind the eyes
Of the girl in disguise as
A person
But the truth is worse than
The fear.
It’s clear
To see
Cause,
She doesn’t
Just
Have fear of isolation
She isolates herself
Removed from the shelf
Of comfort
which is dirt
Dirt cheap
She got her clothes from her bros
And her charm from karm
karma(if she believed in stuff like karma)
Would be on the down side
Of good to
AT LEAST I TRIED
But she’ll pause this ramble
Cause you stopped trying to unscramble
The message behind
This waste of your time
So she’ll give the explanation
To satisfy your expectation
And she is
A poem
A world
the essence
The presence
Of words so beautiful
Words so tactful
Words so thesaurical
The world is a poem
The poem is a world
She’s the world
She’s a poem
She’s a girl
Life With Esther 