On the topic of

words that seem to

slip through my fingertips:

I have always been well-endowed as a

wordsmith of sorts, these frantic keyboard strokes

mimicking my ADHD-addled mind, the

off-time beating of a chest wound too tight,

my fingers that tap tap tap the rhythms of one-hundred-thousand

stupid ideas

as they search frantically, compulsively for

syllables that I know, consciously, are

simply no-good;

consonants stuttered

by a hopeless teenage romantic.

(Hey,

that’s me.)

 

I do not know much about

myself, except for in the ways that I fail to articulate my thoughts.

I am seventeen, and I am in

The Greatest Years of my Life

except without the soundtrack and with

far less crying.

I have always been too talkative, too talkative, too talkative

(have I said it enough times yet?)

and with the sneaking suspicion that maybe nobody

actually wants to listen, a cosmic fact of adolescence

that I am trying hard to avoid taking

personally.

But I think in consonants and

syllables, and the most neurotic part of

adolescence is the sneaking suspicion

that if I do not speak now, maybe

I will never actually be heard.

 

Poetry with crisp lines and

easy rhymes:

I have always possessed the rhythm of pattern and

the nuance of execution.

But as I have grown up, and my mind has become filled

with the whirring and buzzing and

incessant tap tap tap of adolescence, I have found

that a mind as ADHD as my own cannot handle predictability

and that my syllables are no good, no good.

 

On the topic of

why I cannot seem to

articulate myself, ever:

I have never known either concision or brevity

(who are they?)

and I care too much, too much, too much about

the lines on people’s hands and the

spinach stuck in between their teeth

and other

finer

details that are so often and so tragically overlooked.

What am I but an ADHD-addled

seventeen-year old girl?

Small hands, bright eyes, green fingernail polish

that flakes when my fingers tap tap tap the next word

next syllable, next consonant,

the usual

neuroticies

of a poet who is seeking two unknown figures named

concision and brevity, and who is trying only to make sense of an

unfair adolescent world

with consonant that she knows

consciously

are no good, no good at all.

 

(Hey,

that’s me.)