That Girl

Inspired by Ted Kooser’s poem That Was I

I was that teenaged girl, you saw

arranged on the parsley colored bed.

With ear buds trapped inside the ears

that felt vibrations of sound waves

coming in and out with each beat.

Knees bent. Eyes wet. Goose- bumped.

I hadn’t wept in pride knows how long.

The inhale of night, just to make it to

the exhale of morning. Time gets faster,

while the room gets colder. My stomach,

sunken in. Food was just a distant memory.

Instead, I let this music feed me. Yes, that was I. 

And that was I, the girl who wore all black.

The one with the spiraled curls, streaming down

from her head, like she spent hours

mapping out the exact placement of each coil.

Hair darkened. So much midnight about her,

you feel like she’s cursed or a mystery.

Trapped behind the half-ass smile,

of those thirty-two perfectly aligned teeth,

it's always head up, not head down,

their watching her now. In a couple more hours

she will climb back into her cave. But for now,

she kept a bullet proof face. Yes, that was I. 

And that was I, you saw coming home, parked,

sitting there in that 1999 black Monte Carlo,

looking down as if she were checking her phone,

an abandoned soul, you thought, waiting

for someone, or was dreading the winter cold,

but that was not so. She sits and writes

in that purple notebook, until the ink thins

and her hands grow weak, but it's time to go.

As she gets out, she clenches  the secrets,

transferred from head to paper. Soon,

they will hide in the depths of her bed.

Yes, that was I.