I see the most tortured, beautiful souls around me,

being dragged down by societal standards and adult anxiety,

relying on the words to carry their hidden emotions.

 

They are tiny girls,

That wish their bony shoulder blades were wings

so that they could fly high with the forgiving clouds

so that they could fly high with glimmering angels.

They let the words dart on their cobalt irises,

let the letters consume their squishy brains,

and actualize ballads of quiescent power.

 

They are afraid girls,

that cover their mouths when they smile to hide crooked teeth,

who create elegance on cut down trees and shrubs,

with neon breezes of verse bouncing off their quivering tongues,

reciting stories of love and hurt and pain and sorrow and more love and more hurt.

 

They are insecure boys,

that have teary eyes of perpetualness,

that look in the glass mirrors and shatter.

They see a body,

a body that’s distorted by freckles and moles,

a body that society has manifested from its evil depths,

a body that's scrutinized by judgemental glances and fastidious whispers.

 

They are anxious girls,

that fall into deep pits during social situations,

descending into the fast-paced trek into adulterated boredom,

ascending into glorious fantasies of ferocious dragons and forbidden love,

hating the way that quick feeling of infinity never lasts.

 

 

They are sad boys,

that have rusty fingernails and dehydrated skin,

radiating in chlorinated hallucinations of drowning,

radiating in a pool of effervescent fluorescence

but always sinking into a six-foot deep grave of dirt and malice,

weighed down by the skulls of past mistakes.

 

They are the ones that scribble stanzaic structures,

that protect exuberant expressions with a silver lock.

They have an array of voices that metamorph into a scream at night,

  transcribe with soul-infused sentences,

 find solace only in their enigmatic illumination.

They don’t find beauty in colorless eyes,

instead, they discover vision in vintage concrete.

They open oxygenated veins, only to find glowing geraniums,

and those crimson petals splash into a kaleidoscopic sonnet.

 

I gaze at the poets who speak in cursive,

the ones who are the chosen vagabonds,

creating love, eternity, heartbreak, and oblivion.