Rachel

When the people to my left bear arms and the people to my right draw knives,

I pick up my pen.

 All I shed is tears and ink, wishing for peaceful days

with each stroke the hurt eases away

watching the agony flow from within, out of the pen as the paper soaks the dark ink

intertwining words together, allowing my soul to reach out from between the lines

writing only comes natural when pain steeps deep into my life

placing words together like the pieces of the puzzle that expresses my passions,

regrets and torture

loves and loss

the side effects of living on Sunnyside Ave.

When I write I think of the youth who’ve been through so much.

The ones who fall over again for the same sliver tongues,

feeling trapped in the same lies

waking up to a plastic world every morning

scars telling more stories than their vocal cords care to share

and the ones who were silenced before they could even live a life.

There’s too many untold stories that need to reach above the underground for us to be silent.

But our high school graduates reading first grade level can’t tell their story, so who can?

Placing unspoken issues on paper makes it real.

It pushes stories through the generations unchanged,

Creating checkpoints in history’s timeline, almost making promises for hopes of better times

Materializing our struggles, and letting people know we’re trying to make it out alive.

I guess I write because I got this far and I can’t be silenced on paper.