Poetry written in 2015.
She told me red was my color so
I painted my whole body in it.
Red was the color of my palms
When her hands were in mine.
Red roses in my hair, red heels,
I spoke red words
But red was soon the color of my skin
From being rubbed raw.
The color of my eyes from losing sleep.
When she left, I was red without willing it.
I miss when I was colorless,
When I looked in the mirror and
Saw myself.
Poetry I wrote at some point between 2013 and 2014, re-titled in 2021. My feelings on this topic are less intense, but I still understand this feel.
Black holes do not crush things because they have a desire to.
The universe exists, and it only exists. It does not want, it does not plan, it does not change its course, and it is not selfish.
Planets do not seek power. Their gravitational pulls are not greedy.
If nature is destructive, this is chance. Nature’s victims are not its enemies, are not its constituents, and were never its friends.
We can claim to be one with nature all we want. We will never be so gracious.
We are beneath her, and will never understand her. We reproduce for lust, waste life for love, spill blood for pride, and claim that she is our design for glory.
To liken humanity with nature is an insult to her order, because we are chaos.
We are emotions, we are chosen acts of violence, we are conscientious existence, we are destruction.
We are the desire to crush the universe.
Originally posted on 101words.org
When I was ten, my parents divorced. I coped with repetition. I collected state quarters.
Why state quarters? I loved the consistency. Name at the top, year at the bottom, and the pictures in the center I’d memorized: California, Delaware, Maine, engraved silver trees and patriotic birds and olive branches.
I dug through couches and coats, feeling their ridges on my fingers, always trying to recreate a full set of fifty. I always could.
No matter his or her house, no matter the struggle, I found each one and I kept them together, starting over the next day.
Why couldn’t they?
Written in 2013, during Domestic Violence Awareness Month (October)
LARISSA MALIA 