I tread softly over penny wishes

<3

This
Is
The
Story
Of
Penny
Lane.






Warning!

There may be poems in this NaPo that contain mature themes or inappropriate language. For that reason, I would say this thread is 16+.

One-


My mother named me after pennies,
a tragedy in and of itself.
Penny Lane, she whispered across my forehead
wrapping me in blankets on stars, hopes and dreams.
She wrote a future in constellations above my crib
and I watched as it spun, round and round,
straight down the toilet of life.

Two

Summers are odd in the way
that curfews stop mattering
and parents stop caring.
Everyone's out on the streets
riding skate boards
and each other in dark basements
and no one notices the teenagers sneaking off
to do things our grandmother's wouldn't approve of.

No one has consequences in the summer time
but when the school year comes back
and the lips of those teenagers are stained blue from secrets
they hid deep in their throats till morning.
Everyone knows what they did
and they can't hide the shame behind oversized tee-shirts and sunglasses
because it's written across our faces
in red sharpie.

Three


I hid my secrets under my bed,
protected by dust bunny soldiers.
I told them, don't come out and look for me,
I'm done with you.
Done with blue eyes and wide lies that span the entire ocean.
And they whispered okay, stroking my cheek and drying my tears
leaving tracks of dirt on my face in the morning.

I sobbed mud and dust for a month, my face buried in a pillow
the pink sheets dyed black from my overwhelming urge to tell someone
anyone

what was lying under the bed.

But beds aren't good at hiding things forever.

Eventually they get dragged out by dogs or mother's
and when it's the latter, the shouts echo through the house
"Penny, how could you do this"
"Penny how could you betray our trust"
"Penny your future"
"Penny, a baby"

I'm mute, the dust has covered my throat in cobwebs
I can't speak of it
and I certainly can't tell him

because blue eyes lie
and he'll say it's not his.

Five


His lips weren't the soft things they tell you about in fairy tales.
They were chapped and cracked, rough against my baby skin.
And I liked the scratches they gave me, because it made me feel alive.
When he kissed me I would celebrate the hardness of his touch.
Not thinking about--well, how soft it should be.
When he held me I didn't wonder why his fingers were cold against my spine.
When he pushed me away, I didn't wonder about the numbness I felt deep inside.
But I felt it anyway.

The window is splashed with colors, scarlet, blue and grey.
The rain, the blood and the tears.
I don't know where any of them came from, but I do know the reason is floating on the surface of the glass,
sliding down the pane.
It's all his fault.

It's all his rough words and rougher hands, the calluses flung at me in the dead of night

What's a pretty fool to do?

Six


Nine months of floating above everyone else
a balloon released by the child who wanted ice cream instead.
Everyone watched me fly away, spinning
and laughed as I got caught on tree branches that held me
pricked me with needles
whispered wind lies in my ears
till they'd deflated the life out of me.

A blue balloon in a blue sky
lost because of my unoriginality.

Poor Penny, they whispered through branches they used to cover their eyes
"Careful, if you look her in the eye, you might get pregnant too."

And I wanted to scream that's not what happened, that I wasn't a slut,
I was a victim of circumstances and innocent curiosity
that got abused by people who had no right to take anything from a girl
especially her virginity.

But they ignored me, and threw insults when they knew I could hear.
"Slut"
"Whore"

For nine months, I was a balloon floating in the sky.
And now I'm on the ground, a deflated piece of rubber that got torn by too many words.

Seven

I gave birth to the sound of the Beatles and Eagles
I listened to the words as contractions held me in their sweaty grasp
pushing every ounce of me out with the little girl
that had his red dusting of hair
and my mom's big chocolate eyes.

Nothing about her said 'mine'.
And even as Let It Be echoed through the CD player
I wept
because I hadn't even gotten a child that looked like me
didn't even have that to hold close to me when I felt the paper thin edges
light with a fire
to leave.

I named her Eleanor Grace Rigby.

Why not continue the tradition of being named after a song?

She was born into a lonely world
with a lonely mother

and her big eyes asked over and over



where do they all come from?

Relax, it's only April 4th.

@Karzkin

Oui, but when one has a week booked with no access to internet, one must plan ahead

Eight

my baby and i went home the next day
a+ for good behavior.
the nurses told me stories of teenage mothers in there before me
of the way they would scream they didn't want the baby
only to sob when the nurses listened and took the child away.

i didn't do any of that.
i sat
and watched
and tried not to think about how this was mine,
this little tiny baby
and i had no idea what to do.

who do you call to gush too when you have no friends?

my mother turned off my music after the baby was born
she told me that the baby should only hear classical music for the first few months.
where did that stupid rule come from?

classical music has no soul.

my little girl might have a father that's a husk
and a mother that's a memory
but she will have a soul.

they put her in my lap when they wheeled me out of the hospital
and said 'good luck'
and their smiles were almost believable
as if they almost meant it.
so i smiled back and said 'thank you'.

my mother didn't speak, just plucked the baby from my arms
strapped it into the seat with absurd ease.

that made me mad.

'i can do it.'

she looked at me with a stale smile and looking glass eyes
'of course you can.'

already she didn't believe in me
the daughter who tore apart
all her wishes
for the perfect world.

Nine


i flung the words i wanted to say at my journal
scribbled in red pen.
the scarlet was the color of the blood i wished i could spill.
mine or his, i didn't even know anymore.

he left town today, bags packed for an education
i would never get.
i stayed home today, weighted down by nightmares that followed me
into the daylight and sat in bright corners
when i talked or sang to my daughter
when i held her close when she was crying.
they lept out to laugh
'ha, your friends are picking out prom dresses and you're picking out your daughter's sleeper for the night.'

cruel words injecting through a needle that wasn't sanitary
and was stained with rust, tears and lies and secrets
i tried to leave under the bed.

the secret left town, in his brand spankin' new jeep
the car jumping over pot holes, into a sky i could never follow.

so i just sit
and write in my red pen
my fingers tracing out words that cut deeper than i mean them too
through paper skin and hearts that put up no fight
to secrets and lies.

Yo, that intro-post is baws. I am loving the continued progression and the play between all of these poems. I forget how much I love narrative progression poetry.

2- hehehe. That red sharpie line, I am just harken to those times xD
3 - oh dear, Penny, what has she gotten herself into!
4- This one is my favorite, I guess it's the reflective nature of all of these, but especially strong in this one. I love the intro setting itself up :c so sad.
6- Just. This line: a balloon released by the child who wanted ice cream instead. Everyone watched me fly away, spinning...
9 - This one is sad and kind of pangs. I cannot wait to see how it progresses ^^

Ten

when i was little, i had this obsession with dimes.
weird, right? a kid named Penny who likes dimes.
but i seriously collected the stupid silver things.
i had a can, the wrapper peeled off to reveal the shiny silver
fake, but to me it was real silver
heaped full of coins. i would make wishes everytime i put a new coin
in my jar, hoping that my dreams would come true- a fairy wish hanging off the edge of a silver coin
that flipped to reveal tails
an unlucky toss.

I Was Betting On Heads.

Eleven

There's this song that my mom used to listen to when I was little,
playing out of the stereo in the kitchen
when she washed dishes and dusted the living room.
It was called Ironic
and I always wondered, is the point of the song that the words she was uttering weren't ironic
or if I was reading too much into it.

My mother would laugh and shake her head
and tell me to get my head out of the clouds,
that sometimes things are exactly what they seem to be.

She was right, I think.
Sometimes, rose colored glasses just make things worse
and hide the truth from your eyes.

Unfortunately, I think, the rose paint has permanently stained my eyes
to where no matter how hard I try
I can't scrape the enamel off
chips remain,
and I'm stuck in a labyrinth that holds tight to me
repainting my eyes so they don't fade away completely.