maybe running away isn't the term for what i did.
i didn't run at all. i had already been gone the first time - i had been dropped off, in fact, by my mother. from that point, it was just a matter of staying in the little room with the old table that had heard all our secrets over the winter, until it closed and my friend offered me a spare room. they called it a 'peer' group, because 'youth' group was too religious (and god knows we didn't need any more of that), and 'support' group was too correct.
the old table tasted my tears that night, one out of four phones missing from its surface, and along with it a myriad of secrets - like the little flags in my bio, like the love of my life and the little flags she hadn't put in hers, like the deep thoughts and the 'i love you's and the 'someday it'll be okay's we shared while i spent a hundred nights shaking and breathless, head under the covers, brightness never low enough, my mother's footsteps downstairs, coming upstairs, cracking and sighing as i'm praying and praying, 'please god don't let her know i have a phone', 'please god don't let her know i have a girlfriend', 'please god don't let her know i have a self' - please, god, don't let my mother see the myriad of secrets in the phone missing from the old table.
i told my 'peers', if 'peers' meant 'family', how she'd forced me to write down my password. i shook a little more than usual when she asked me this time if i'd contacted anyone on her blacklist - which happened to be mostly the same as my list of people who loved me. my poker face dissolved; i don't think i ever really had one. i think she knew the whole time. mothers move in mysterious ways.
i was 18. my peer-family told me, in exchange for the tears on the old table, that i'd been stolen from. i hadn't even considered that; if your homeland is ruled by a tyrant, to whom do you report a crime?
i learned that when you overcome the fear of it all, you report it to yourself. you create your own homeland.
i didn't run away the first time. really, i just stayed home.
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141,257 Literary Works • 674,331 Reviews
part one of a series (?) all about my leaving home
hiii! first off, i just want to say this is very relatable and i also do really hope you're doing alright right now.
I really really enjoyed the quietly devastating tone of this work and how you blended narrative with great lyricism!
this is beautiful. i find it amazing how the old table is a witness and a confident and this sort of silent archive of secrets! and it gives the reader something physical to anchor themselves on while trying to navigate the tossing and turning emotional shifts. this also ties into the missing phone, winter secrets, and the footsteps on the stairs! this is actually so great im so so so impressed c:
in my opinion the voice here is really really intriguing because of the fact that it's vulnerable but still doesn't quite fully shift into self-pity, like you're almost learning how to speak freely.
when you say
i love how you reframe the escape as an act of recognition (in my eyes)
this is so beautifully written im in awe c: great great great work!
Hi ana! And a warm welcome to Young Writers Society - happy to have a chance to read a little of your work for review day and always glad to have another poet among us. I saw you commented that this poem was inspired by real life - and I am so sorry you went through what is described, without knowing all the details, I hope you are now safe have a sense of family / support!
As 4revgreen said, I think you chose the right format for a poem like this - the prose / paragraph form works well for the narrative driven poem.
You also did a good job incorporating imagery and internal dialogue to communicate the severity / fear of those moments for the speaker when their mom comes to check on them, and they feel it seems like that phone is their life-line and their one connection to their support that they must hold on to.
I didn't quite understand the "running away" metaphor - the poem says the speaker ran away, but didn't run away - I guess I'm not quite understanding exactly what is meant by that? Do they mean they ran away from their true self in a metaphorical sense or am I missing something here? I would love to see you do a little more with the home metaphor of what is home and what does creating a home / family mean - I think that is a strong metaphor / image within your poem for sure.
Personally I thought this line " if your homeland is ruled by a tyrant, to whom do you report a crime? ... you create your own homeland" was the most devasting. <3 ooof. that packs a punch and puts things in perspective. When the one who is supposed to protect your safety is the one violating your well-being, what can be done? It sounds like as a child you / the speaker were put right in that very heart-aching predicament with no options. My heart hurts for children that don't feel support and love from their parents.
Thank you for sharing this! Please let me know if you have any questions about my review or wanted feedback on something else specifically.
All the best,
~ A
First of all, I really like the choice to write all in lowercase and not use capital letters. It makes it feel more emotional and desperate, really highlighting the panic and claustrophobia of running away and ending up in a group home like this. I assume this is you writing from experience, and I can really feel the emotion running throughout the whole piece. The very long, run-on sentences do a good job of showing how you, or this narrator version of you, might have been thinking- thoughts racing fast, etc. Still, especially that second long paragraph, I would try to break it up into at least two separate sentences just to make the flow a little better.
One of my favourite lines is ''please god don't let her know i have a self'' which is just devastatingly beautiful, and captures that feeling of a family who don't, or won't, accept you for who you are. It escalates the worry from something concrete, like having a phone, to something existential.
Putting 'peer' and 'youth' etc in quotes was a great touch; I wonder if you could play more into this and come up with new terms that you also put in quotes, if that makes sense, rather than reusing the same ones.
Overall, this is a beautifully written piece, and if true, I hope you are in a better place now. You are a very talented writer and able to capture emotions through syntax and grammatical choices <3
thank you so much for the review! it is from experience, yes, but i have my own place now <3 im honored you enjoyed the piece :]