I was handed a white canvas when I was born.
When I was young,
I ran around free,
My feet memorised the softness of the green grass.
When I was Eight,
I loved going to church,
How amazing it is for our God to love each and every one of us.
The familiar faces all blended into one vibrant colour.
During the week, I longed for the warmth of their hands and their words.
When I was Ten,
The sound of the contact from hand to cheek resonated throughout the cold
house.
The light from the rooms were contrasted with the dark, black corridors,
It created the tall and scary shadows of two people.
When I was Fifteen,
I watched Glee.
The image of two girls loving each other threw me into a war I did not know the
name of,
I did not have any weaponry,
There I was,
Naked,
Vulnerable,
Confused.
My unlabelled emotions suddenly fit into categories assigned by other people.
My thoughts turned clear, yet I have never been so confused before.
Like when the blue, flowing waves wash over the footsteps on the sand,
I had to learn about myself all over again at the age of fifteen.
When I was Seventeen,
During service one week,
I had to urge to run.
My feet would not be able to catch up to my thoughts,
But I would have died trying.
My body was being wrapped with hopelessness,
I could feel the redness of my cheeks.
The label I have finally grown comfortable with,
The label which existed in the soft background of all my earliest memories,
The label which grew along, tangled, with my bones.
That label was not loved by the God I had come to love.
Now,
At the age of Nineteen,
Years of fighting the same fight has not left me with any answers.
Can I really be two people at once?
That even if I hold yellow flowers in my hand,
They will wither as I reach for the entrance doors of the church.
The pages that are too heavy to turn,
The wine that runs down my throat like poison,
Can I ever grow to love this community again?
Can they ever love me again?
Can God ever love me?
I continuously search for unanswerable questions.
Nineteen,
The age in which I had hoped things will start to make sense,
The canvas is splattered with an array of colours.
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140,552 Literary Works • 673,425 Reviews
This really reminded me of a poem I wrote but I like your poem a whole lot better. You handled this topic in a very gentle and melancholic way, its almost like someone is crying and you're trying to give them a hug? I don't know, that probably doesn't make sense.
I love the ending, the use of a canvas to convey that there is still this war going on inside of yourself is pure genius, although I think you could say it in a better way. But everyone has their own opinions about things and I could be completely wrong about what the canvas means symbolically. Another thing I really like is the use of age, starting with the purity of a child and then diving into more mature ages.
very consistent theme. I also love your concept. I think this would look a lot better as a story. As it is now it looks half baked, and that's not your fault, its just the concept you chose is so vast. There are so many things you can explore if you wrote this as a story instead of a poem.
As for the poem itself. Like I said, I love the theme and the concept, but your imagery is sort of bland. You could have phrased your lines better. I think you also need to flow your lines better. This may be my opinion, but poems shouldn't look like groups of isolated sentences, it should feel like your reading a short story that conveys not only a straightforward mood, but an implied mood. Your poem is straightforward, but it doesn't feel like theirs anything behind your lines.
Anyway, that's my two cents. Keep writing.
Can you say the story of my life?
I loved this. I really did. I love how each stanza begins with a different age, a different perspective in life. I felt like that was an incredibly personal story to tell, and I am personally grateful to have read it and know that there are other people that share my same story.
In the first section, you begin by saying "When I was young" instead of "When I was [a specific age]." To keep the poem the same, I would suggest insert a specific age?
I love the theme of being two people at once. It's actually a very prevalent theme in most everyone's life, even if they don't deal with a sexuality crisis.
Overall, I thought the poem was heartfelt and meaningful. Loved it.
Jared