Hello. Goodbye. Thank you.

These past two weeks have been an emotional slump. November is just simply a hard month and I want to drop everything and live a carefree existence for a couple weeks. I can't wait for Thanksgiving Break (I'm going to Boston!) and winter break (first time going home). I want to go to a fancy holiday party or dress up and wander an art museum. It just seems that there's so much and so little to look forward to at the same time. Anyways, Friday was a really good day and I read poetry for the first time, learned once again how Smith parties are not fun sober, and am slowly getting used to the biting cold. Snow has not fallen on Northampton yet!

I just wanted to share the poem I wrote for the Open Mic! I'm the secretary of Smith's lit mag called Labrys! woo! 

Hello. Goodbye. Thank you

Hello.

He said to a girl who had forgotten the pain of frowning, of the dark, of being alone. 

A girl who finally found a place better than reality, somewhere in her head. 

You are perfect, he said. 

Perfect in the way you complete me. 

The way you smile, the way your feet are perpetually cold, the way you cry when you watch adventure time

It’s cute how you don’t understand physics and the way you love literature, plants, and kate spade

Hello he said to the same girl three months later, who slowly lost herself in return for the empty promise of love. 

You are perfect, like a charity case. 

I love you, he said ten times a day, as if simple act of speech made everything all right. 

She began to remember the pain of frowning, of the dark, of being alone. 

The terror of waking up each morning in actual reality with only four minutes of solace before having to pretend to be extraordinarily happy. 

And on some particularly bad days, four minutes is not nearly enough to mask away the pain. Everything cracks and the emotional mess begins. 

You were my escape from reality she said. Until you became worse than my fear of frowning, of the dark, of being alone.

Goodbye. 

She said to him, who gave nothing in return for everything. 

Goodbye, he said to her, the girl who was now a shadow of her former self. 

She cried enough tears to fill the ocean and tried so hard to understand a world of complete darkness.

Slowly she learned, 

He is not the solution to overcoming reality, the reality outside her head. 

Goodbye to that girl who thought he was necessary to stay afloat.

Goodbye to the girl he had once loved 

Goodbye to the feeling of disappointment that there were still signs of life every morning, that her lungs still ached for air, and her heart still pumped blood.

Life is a gift, a gift given only once. A gift meant keeping.

Goodbye to people who can’t see the complexity between her smiling eyes. 

Goodbye to people who can’t see that she is more than someone willing to swallow all the negativity in the world. 

She said to herself, you are perfect in all your imperfections. 

You are perfect because you don’t smile every moment, you are perfect because you are frivilous, intellectual, beautiful. 

Thank you.

She said to him almost a year later.

She had overcome her hatred of reality, the pain of frowning, of the dark, of being alone. 

All by herself she had grown. 

Barely a reflection of the girl he once loved. Familiar but completely changed. 

No longer soft spoken, no longer so afraid, no longer that charity case he had so willingly thrown away.

He said hello a second time as if the past is something that simple. 

She doesn’t care because she no longer desperately seeks to leave reality. 

Had she stayed, she would’ve been the exact person she promised never to be 

Someone so ready to give up dreams, hopes, ambitions for someone who doesn’t even care. 

Thank you because now she is

Fearless to be whoever the hell she wants to be. 

To disturb the universe 

or whatever else she seeks.