One for You
You’ve torn through scar
Bewildered, and why?
I love you
My coup de grâce
I hate you,
for all you’ve done.
For how you wailed at night,
making me your mother
as you hated being mine.
For how you pierce me
twist me
I hand you my spear.
It is my fault, perhaps, chasing
my own tail.
Your mindless pup,
forever wandering
the lonely night, hiding
in the shadows, watching
the other strays find homes
in structures and
hearths and
hearts of many
while I shriek
in the whimper of mine.
I hate you, for all you’ve done.
All
you have done.
Moo
Who rots when the sun sets
and everyone goes to sleep?
Who rots when the rest of the town
lock their doors and their windows
and shut their curtains?
Who rots while God sits
on his throne of jewels, weeping
the death of yet another cow?
Another cow
that he designed, gut to rot?
Is this true?
Is he the one you want?
Is he the one you trust?
Look at a mountain
tell me,
what does it feel like to see
power?
Now
tell me,
what is it like to believe?
Now
look up
at the stars and scream,
"GUT ME!"
Revelations
A memory imbeds into the skin
as if it is fighting for no other chance at survival.
Gasping, clinging, aerating and suffocating
until my eyes are mirrors for the helpless.
It is merciless and will kill if need be.
What is enough,
however,
is if I can stay above current for just five seconds.
If I can count with each breath, I may
find the ground beneath my feet.
I may thrash, I may scream
and I may plant my soles where they belong.
One.
Hope is most treasured when it has fled.
Two.
I am not meant for a life in the dark.
Even in the darkest shadows,
I have clung to whatever light
I could find.
Three.
The sun has never forgotten to look at me.
Four.
If I never find the ground, I will find the lake
and the stars and the wind
and the stream and the people
who allow me to bend and break and shatter.
They will be there.
Five.
Humanity is hidden in our wounds.
Mortality is truth
and I must keep that.
Auria Brown
Crystalline
I am not good, I may never be.
My heart is withered and it storms.
Ferociously thunderous,
a child of its essence.
Should I reveal its palpitating hesitancy,
a bouquet of shrunken hydrangeas
and fragrant copper peonies,
could the rest permit a season in a crystal ball?
Could the crystalline frames provide considerable insight?
Could the bird’s nest give shelter to your eggs?
Could the shell be too shiny to leave on the shore?
I can only hope that
when the seasons change
the sun burns through my chest for those lost in the blizzard
and the moon shines through my eyes
for those buried in the sand.
Crystalline//Free Verse//21+//109//Auria Brown//This, along with many of my other pieces, reflect the struggles and fluidity of mental health. My pieces are words to the feeling and could be helpful to those unaware that they are seen and heard.//The hook immediately sets the tone for the general acceptance over the theme of this poem, leading into a vivid description of what can only be described as what it feels like to not be enough and overall hoping, at the end of the day, that what can still be given, despite, is grace.//Auria Brown is an aspiring writer/English teacher residing in the Ozarks in epic tenure with her mind of malleable stone and quirky conviction. Her main platform is her own two feet and her experience is twenty-one long, long years of life. She is most curious of the world around her, constantly taking in the wonders and beauty of the rurality she calls home. Writing mostly in free verse or prose, she finds solace in picking the seeds from her brain and planting them on blank canvases, watching them grow in the soils of sorrow and blossom for those who know, all too well, where to look. When she is not filling her laptop with grief in the candlelight, she is flooding the piano with songs of such in minor keys. Along with this, she may be found reading tales of realistic fiction, much unlike the heavy realness of her own pen, and escaping to worlds of brave heroines who forge their own paths, defying all odds against them.