It’s Poetry Tuesday! We are going to go back through all my old notebooks and look at the god-awful poetry I wrote when I was an angsty teen and then you will get present day Michelle’s re-interpretation/headdesk horror-filled embarrassment.

Heartbreak

It’s all in my head
The signs that I read

You weren’t looking at me
We could never be

I’m nothing to you
But I never knew

To have your hopes up so high
Only to be left high and dry

My throat is perpetually thick
With tears I refuse to let slip

You had me star struck
But now I’m out of luck

Life bites
Especially these restless nights

Whenever I space
I see your face

The words you spoke
I wear them like a cloak

To protect my heart
From all who would tear it apart

---

HA FUCKING HA! NO SUICIDE OR MURDER OR DOMESTIC ABUSE OR CUTTING OR ANYTHING DEPRESSING AS….okay so it’s a little depressing, BUT THIS IS NORMAL TEEN ANGST!!! FUCKING THANK YOU!!

I feel like unrequited love is very safe territory compared with all of the other poems Baby Michelle wrote previous to this one. I am not in love with the format of the poem, the stanzas are only two rhyming lines (you can’t even call them couplets Michelle!) which gives the piece a very broken up and staccato rhythm that I am not enjoying. The rhyming is also not well done – “thick” and “slip”? Maybe next time Baby Michelle!!

I get a bit of an Éponine feel from this poem (musical not book, I still have it on my list of books to read). Except for, you know, the main character of this poem doesn’t die (at least not in the poem). I think this poem is also another good example of my classic martyr complex. It is almost the beginning of Nice Girl(TM) territory.

Oh fuck.

I think I know what this poem was written about. I mean there is no guarantee, but this sounds like the end of the crush I had nurtured for a friend/acquaintance. We had known each other since we were really young because our siblings had hung out. We had never really been close, but I think in middle school/high school (everything is SUPER foggy with timelines) I started to romanticize him because he was brash and loud, and was what passed for a “bad boy” in my estimation. Long story short, we hung out as friends, I was harboring a burgeoning crush on him and painting little narratives in my head and then one day he says, “I could never be attracted to you because I’ve know you since we were like two.”

Whelp! Crush successfully quashed! I think I got a lot more assertive with him after that. You want me to do that thing? Well the last time I did the thing you fucked with my work. So unless you keep it the way I originally presented it to you – no.

God, now I’m just remembering that horribly embarrassing dance from middle school and it is now officially time to sign off before I can’t concentrate at work all day due to horrifically humiliating middle school memories.

I bid you adieu!