Student Poetry Collection: October 2022
“Number 5 of Seven: Kevin.”
In every decision,
In every circumstance,
In every way,
I’d always choose you.
No matter the consequences.
Whether it be your blessing my curse,
Vice versa,
Ad continuum,
I’ll always choose you.
No matter the cost.
My love is my drive and my detriment,
I love until I can not love any more
And when I can’t, I give the parts I
can’t afford to lose.
I give it all.
Even when I didn’t want to I gave it all.
Loving you petrified me.
I never knew if you’d stay or go,
So I gave it all
in vain hope that you wouldn’t leave.
I didn’t want to meet you in another life.
I love even if it pains me to do so.
I love hard and passionately,
Wholly and truthfully,
I loved you so much that
It was easy
for you to take advantage of it.
In every decision,
In every circumstance,
In every way,
I’d always choose you.
No matter the consequences.
You ruined me,
I loved you.
Cecil Timothy Sykes
“Honeybee (a romantic.)”
Seraphic,
To you I am devout.
The adoration I harbour for you is steadfast,
fervently glowing brighter and brighter.
I am seldom capable of
containing myself;
Of whom
you must know
cherishes you deeply.
Oh you,
You, ever sweet.
His eyes,
the ocean that brings me closer to him.
A sea I could never bring myself to hate.
For it is filled with such fond wonder
At the simple man I am.
As if I am something worthy of a gaze like his,
all while my singular weakness deepens,
I’m starting to believe
Perhaps I am.
Deserving? Maybe.
A divine creature by nature,
Your voice hums sweet hymns.
Though agnostic,
I am your devotee,
Loving in awe.
My prayers sent to you alone.
Honeybee,
In the sweetness of your undoubted love,
I find my answer.
I find my purpose,
Returning.
Cecil Timothy Sykes
A Challenge, Followed by an Answer
I sit at the mirror,
Staring down my reflection until my image dissolves,
My form breaking apart and coming back together,
The ripples of a tainted pond.
Perhaps, if I stare long enough, I’ll find a solution,
The answer to how I can fix this body,
Prepare myself for my purpose.
To bring someone in, to be of use, to cleanse them.
But I can’t do it like this. Not when I look like this.
Will the secret to smoothing out my shape appear?
Will the pounds finally flee in the face of my shame, my disgust?
It still doesn’t match the disgust that would be on their face.
Maybe my face will fix itself if I keep doing this,
Keep on with this thousand-yard stare,
Willing myself to look better.
Willing my jaw to change its angles,
To whiten my teeth,
To make my lips the right shape.
I just want to be right. I just want to be good enough. Good enough for them.
If I keep staring, maybe I will find accountability.
Finally, I’ll be forced to confront the truth;
This pond may never be cleansed,
Shall never be fit for baptism.
It’s your fault you look like this.
You’re doomed to always look like this.
Mira El Achhab
“Rebirth”
The many ways you have left me broken
The pieces of my heart that you've torn
All the times that you left me deprived
They don't compare to the ways I was unspokenOr the times I was left to mourn
Nonetheless the path forced upon me I survives
Though my constant hardships I was given a token
And in many ways I was reborn
My painful battles led me to be revived
So through rebirth I’ve come back alive
Onix MacAulay
In The Reflection
You're pointlessly standing there with your feet wearily joined to the dead dim floor. Your eyes float wandering around with uncertainty and panic; you can't help but feel abandoned and shunned somehow in an overflowing room of people. Suddenly you lock eyes with a bizarre yet recognizable shadow, it inhabits and mirrors your exact lonesome and outcasted impression entirely. Your eyes are glistening with endearment, you feel entirely seen from the depths of your consciousness where most would get startled by a glimpse and flee at first sight. They're not though they seem appeased and almost sedated with affection and passion weeping immensely at the very root of their soul. You can't help but plead to be eternally united to them although you know it’s a hopeless and desperate request. They gradually drift into obscurity where you may only witness them in the vivid voids of your desire-filled fantasies. You do never get to admiringly remark at them faithfully again which you inevitably live mournfully with the affliction of “ If only… I could love them.”
Lila Maxwell
Limitations
So many limitations
I have so many that it’s a joke among friends
Whether that be my skin tone holding me back
Or the fact that I’m not a perfect cis-het white girl
Yeah, I’m queer as fuck
And that’s okay
I’m not white, couldn’t be further from it if I tried
That’s okay too
I’m AFAB, yet another thing to pin against me
It feels like I’m backed into a wall
Like I’m in a room within a room
As the walls tower around me
Continuously growing
Growing so much that it won’t take long
before I’m completely isolated from the rest of the world
None of this is my fault
Stretching from colonialism and the patriarchal society
To the white supremacists that we still deal with today
How cisgender heterosexual normativity has
spanned thousands of years
Still not being put to rest
When I think about it
I can’t name one right I actually have
Or one that doesn’t come with a terms and
conditions section
I’m a person of colour
I’m trans
Not within the binary, of course
I’m aro/ace
Making people question if I even feel love at all
Being AFAB
It holds me back and invalidates my identity while doing so
The walls start growing again
I’m in foster care
Which feels about as stable as balancing on a
tightrope over a pool of sharks
Moral of the story
Rights and freedoms are an oddity to me
A confusing concept I can’t quite grasp
The fact that anyone has them boggles my
mind yet makes me so annoyed
Not at the person
Not their fault they have a life I couldn’t dream of
But at society
How I even have to stop and consider this in
the first place
Change is a must
And while people take their first steps it’s a
valley away
So out of reach it doesn’t even feel possible
Even when a step is taken someone else
somehow makes the field longer and longer
A never ending trail
3 steps forward? 300 more added to the vast space
All we can do
Is take one slow step at a time
Uri
Further than the clouds
I like stars.
I get lost in them.
Floating away,
Throughout the solar system.
Drifting to Jupiter,
Orbiting Mars.
Waving at spaceships,
I must seem bizarre.
I haven't done any chores,
Or refreshed my tank of oxygen.
I've been too busy drifting,
Alone in my helmet.
The intercom fizzes,
Asking if I'm still here
But I'm too busy in space.
Floating around,
Seldom in one place.
I watch life move on,
Safely in my suit.
Floating through this vacuum
That I hardly understand
But also know better
Than anybody
Else.
I like space.
Anonymous
A Short Dream
Replace my bumpy teeth
with the rind of a metal spoon
Let the metallic
flow through the taste buds on my gums
Cling
Vy Zersikov
Untitled
My mother washes the cars windows
A child sits in the backseat
Useless and young
My mother washes the windshield
A child sits in the backseat
Vy Zersikov
Untitled
Sometimes I can't help but think
about destroying myself
Completely and wholly
Until there is nothing left of me to see
A clump of dust behind the refrigerator
Sometimes I can't help but think
of working until I dissolve
until my skin is raw and peeling
And I crumple in on myself
now a deflated leather balloon
Vy Zersikov
“Underwater They Prefer Fins”
sucks that you only visit me on Amāvásyā / don’t need to lick pearls from your stomach to convince you of my undoing / you undo everyone / underwater undoes everyone / overwater I waltz with many shiny women / who are more jealous / less violent / more loving
there are enough men on the sand to survive a holy capsize / whose meaty hands only know your skin to be hot / crush was never made a secret / frosted jasmine rot / should’ve / you dive—tease—to quell it / sweat pearls under vermilion scale / I watch your tail / cheek / womb / neck / back / gut / chest / chest hurts a lot
don’t like being quelled / crush or not / lips chap away from mermaid waist / please understand / no stranger to the sea / only stranger to you
I come back into the water / infirmary for the wicked and loose / no place for me / bold hands palm me / make mad talk / someone told me this madwoman was building a ship
Emma Pemmann
Untitled
I sigh at your body of self proclaimed porcelain,
you say my touch breaks you
then you force my hand into yours
Star
Untitled
You painted discoloured knuckles and popping blue veins and you told me
This is art
And when I looked down and my hands I heard your voice
This is art
You drew bumpy legs and soft stomachs and you said to me
This is art
I looked in our tall mirror and with your words in my head I thought
This is art
You sculpted smile lines and acne scars and you spoke to me
This is art
I knew even before your voice echoed through my mind
You are art
Star
Oranges
I peel an orange
And split in half
I look up at you, and think to myself
"I love you"
As I hand you one half
I hope you think the same of me
Love comes in many forms
But this one
This one feels warm and right
Once more tonight
I look at you and think to myself
"I love you"
V.K
The Moon Crashes Into The Earth
I burn my hand on the stove,
When I pull it away the flesh is angry and raw and I can see my face reflected in the skin.
Every night after that I lay my palms face up and imagine I am cradling the moon.
Cradle its body until the sun rises and my ribs burn.
Although I can not sing lullabies nor soothe the ache
I can hum,
quietly and softly until my voice does not even exist at all.
Although I am not soft,
I can be kind.
I can cradle the moon in my hands until my arms are burned to ash,
I can still wake up on fire the next morning.
In January the moon crashes into the earth and nobody notices.
If I was the moon would you notice?
If I never spoke again would the moon crash into the earth?
If I never burned my palm,
If I never looked up,
Would the flesh still be raw?
Symrin Rai
