By: Mira Kaufman

Intro:
I am Mira, a sophomore living through life like the rest of you all, so here’s some poems for you to enjoy, relate to, or maybe to make you think and question a little more.

Title: This structured society

I’m so sick of a life being given to me
To be held back from living due to school and anxiety
I want to be free for my soul wanders without me
It longs for the forest and waters that flow in harmony

My mind defines a nature as a cursive wavy line
But right now I am stuck in a structured cornered shape
With harsh sounds and gray lines

I wish to squiggle these lines into edges without corners
And from gray to blue or pink
But I have obligations
To people and things
And I can’t just pause life
So how can I change?

People make society
And with society comes structure
What if Moses had never been given the ten commandments?
Would we still have nine to five jobs
Or would we live independently
Following our own schedules of life
Instead of today’s normality?

I’m so sick of a life being given to me
To be held back from living due to structures in society
I want to be free for my soul wanders without me
It longs to be like the forest and waters that flow in harmony

My little voice can not crush
But I will continue to make dents
For this world is too stubbornly scared to change to that extent

But we will find our ways within it
We are currently forced into the schedule of gray corners
But I will draw my lines into soft curves and squiggles
I will carve my own path
I will create a life worth living

Title: To be little

I miss the days of class birthday treats
And pushing each other on the tire swings

I miss the days of car seats so when we pulled into the grange
I would pretend to sleep
And sitting so still at night watching TV
Because if I moved I knew it would be bedtime

I miss watching big kids do cartwheels
Thinking that will be me

I miss gym parachutes
As we sat silently still with big smiles all together under the dome watching it deflate
The first absolute silence of the day
With afternoons at grandmas house
And wagon rides attempting not to fall asleep

I miss when my legs could reach straight out on a plane seat
And still never touching the ending

I miss the innocence of my worries being who to sit with at lunch
But there is one thing that has not changed

Wanting to grow up

A neverending expectation of what life will be
I worry that I will never be satisfied with my age
Because that little me could not wait to be a teen
And it’s nothing compared the what I thought it would be

So I wait hoping this cycle of wishing has an ending
Where I can be happy in the moment
And still excited for a new beginning

Title: A forest in my eyes

I am human
my body is perfection
For it is made from the resources of Earth
Just like everything around it

My eyes are a mossy forest
Home to many stories
That have seen life lived

My lips are a shell
holding my voice
My hairs are seaweed
Protecting the fish

My veins are rivers reaching from one ocean to the next
They bulge and twist and twine to no stop

My shoulders are trees swaying their branches through the breeze
My fingers are the leafs holding the morning dew

My freckles are lily pads
My bumps are stones

My toes are my roots holding me down
My hips are mountains brushing the clouds

My tears are rain and my mind the sky
The sky runs everything to do with the wind
It runs the ecosystem and moves the land
My body is one with the Earth that I wish to understand

I wish that a mirror could tell me these things
I wish we could all see the beauty hidden behind our clouds
Because we make up standards for ourselves

We do not judge the sky
We do not look at lily pads and wish them away
We do not photograph mountains wishing they were different shapes
We see nature as a beauty
as a natural perfection

I am made from the Earth
My curves are like stones
I am the energy from the sun
I’m the dust of billions of forgotten stars

I am human
A magical conscious thing
I am made from the earth
Just as every single beautiful being