Poetry by Laurie Schreur

                   Elo Vazquez CC



Be

​
When is the age to put down childish things and become grown? To give up on fantastical notions and throw away dreams, to put youthful things away and become an adult?

Was this where I thought I’d be ten years ago? In tears every night, melancholy phrases, lyrics, poetry, buzzing through my head constantly, one hundred miles per hour, heart beating fast, too fast,

breath hitching in my chest, drinking cup after cup after cup of coffee until caffeine replaces the blood in my veins and I don’t know who I am anymore and now my heart hurts, please make the pain go away.

When will young girls stop having to grow up fast? Learning to develop a thick skin, too thick, not letting anyone in -– ever, pushing people away until no one cares because we don’t let them, not letting ourselves be loved because we were told we don’t deserve love, we were told we weren’t good enough.

Was growing up supposed to be this soul-crushing? Gut-wrenching? Somehow, we withstood the vicious fight because we were resilient (why?), we became unbreakable when we didn’t need to be. Childhood is a fight we survived only to find ourselves fighting more as adults.

When will we be able to stop fighting?

When will we be able

to simply

be?

​



Death Sentence

Gripping tight,
F
         A
                    L
                        L
                              I
                                       N
                                                G
fast, never alone – not anymore. Falling together, too fast, too deep, ever deeper.

Reckoning has come – our world is dying. A death sentence is slapped like a name-tag onto each fresh-birthed child, no longer safe in its mother’s womb.

Humans exist in a world purely and wholly designed for hands to touch. We cannot keep each other safe anymore. Bear hugs and kisses are threats, handshakes and high-fives risk destruction.

As barbed wire encloses on our lungs and our faces become pale, as our skin becomes a map of all the ways we hurt, the darkness suffocates, pulling the air from our lungs like a clown’s handkerchief, pulling out the life inside us – there’s so much of it! And we grasp for moments of the clean air of hope, the moment our mouths expel the aching despair that replaced the air in our lungs.

We search for that addictive drug: DIS-TRAC-TION. Something, anything that will keep our minds from worrying about the unknown.

It’s coming closer, the icy grip of dread creeps in, its bony fingers grasping your heart, squeezing the blood out of it, replacing it with emptiness. Bone marrow shifts to liquid terror and the cold, sharp, white bite of loneliness latches onto your skin like a vampire, sucking the life from you.

Lives are transient, we live on edge, waiting, wishing that the darkness won’t grasp our ankles and pull us back to purgatory.

Feeling is fatal.

The moment of eternal reckoning has come, our fate has broken the seal on the lips of life.
Death grips our shoulders, reverse-CPR takes hold of the life within us.
As we breathe our last, we wish,
for a moment,

that we had done things differently.

​

Laurie is currently working on her Bachelor’s degree in Professional and Creative Writing. She enjoys writing Poetry and Creative Nonfiction, and is in the process of curating a collection of classic novels. Her favorite authors are Roxane Gay and Jane Austen, and her favorite poets are W.B. Yeats and Pádraig Ó Tuama. Her favorite pastimes are traveling, drinking coffee & tea, and reading poetry.

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