Wet hair clings to my cheeks

salty from the rain

Drops like tears slide down my nose

as the gray of the sky peers down upon me

Barefoot in the grass

for a few moments

I forget about the life I am crushing below

A ransacked village in India is where my lineage began

Women.

Women, I will

And

Can never, ever know.

Tribulations my western brain

Cannot comprehend.

They made me.

I have the blood of

Hundreds

To you I’m broken

To you I’m like a flavor that wouldn’t last

You took one bite

And spat me out real fast

Now this mark remains and it will never ever go away

To you I’m broken

I stretched myself across the world

An act of courage is what I call,

 In the eye of a parent a plummeting fall.

An hour-long lecture will send him on his way.

 It just seems like another reason to run away.

These are words of wisdom you should borrow.

“To Strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Thou shalt never give up,

What is rightfully his,

Never whimper away from fears,

Never give away their tears,

Fight for what is right,

Inside the brightest of light,

With winter gone, she can THROW her window open wide

With spring arriving, she can dance in bright SUNSHINE.

This is what it is to LIVE without regret;

To know she can NEVER FORGET, only move on.

With BLUE above, so open, so clear and bright

A bright desire shines, wanting to be noticed.

Throughout the day,

she begins to lose hope, starting

to diminish as if she were to disappear.

Fading to nothing more than a shadow

of what once was.

The coffin wood grabs at my clothes

The wood chokes me

The darkness attacks me

The weariness crawls around me

When it opens the sun grabs me

I am back

This man is rueful,

This man was done,

This man let go, temptation had won.

This man was punished, for things of great crime,

This man left a sod to eat on a dime.

This man, crushed and torn,

This man was tired and worn.

I messed up with my life

Now I get held with a knife

I am out here trying to survive

I’m glad I’m still alive

I sit in JDC

Thinking how my life is going to be

My dad told me I would be aborted

To my mom I was important

I am an athlete,

trying to train hard;

to reach the top.

SMACK!

I get knocked down,

but then I get right back up.

To continue on.

To be a champion.

I am an athlete.

The start of the race isn’t always easy

They say to just put one foot in front of the other

Then repeat

How can you repeat that when you’re racing to find yourself?

In my poem “Out of this World,” I explore the theme of oppression and the ways in which Leonard Peltier’s Prison Writings and Rachel Zucker’s “Paying Down the Debt: Happiness” evidence this central theme.

Life has been a roller coaster,

it’s had missing tracks,

and breakdowns,

and plenty of bumps,

but I don’t stop.

I don’t stop in the middle of the ride,

even though there might be a downfall.

The first box of society is the family, were born into, the box referred to as home, where we are made and broken. Willingly kept within four lines, that we’ve been conditioned of what boundaries, can and will not be crossed.

I’m hanging from the edge.

Nothing stands between me

and falling but my own waning strength.

What if I fall? What if I seriously hurt myself?

I am but a girl with scars,

Not those that are seen,

The kind buried beneath it all,

I am but a girl with a dream,

Like any other you will see,

I am unique,

But still like any other,

I’ve been thrown,

And hit,