Poetry and Violence

I've been told that poetry is violence. Violence is in the things that matter--the things that bruise, or break. 

When I think about the day I climbed out the window, I think of violence. I think about violence when I think about the day that I walked around in my pajamas because I just didn't care. I think I would've been fine with kissing a stranger that day. I would've danced on top of a car, or read a poem in front of the class. Nothing could reach me--there were too many walls, too many fences, and it was so cold.

Then there was the day that I won at darts without trying. All of the days I spent shivering in bed, at school--wherever. The day I sat on the roof of the apartment complex and looked out over the city lights, the image of another city in my head. Only a handful of people knew my name, and I was fine with that. Everyone I knew and loved was somewhere else, and I was fine with that. President Kennedy was assassinated, and I was fine with that. 

The funny thing about violence in poetry is that it needs a victim. When I think of victims, I think of me eating cornflakes alone in my apartment, pretending like nothing was wrong. I think of the day I left that place. There were strangers of all breeds standing in the kitchen just a few feet away. Only a wall separated them from where I was; my skin was gone, I was bleeding on the floor, and the only thing I could think of was my mom's tone when she called to ask if I was fine with moving out of my apartment on my own. (It's more convenient for us if you do it yourself.) The violence was in the Youtube videos I watched on my iPhone that day--the iPhone with the screen that I cracked just a few days prior. I tapped at the screen, but half of it was numb to my touch (just like me). 

The violence was in the number of times my roommates asked when I was moving out. It was in the cookie dough I shoved in my mouth. In the blank beds and on the blank walls. The blueish dark room, and the closet that still had clothes I needed to pack. A plane that's dive-bombing for the ground. The passengers are screaming. The people in the other room are getting married. I have a long way to drive. My roommate left without saying goodbye. We slept next to each other for three months, and we didn't even know each other's last names. No matter how well I knew her, she would always be a stranger to me, and yet, I felt my chest get a little emptier when I heard her shut the door behind her for the last time.

It was in the country music I loathed, and the cold weather. It was in the sweater that I wore every Sunday, and the way I had to use Siri to find anything.

It was in the way I went grocery shopping for frozen dinners, and the way I drove to Idaho Falls to get a new hair dryer.

I didn't climb out that window because of you. Well, I'd say it was 5% because of you. We were trying to say goodbye, and they were kissing, and they were in my way. They were always there, a reminder. I had to leave. I had to live. I had to know what it felt like to be free, just for a brief moment, before I died.

I don't know how much time I have, but the sand is slipping from my hands, and I can't help but feel that every tomorrow will be my last.

A small child clawing their way out of a plastic bag. Like someone who was buried too early, and now they're clawing at the coffin with their fingernails, all in vain, crying out for someone to hear them. They fight, but it will kill them soon, no matter how hard they struggle. 

It was in the way I told myself I could just keep driving. I could just drive and drive and drive, and they couldn't stop me from leaving it all behind and starting over in some coffee shop in California. It was in the way the sagebrush flew past me on the road, and in the clock, which told me that I would arrive back in Rexburg in a matter of minutes. It was in the way I gripped the steering wheel, as though it were something that could snap.

But my parents looked at me with their foreheads wrinkled with worry. And I thought about my siblings, and about how I'm supposed to be a big sister. That's what made me loosen my grip on the steering wheel. That was the reason I finished the semester.

More on poetry and violence: Evening Will Come by Zachary Schomburg