Poetry Prompt Collection 2 || Something you were told was 'unattainable' that you attained
This weeks poems
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devotion: find my fossil stuck in slate
dedicate breath to impossibility
soon will yourself: leave the state
extricate damned body from the crucible.
o’freedom from harsh cemetery fate.
who’s afraid? stained funerary
scripts aren’t accepted, taken
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I couldn't start this poem the way I wanted.
Because all the ways I wanted to start, started with an "A."
And A's make my mouth ache, my throat convulse, and my heart burn.
I try to force the sound out and instead I turn into a broken tape recorder,
Spitting out fragments, choking on syllables, drowning in my own attempt to speak.
When I was younger, it was worse.
"The y— e- e- e-” haunted my life as I tried to answer,
But I was a ball of silent words, trapped in my own mind.
Silent words no one could hear.
I would stutter and sputter, my mouth a battlefield,
Lips trembling, tongue twisting, teeth clenching,
Desperate for release, but finding only frustration.
Words felt like shards of glass in my throat,
Cutting me from the inside, leaving me voiceless and bleeding.
In class, my stutter was a cruel tyrant,
Turning simple sentences into a grotesque experiment testing how defeated I'd feel.
Every "S" became a snake, hissing and curling in my mouth,
Every "B" a bomb, ready to explode and scatter my thoughts.
So I wrote those silent words on paper,
Words no one would see for years.
I would write and write and write,
Pouring my silent words into the pages,
Chasing the unattainable dream of being heard,
Of being seen as someone special.
Even if I had silent words,
There was someone special living here.
I created a world of characters,
A world of dreams,
A trove of poems that etched my feelings into reeling pieces.
And then I performed.
Even if my own parents or friends could never hear me,
There was a world out there that wanted to.
A world that wanted to hear all the silent words,
And the millions of dreams that I had.
So I jumped, and let my silent words spill out for the world to hear.
Now, I even have pieces that incorporate my speech impediment into my art.
It was never a barricade to push through.
It was a part of me I had yet to accept.
And now I know that there is someone special living here,
Because my silent words were never silent – just a bit shy.
But let's get real for a second.
The true monsters aren't my stutter.
They're the anxiety and the high standards I set for myself,
Looming in the shadows, ready to pounce.
They make my impediment worse, feeding it ammunition,
Turning every word into a battlefield, every sentence a struggle.
The frustration and resentment is palpable,
But when every single forced breath is fuel on the table,
It's difficult to get any words out,
Even if all I want to do is shout.
Breathe, be mindful, and be the ball of words you want to say.
Don't let anxiety and perfectionism be the boogeymen in your story.
Embrace your quirks, your stumbles, your unique voice.
Because in the end, it's the imperfections that make us human,
And the courage to speak, no matter how messy,
That makes us special.
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Graphics by Rhath
