This is how a poem begins.

I adore watching you bloom.

thoughts from a wondering mind.

Flicker, by Amarys Dean

FISH TANK: A POEM

I have locked myself inside of my car in the middle of the school parking lot.

I can still hear the ringing of the bell that caused us to scatter out of the school like ants escaping from a disrupted colony ringing in my ears. I am no longer a fire ant, but a caged animal, and I’m not sure who the metal barrier around me is supposed to be protecting. I still don’t feel safe.

I am thinking about how the glass at the zoos muffles the sounds of the animals, and how you might miss their cries unless you stopped walking and got right next to the glass. I don’t want to be seen, but, at the same time, I am hoping and waiting for people to stop walking past me, stand next to my car, and listen.

I am laying down in my back seat like a wounded animal, and my screams are being muffled by me burying my face into the seat. I no longer feel like a caged animal, but a fish inside of a tank. I don’t know how long I have been crying, but I feel like I am drowning. You can’t hear noises in the water unless you are below the surface yourself. I feel like I am the exhibit in the aquarium that everyone ignores because whatever’s in the water is hiding under a rock.

My head feels as though it will explode, I can’t breathe, everything is blurry, my chest hurts, I can’t stop crying, and I have convinced myself that I am dying. When my cousin was three, he would have died if my dad had not performed cpr on his blue, limp little body after he was pulled out of the pool. Now, he is eleven, and he knows how to swim, but I don’t have the heart to tell him that you don’t need water to drown.

Now, I am wishing that I had been the one that drowned that day.

I am sitting in a fish tank, I have no gills and I can not breathe.

My screams are silent, nobody can hear me, and I am kicking the inside of the car to try and make some noise, but everyone has gone home by now.

I am able to breathe again and I have grown a pair of lungs.

I am sitting in a zoo after closing hours, and all I can do is practice my roar and try to be heard again in the morning.

-amarys dean

“I wish that you still loved me. Please, come home.”

| Postcard #2

About Endings

Everything has an ending.

Today, my shift at work ended, and I walked to my car. On the way home, I listened to Balance and Composure, and I thought about their breakup a few months ago. Two years ago, my friend and I saw them at the Mohawk. I wish that I had known that it was going to be the first and last time I saw them live. I would have gone a little crazier, I would have stage dived, and I would have brushed up on the lyrics a little more.

On the drive home, I also had my window rolled down. The sunset looks prettier without glass in front of it. I thought about how days end, and how, on the end of this particular day, I didn't cry on the way home because my sadness had temporarily ended. I started thinking about the ending of more things.

High school had finally ended, and I had graduated. I was eighteen now, and being a child had ended as well. Friendships have ended, and there have been times when I wished that my ending would come sooner. There were times when I didn’t want to see another sunset, hear another morning dove, or get myself out of bed. There were times when I wished that I could drown in the crowded hallway’s sea of bodies. Sometimes, when I read I count how many pages there are between where I am and the end of the book. I wish that I could just be patient, enjoy things instead of worrying about when they’re going to end.

I think about the future too much. I think about the inevitable. I wish that I had known when the last time was going to be the last time.

I would have stage dived, I would have told you that I cared for you and made you understand that, I would have told you that I loved you, I would have spit in your face and told you to go to hell, and I would have gotten the courage to start a conversation with you instead of biting my tongue out of fear that I would say something stupid and stutter, like I do every time that I get nervous.

But I’ll keep the window rolled up so nobody has to listen to the music; if they don’t ask, then don’t tell. I’ll keep quiet. Does the end of something even matter if nobody cared enough to be a part of it’s journey?

-amarys dejai

6/29/17

I have never been good with words, so let me trace the phrase “I love you” onto the skin of your back and down your spine as we lay in bed so that you fall never fall asleep feeling unwanted.

afraid of the unrequited

If you are afraid of the unrequited, there is a chance you might have learned it from a parent. and you were probably young; children are too impressionable. it lingered in the air and echoed through the silence when you asked your mom when you were going to see dad again. the word “unrequited” is a taste bud on the back of your tongue that will always remind you how even the sweetest things turn sour.

if you are afraid of the unrequited, you will start to type a message to your friends because the loneliness has become to heavy, but you will always be stopped by the sour taste of trying to swallow your pride.

if you are afraid of the unrequited, you might apologize for yourself every day and tell people that you wouldn’t blame them if they cut you off. maybe being alone will feel a little easier if you are certain you did something to deserve it.

if you are afraid of the unrequited, you might go out in public to make sure you are seen

talk to yourself to reassure yourself that you have a voice

watch strangers converse to convince yourself that everybody has somebody, even you

you might write poetry to try and teach yourself the lessons on the love that was never requited to you.

An excerpt….