Paperweight Poetry

You see your breath that kisses the cold air into a fog?  That is you making a mark on this world It isn't you contributing to the pollution and smog That is you giving air to a tree that will give air back to you Can you see yourself walking on the street?  That is you scarring the world with your heart For when you smile at every person you meet You are giving them a little sunshine they otherwise wouldn't have  Do you see your hand making its outline when pressed to the sand?  That is your proof that you existed here  That you made a lovely mark on this land And that you are here, even when death is near And until then you aren't going anywhere.  -anna sluder

Every time I look at you  It is like getting drunk on the universe Like seeing something beautiful and forgetting the words To a line you had perfected and so eloquently rehearsed.  -anna sluder

I remember hope The way it felt against my chest How it could make you smile And forget about all the rest How it tasted like sugar plum dreams And sounded like butterfly wings How one day it would shake you awake And the next day to you it would sing  So I remember hope And I know she whispers to me that "I know you"  For I never knew Hope would also be Love  And that I would fall in love with her for that too.  -anna sluder

You broke my knuckles when I knocked on your door  For after one night you fortified the walls so strong  And who would've known that I would be curled on the floor Wailing, in my own blood, that I knew this was wrong all along.  -anna sluder

They say you can hear the ocean through a conch shell So when I press my ear to it and listen to all of the seas so blue  I whisper it a secret so all the fish can hear what I have to tell  And I can only hope that the ocean can hear me too.  -anna sluder

It is not a threat that keeps our guns upheld Pointed at another bird just like us from another sky And when one feather twitches we fire and the whole world is shelled For it isn't the feather that threatens us, but the fear that it could fly.  -anna sluder