I was told to write poetry.
Uninspired, unintentional poetry.
Clichés running through my mind,
Write about love, about death, about Mom, Dad
Gay, straight, chairs, phones, technology, pugs.
I settled on poetry.
Bad poetry, specifically. Should I rhyme?
I don’t have the time.
See what I did there.
This isn’t art, we never were.
You remind me of bad poetry, all lines
No substance, I could hardly read your
Face, contorted like a Shakespearean sonnet.
Always too confusing for me.
A little too revealing,
You smelled like coffee and newsprint.
I dropped you like my AP Composition class,
Always too hard, with never enough benefits.
And now, you make me write bad poetry,
The irony you left behind, like your sweater
I can still smell you on my skin
When I hold it, hold you
Come back to me.
Coping out with a line like that,
And ending this poem abruptly.
You remind me of bad poetry.
Uninspired, unintentional poetry.
Clichés running through my mind,
Write about love, about death, about Mom, Dad
Gay, straight, chairs, phones, technology, pugs.
I settled on poetry.
Bad poetry, specifically. Should I rhyme?
I don’t have the time.
See what I did there.
This isn’t art, we never were.
You remind me of bad poetry, all lines
No substance, I could hardly read your
Face, contorted like a Shakespearean sonnet.
Always too confusing for me.
A little too revealing,
You smelled like coffee and newsprint.
I dropped you like my AP Composition class,
Always too hard, with never enough benefits.
And now, you make me write bad poetry,
The irony you left behind, like your sweater
I can still smell you on my skin
When I hold it, hold you
Come back to me.
Coping out with a line like that,
And ending this poem abruptly.
You remind me of bad poetry.
This piece has been published in Teen Ink’s monthly print magazine.



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