PIE Poetry Corner #2

It's our second installment of PIE Poetry, this time with a brilliant introduction from our very own Antony:

This is an absolutely amazing poem by Mary Shittu at Harrytown High School.

Absolutely blew me away, so personal and profound and also so effortless in its construction.

Mary has a bright future ahead of her in writing if she so chooses but I have no doubt she will make a success of anything she chooses to do.

Good poetry lies in honesty, and this is one of the best poems I've read not only from one of our young people, but from anybody.

I’m lost

I’m lost. Locked in a room

The handle won’t budge

It’s overflowed

Filled with people scurrying around through doors that open

Not for me though

It seems every path I take leads to endless halls and I twist and I turn and I’m stuck

No light to fall on no map to guide me no people to lean on

I’m completely lost

I’m trapped between the middle centre and front

I’m being compressed inside out

I want to scream but the noise leaves me breathless

cry but the tears are all dried up

I want a hug but my soul is cold and I’ve been scorched one too many times it’s left me restless

It’s apart of life, these experiences prepare you for the even shittier ones, it gets worse before it gets better that’s what they all say.

When I say all I mean your mum who doesn’t understand what being a teenager means I mean your teachers who want you when you succeed but turn on you when you fail, I mean your friends who are your friends until they aren’t leaving you confused on who actually will stay. I think I’m a hard person to love, a too loud, a too emotional over thinker

I care a lot but I never show it

Should I have shown it more

what if my appreciation could’ve made u stay, you could’ve been the hug I needed, the light that shined, the road for my path

All these what ifs

What ifs aren’t reality they are illusions made up in our head to shelter us from ourselves to stop us from looking at the world as it is

I Look at myself, I really look at myself,

I belong to myself before anything else,

I am my own light that I look from , my own path that I walk down on , my own shoulder to lean on , my own tears my own screams

I am my own world

I’m no longer lost

my eyes are open, they weren’t really ever closed, they were just weren’t fully formed, they weren’t prepared maybe they won’t ever be but my eyes are open

They’re open wide and if I am a hard person to love it just means that I’m choosing the wrong people to love me, in a world where there are you and I, I’m thankful that my eyes are willing to be open.

Mary Shittu, Harrytown High School.