Rare Moment of Acceptance by Stephanie Harad

I walk with abrupt
thoughts, my soundtrack
badly dubbed like an orange
picnic under a winter maple,
a helpless funeral laughing
grin pasted at absurd angles
on my mouth. I celebrate
the hyperbolic hurricane
of my fifteenth year, I laugh with
the wrong people who swim
from my thunder floods.
I am becoming the gaping silence
after I read too vulnerable poetry.
I am in love with the double edged
shame of everything
I’ve done wrong.
The sky is gray and removed, refusing
sunset, the wind is sharp on tarred
lungs, everyone is laughing too
loud and the hills demand
so much of me. The night will be
too still, a velvet blanket in mosquito
times, and the day will be spring-harsh
and I will forget that I don’t want
to understand your eyes,
the kaleidoscope of ancient
ideas tumbling through each gaze,
why we all revolve desperately
around each other. Now my breath
is as clumsy as my stride
and I am alive
with the beauty of so much further to go.