Beautiful Yet Dangerous - A Book of Poems

Ode to Spectacles (change hurts)

change hurts in a burning kind of way, like
glasses raised to catch the sun, intensifying
bright, sharp glare 
through lenses you thought were supposed to represent knowledge.

(why would a bookworm ever burn
a book, or a worm?)

change hurts deep in your chest
when you can feel it wriggling around
cavity filled with hollows 
where something was supposed to be, but it's lost now. 

(I'm not saying change isn't important, by the way. 
it's what makes us who we are.
just that who we are aches sometimes.)

change hurts like
out of breath
muscles burning, everything burning
but you don't know what you're running away from, only that you can't stop and can't look back.

(if you do, you'll see it. you don't want to 
remember. because it'll hurt all over again, worse than this.)

change hurts like running barefoot
back and forth down the halls of your house, throat raw from screaming
"DON'T LET LOLA DIE!"
she's your dog, you love her, please, PLEASE-

(you get home from elementary school one day and she's not there. your parents tell you
that she's gone.
they're fucking cowards, and took her away when you weren't there.
you want to rip them to shreds. you're powerless, more than you have ever been.)
(you used to
have a punching bag. sold that
a while ago, don't even remember when.)

change hurts like running over a raccoon at eight-thirty PM, driving a car
at night in the rain for the first time 
and it's dark and the road's wet and your dad's sitting in the seat beside you and you thought you could speed up a little on this stretch but it leapt
out just as you turned the corner. 

(there was nothing you could've done. there was a car behind you. it's dark and the road's wet. 
so you grip the steering wheel until your hands ache
and you don't cry. you bite the inside of your cheek until you can't feel
anything else.)
(dad had a red Volkswagen once. he drove you to preschool in it, played 80s new wave and gave you your taste in music.
he sold the car a few years ago. the garage felt empty for a while
without it, like getting your braces removed after five years.)

change hurts like getting braces. 
your teeth ache and you wonder
when it'll be over
even though you know your smile will be nicer in the end. 

(eight to thirteen. eight to thirteen. 
that's five years of braces. and to think you still brag about having all your baby teeth out by age ten.)

Parker got braces this week, which we all knew was going to happen eventually, and glasses last week, which we didn't. last time he went to the eye doctor, they said he had 20-20 vision, but that was before 2020, and since then he's strained his eyes on computer screens and he's nearsighted and needed glasses, so now he has glasses, which he got last week. 

he used to love you more than anything else in the world (besides Mommy and Daddy, of course). now he'll do anything he can to get on your nerves, under your skin. there's pictures of the two of you in a calendar when he was one year old and you were three years old, and one of the pictures has the two of you in fairy tutus and his is bright pink and he's beaming ear-to-ear because he used to love you more than anything else in the world. 

in the back of that picture, your dollhouse is visible, sitting on the right side of your bedroom. it's been moved since then, now leans against the front wall, the same one the door is on. it's a shelf, not a toy anymore; papers and trinkets and things you'll never play with again fill its rooms instead of tiny furniture and Barbie dolls. you never really liked Barbie dolls, anyways. LEGOs and stuffed animals were always more of your forte. 

the other pictures have you and your brother and family doing various other things; going to the farm - there's the time your brother punched the chicken that bit your thumb a year earlier - picking up a caterpillar and beaming at the camera - your shirt has a heart on it with the colors of the pan flag, but that can't have been intentional - oh, and you remember that Halloween - you'd gone as a cat and worn your brother's paw-mittens, which were a size too small but kept your hands warm. your hair used to be blonde, but it's darkened to brown now. your parents looked so much less tired. 

change hurts like holding an unloaded gun and crying
because you're scared of the world 
and yourself and sometimes
you don't want to be a part of either anymore. 

(it was all sharp edges and ugly dark metal and it was heavy and the click of the trigger
was so soft and it terrified you.)
(that was the first time you ever drove, ever. it was snowing. 
you crashed into one of the trash cans in front of your house. dad was yelling. he still let you hold the gun.)

change hurts because you'll never be naive again. 
the world is falling apart 
and you know it
and you do nothing. you haven't done shit. 

(what can you do, anyways?)

change hurts because you'll never be naive again.
you'll never be able to look at yourself
in the mirror wearing pink and be happy
with what you see. 

(you're not a girl.
you're not sure what you are.
you wish you could be happy
in yourself.)

change hurts in a not-physical way as you stand there 
and look at your brother's glasses
and look at the road ahead of you and not the dead raccoon behind
and look at the dollhouse-turned-shelf on the front side of your room
and look at nothing because you can't see past the tears
and look at this stupid little calendar from 2013 when you were blonde and you got your brother to wear a tutu
and look at the gun in your hands on a snowy January night after crashing into one of the trash cans in front of your house
and look in the mirror and smile to see your braces
and look in the mirror and smile, but focus more on the bags under your eyes
and look at your half-empty garage, because the red Volkswagen you grew up with is gone. 

change hurts because you'll never be three again,
pretending to need glasses to see
because you thought it was a funny game to play. 
your brother actually needs glasses. 

(he's still an annoying little brat, but you love him to death.
no matter what changes, you'll always love him.)

--

this is messy, and it's one in the morning. I was just thinking about this spotify playlist I made earlier called "songs you listened to while sitting in the backseat of your dad's red Volkswagen on the way to preschool" and the fact that my brother got glasses really recently, and then I started thinking about this calendar we have of pictures from when we were little, and then I kinda just remembered all the other ways my life has changed. I feel like I could've formatted this better, maybe talked a little more about my struggles with my own identity rather than the world around me changing, but I think it's still kinda decent. maybe. I don't know, it's one in the morning right now, I'm probably not coherent at all. this was more for catharsis than for anybody else.