2023 Barrett Winner
3rd Place Kalimah Gardner
Sitting alone with lingering thoughts keeping me company
and a restless feeling that plagues my core.
Springing alive only to torture me.
Drowning my heart in its fluid,
ringing in my ears
till I’m deaf with its sound
and leaves me numb with nothing but
my thoughts and this cursed feeling.
I try to drown it out, plugging tunes in my eardrums.
Getting lost in the melodies but somehow
it finds its way back into my soul.
I try blinding my eyes to its presence
and yet when I wake, it's all that I can see,
all that I have to face.
They say it passes.
Like the sun slipping into night.
Like the cold breeze slipping across my cheeks.
But how can one pass when it lingers in me?
Attaching onto my heart
like a parasite, yet, it sucks toxins back into my body
instead of out.
They say it passes,
but it seems like
it's a part of me now.