Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Small Town Spew

This is a major work in progress for a poetry slam competition (spoken word) There is much to edit, revise, and add.

Yep, I'm one of those small town girls.
You can stereotype me any way you please.
I know what a combine is. I can drive a 4-wheeler. I've spent time in cornfields. My town is smaller than your entire school.
Oh, and I was sheltered. Big time.
It's never been about what I should do. What I could have done. What I did.
Well, it has a lot to do with what I did.
And didn't do.
You see,
I was one of those girls. A mean girl. Someone who vied to be popular. It didn't matter who I hurt.
It didn't matter whose heart I walked all over. Although, when I did walk all over someone's heart, those puppies were red hot
stilettos.
Maybe it did matter when I stomped all over your Teddy Grahams and hoped they spilled into your gym bag.
And maybe I did mean it when I poured flour all over the outside of your car.
I was never going to admit to something that was going to compromise my reputation. That was social suicide. And unnecessary.
It certainly was fun living in the moment. Living in my moment. I couldn't see beyond it.
I didn't know any better.
I was...Stuck in time.
I was...Stuck in a place I thought was the center of my world.
I was...Stuck between now and later.
I was...Stuck within my own potential.
And I paid for it.
Oh yes, I paid for it big time.
The world was a foggy window; a place unexplored; oblivious.
And what about all of the times I swore my best friend and I would live next to each other in the same city in the same neighborhood? Who was I kidding?
I should have known that would never happen.
At the time, life seemed so simple. Like lemonade.
And then there was someone who I thought was the love of my life. We all know how that turns out in high school. (It doesn't, in case you were wondering.)
In fact, looking back, it was probably more of a train wreck than Romeo and Juliet--at least before they killed each other.
But I was stuck. Again.
I was...stuck between love and war. Fighting for something that was never worth fighting for. A lost cause.
And instead of waving the white flag, I continued to fight harder than ever only to run directly into hostile territory.
But I was headstrong and darn it, this was my dream.
A dream deferred is more like it. Did it fester in the sun? Why, yes it did. It burned the very edges of my soul until I was convinced that love would never exist for me again.
Naive. Sheltered. Gullible. What a package, eh?