by Lizzie Mueller
Lizzie Mueller (they/she) is a Secondary Education and English major who has been writing their entire life. They seek to explore human emotions and connections in their pieces, and use writing to cope with their own feelings. Lizzie dedicates this poem to their best friend Katelyn, who was a source of light in their life until they lost her to suicide at the peak of their teen years. Lizzie hopes this poem can reach others in their own way, and inspire perseverance through life’s difficult emotions and challenges, spreading the message that in life you’re never truly alone.
I was orange, yellow, red
forking out of a thick brown body
that promised to let me go
In summertime I grew green
malachite and peridot
arms reaching with little help
I stretched to reach
the snowflake obsidian sky
who whispered its misty music in my ear
I worked with the wind
Fighting for fluorite freedom
distorted fingers anchoring me in
Surely the white witherite winter would
carry me away
into the peppered vault above
But snow melted
into moonstone mud puddles
and I remained soggy and sorrowful
I was chomped on
by copper caterpillars
and beetles bathing in burmite
I was infested with gloomy, guileful
Golden garden spiders
obscuring my mind with a sweltering stickiness
I felt the tanzanite ticks
resting swollen bellies on my shoulders
seeking shelter from an abandoned carcass
I sipped from the soil below my feet
from shrinking straws of dwindling life
suffocating in a silver silence
withering and wilting,
I waited for water to wash me
with diamond drops of damage
but instead I stood
in a sapphire spring
swarming with bixbite bees
feeding life into my veins
Vivinite vitality venturing every
inch of my skin
and as I breathed a fresh breath
of the new neptunite sky
I tumbled into a distant death
But instead of descending
into a gray ground grave
I glided in the serpentine sky
and a panting puff of
amethyst air ascended my spirit
a strength so strong
that where I’m going is a secret
only I know
it’s where I belong