Writing Prompt
Writings
Writings
POEM STARTER
Compose a poem about rejection.
This doesn't just have to be in a romantic sense; rejection can come in many forms!
Writings
I stare at the food, My mind immediately rejects The thought of savoring Something so damaging.
I feel no hunger anymore, The pain has been consumed. I reject the horrors that will come And bite the pain anew.
I am numb with confusion, These words do not add up. I will reject my image Until I am enough.
Needle piercing my skin Warm blood dripping down
Organs, pink and functioning Living
Piercing resurfacing to the thinnest layer of skin Getting infected Rejected
Organs shutting down, broken And brown Organs failing Rejecting life
Hair prosperous and healthy. Skin shining in the sun
Hair falling out and brittle Skin crusty, cracking Falling off
She steps on the scale.
Just for extra precautions.
In case of extra measures.
When she wakes up,
When she sleeps.
In her dreams, there’s a woman or two.
Slender, with fat dripping down, her skin flapping, she’s a bird flying to the sun.
There’s a woman,
She is ever so large, plummeting down to her.
She wakes up, and doesn’t take a deep breath, she walks over to her scale.
It’s morning.
Skip breakfast, you definitely don’t need it.
It’s time, like the other times.
So she kneels and leans into the toilet, her knuckles turning white as she grips the toilet seat.
She puts a finger in her mouth, failing to her throat, she gags.
Pouring all her life into the flushing water.
Disgusting.
I’m sorry Father.
I am, father.
For my father, I will ignore.
For his Father, I will sweat.
And as a bead of sweat rolls down my head.
I’ll look down.
Perhaps up.
I will sweat into the pool of Holiness.
My reflection staring back at me.
Hands interrupting our contact as they splash water into my face.
My eyes closed shut,
My mouth gaping for air,
My mother frowning.
I’m foolish.
For this weakness, that father has persuaded in me.
The nearest building beckoned me, a white cross slicing the sky like a wound in flesh, a pale welcome to the foolhardy.
Five feet to the ground might as well have been five hundred; the earth stretched wide. Up there, beside God, I could not be afraid.
He was silent, watching with indifferent eyes as I leapt. No holy hand reached out to catch me as I tore through heaven’s thin skin.
I expected too much and got only the soft grass below— a touch which would return me to my mother’s arms, to my first breath, in the hospital’s bright, sterile light, swaddled in blood and afterbirth.
Between sky and ground, in that short moment of falling, the truth I had long denied came clear—God was never there. I had confused my mother’s arms for wings, her touch for the divine.
Yes, because God could watch me jump from every church roof in the world and never once reach to catch me.
But my mother, she would still answer the phone if I called.
On the advent of change The swinging pendulum between Love and pain The somber look through The window pane
The left turn on the freeway The tumbling of the blocks You so carefully arrange And the opportunity
For them to be
New
Or the same
Or put together in an all new way
To be forced to turn around Is to change your perspective To the trail you’ve been following And a chance to correct it
And maybe this failure
In the chance you least expect it
Is a page turning backwards
To take the same words
And reinvent them
(Verse 1)
I ripped my heart out, it’s all I had to give ya,
Doesn't matter now, you're gone and took my sunshine with ya.
Left me in this dusty town, this nowhere conversation,
Crumpled me like notebook paper, no hesitation.
(Chorus)
Choked on your rejection, a bitter aftertaste,
Like the whole damn world coughed me up and slammed my face.
Guess I wasn't pretty enough, my heart not quite the right shade,
Just another face to gather dust in your charade.
(Verse 2)
Maybe I was naive, thought forever wasn't just a lie,
We built castles out of records, thought our love would touch the sky.
But the needle scratched the vinyl, the music slowly halts,
Now the silence screams your name, and I’m the one at fault.
(Repeat Chorus,)
(Bridge)
Fading, fading, like the colors on a bruise,
The memory of your laughter, twisted and misused.
I wear your ghost like a hand-me-down, a size too small,
My new skin! Guess I’m nothing special after all.
(Repeat Chorus)
(Outro)
So I'll collect my shattered dreams and try to piece them back,
But the cracks will always show, a constant, burning track.
Oh, I fear the mirror, a haunting reflection,
Shattered by the emptiness, the blade of your rejection.
Guess what I imagined today I imagined that you caught me crying And feeling miserable And for some reason, I just pour out everything that happened to me And then you wrap me in a hug Kiss my head And say it’s OK I’m here for you Telling me it’s not my fault Whispering comforting words. Then I snapped back to reality. I shook my head, knowing that wouldn’t happen But I hope it’s OK so fantasize Maybe one day The look in your eyes will say That you love me