by Maya Douglas
The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí
The world around me is cold, and stained.
The same way coffee stains my
Breath. Monday through Friday, over
And over again. It is a never
Ending cycle.
Growing up, as a kid, I was forced
Into following a tight schedule.
I would listen to my parents when it’s time
To get up for school and eat Eggo
Waffles.
There has never been a time
In my life that hasn’t been scheduled out.
It started as an innocent, harmless,
And healthy way of what my parents
Called time management.
That was during my age of innocence.
I got to my Mean Girls stage of life
And my schedule turned into when
I got to eat and when I would go for
My three-mile walk.
The exhausted, sixteen-year-old girl
Inside of me is asking why I did this.
Such a simple question that not even
I can answer to this unintentional
Harm.
I personally have always loved poems by Rupi Kaur. I tried to emulate her in this poem. Her poems are written in a way that every line carries emotion and I tried to stay consistent with that theme, rather than writing a poem using the same diction as William Shakespeare or Henry David Thoreau would. I used diction that is understandable to my intended audience but also comprehensible to other audiences. I tried to convey how the painting made me feel as the overall message of the painting regards the effects of time. But this poem is through the lens of a teenage girl and how an innocent habit destroyed her with time. I focused more on the art and what happens with time because you can see how the clocks are melting and the same thing happened with the anecdotes about schedules. I broke lines where I did because although it may not flow, there’s a sense of predictability of what the next line is going to start with which forces the reader to be attentive. There were key word choices in mentioning stained and relating it to coffee, as well as the mention of Mean Girls because it is a common movie for people in the projected audience’s generation.