bbc poetry corner

From Shadow to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sunrise</st1:place></st1:City><o:p></o:p>

Growing up came with its good times and bad times, heartaches and pleasures, tears and laughter. Sometimes it wasn’t easy, at other times it was great. As a child I thought that life would just fall into place, but ninety nine percent of the time it just doesn’t work that way. You have rings to jump through, obstacles to dodge and downfalls to climb from. That is one thing I have learnt.<o:p></o:p>

Life is a rollercoaster that everyone is on, right until the very day they die. The only difference is, on this ride you chose the way you want to go, you chose the direction you travel and at what speed. You are the entertainer and the entertained. The only thing you don’t control is who may join you at a bend or turn a different way at the next corner. I have just gone round the first loop - passed childhood, into adult life. <o:p></o:p>

Now let’s go backwards and upside down�?Rewind.

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Words�?Just Words?<o:p></o:p>

I sat and read the screen in front of me, again and again. This was the fourth time. Tears were streaming down my face by now and they had been for the past ten minutes, but I couldn’t stop reading. Each word hit me even harder than the last and every time I read those words again they sank even deeper into me than they had done the time before. I couldn’t understand it and I laughed to myself because of what some people would think if they saw me in this state. How could something have touched me so deeply? It was if these words had been written for, or by me, because for as long as I could remember, that was exactly how I had felt.<o:p></o:p>

“I am�?Nothing<o:p></o:p>

I am aching<o:p></o:p>

I am breaking<o:p></o:p>

And I dare not let it show.

-<o:p></o:p>

I am crying<o:p></o:p>

I am dying<o:p></o:p>

And no one wants to know.�?lt;o:p></o:p>

What I had read were the words of a little girl - younger than myself at times and I found it so hard not to cry, because we were decades apart, over forty years and yet it was as if we were just the same. I’d read poetry and stuff before, Sylvia Plath for example, but none of her writing had ever made me feel like this. This was different. They weren’t just words to me. I knew that.<o:p></o:p>

The bar in the margin reached the bottom of the screen and I dragged it back to the top again, embedding myself once more into the words of someone who I felt I knew as though I’d known her all my life. I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my grey cardy, it was stained black from the mascara and eye liner that had ran into an inky mess. Not only was I crying for me, but also for the little girl inside those lines, a little girl with a wonderful voice that only her paper could hear. I had waited for someone or something to relate to for a long time, I’d wanted someone to tell me that I wasn’t on my own in a world of harsh judgement and the questioning that I used to submit myself to. I needed someone to let me know that they had found somewhere to go where we would be safe.<o:p></o:p>

That’s what the little girl gave me in her words�?And in the little girl herself, I found a friend.

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A Meeting of Minds

<o:p></o:p>

With miles between<o:p></o:p>

And decades apart<o:p></o:p>

Her words were the first<o:p></o:p>

To touch my heart,<o:p></o:p>

At last the key<o:p></o:p>

To open the door,<o:p></o:p>

The flood gate,<o:p></o:p>

The dungeon,<o:p></o:p>

My mind<o:p></o:p>

And more.

-<o:p></o:p>

To cut the chains<o:p></o:p>

Restricting flight,<o:p></o:p>

Releasing fears<o:p></o:p>

Into the night,<o:p></o:p>

The master alchemist,<o:p></o:p>

The blend refined,<o:p></o:p>

Within her words<o:p></o:p>

Myself entwined.

-<o:p></o:p>

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