Page 16 - The Muse 2019-20 Issue

Words with Wings
How can I explain
What words are?
They can’t be defined with only a few sounds. 26 pieces of a puzzle
People can always find a new ending to
Like a never-ending song
That I want to keep listening to
Words with wings
Float around your head
Dance away when you try to hold on to them Like a dream of feathers
Words with wings
Never stay still
Like birds, never caged under the clouds
With the freedom I envy
How I wish I could just fly away
Distant flurries of memories
Circling just out of reach
When I finally manage to grasp one
When I finally hold it down and make sense of it All people see are words
Marching across a page
Making no sense
To anyone but
Me,
So, I press my pencil to the page
Try and reform the words
Into something unfamiliar
Into something organized
Into something basic and easy and bland
My peers can finally understand
Something neat that the teachers
Can tear apart and dissect
Can put into a box
Can remake into something that makes sense. Even though all that they’re doing
Is breaking the wings of birds
That just want to be free
But what they don’t know is
How hard it is
To steal the words from the sky
To pull each letter from the tumulted sea of thoughts To force the pencil to hover above the page
To catch each letter before
It
Is
Gone Claire Roades, Grade 7
Judges’ Award Blue Ribbon
16
Eloisa Ortiz, Grade 8