A Poem a Day

Keeps the heartache at bay

Author: B. N. Serraty

  • Goodbye For Now

    Goodbye For Now

    Bittersweet goodbyes, what do they taste like?
    Is it wrong to feel relief in them? A song played on the radio a thousand times. Is it wrong to change the station?

    Bittersweet goodbyes, fading into the background while the credits roll and the theme song plays one last time.
    Is it okay to fall into them? To trust the sweet in the bitter enough to take one last bite before shoving the plate away for good.

    Bittersweet goodbyes. Is it really all that bitter? When where you’re headed is that much sweeter than where you’ve been?
    When what you know now will propel you forward to much more than the now could give.

    Bittersweet goodbye, goodbye and goodnight, for the time has come to move on. To move forward, to continue the march straight until morning, until this bittersweet feeling fades with the rise of a new day, a new night.

  • Culture Shock News

    Culture Shock News

    I’m too black to be a Dominican Writer.

    My soul doesn’t just sing bachatas, it also sings the blues – no autotune.

    I’m too inspired by Langston Hughes and the shadows of Harlem, but I’ve also lain in bed with el massacre se pasa a pie and Salome Ureña.

    And somehow, the American overshadows the passion – isn’t that usually in fashion?

    A fusion of culture and sazon, Mr. Softee and trips to El Malecon.

    I’m too black to be a Dominican Writer.

    My hips move in tandem to the perico ripiaos in el campo, but my feet tap to the rhythms of Bronx rap.

    Can’t I love Johnny Ventura and Biggie?

    Can’t I be both black and Morena in the same rhyme?

    Can’t I just exist in this time?

    A time where things should be different,

    Where Dominican Writers have more melanin than the sun rays can burn. Where I can be prieta and not just at home?
    Am I too black to be a Dominican Writer?

    Am I too much to swallow for the people who speak the language I first loved in?

    Who gave me dulce amores before I knew what it meant?

    My heart pounds en timbeque, my blood boils over oil drenched chicharron.

    I am a Dominican Writer, black as black can be all the way down to my toes.

  • Reflection: More

    Reflection: More

    As I sit here, dripping wet with monotony, I wonder, is there more than just this?
    Is there?
    More than hands on a clock, more than sand in an hourglass, is there more?
    More than hoping this too shall pass, pass onto what? I question myself until I’m passed out on the floor.
    I cannot fathom that this is all there is to life.
    A routine sullied by sunshine and moonbeams – is this really all there is to life?
    An unending battle of day in and day out, there should be more.
    More that can shroud me from the perils of reclusivity – if that’s even a word.
    More that can propel me towards the dreams I continue to confuse for reality
    Because this? This cannot be it all.
    Must there be more?
    Yes, there must be or else what am I? What are we?
    If not sedentary creatures of simplicity.

  • The Weight of Memories

    The Weight of Memories

    “I will have had to remember you, longer than I have known you.” C.C. Aurel


    That notion alone makes me immeasurably sad.
    Can you imagine the weight of having to carry you with me?
    Knowing you once existed but no longer exist.
    But that’s not true either, is it?
    You exist in me, in my heart and in my memories
    but that will never be enough for me.
    I so long for the physicality of it all; for one last touch, not whispers of a scent that once was.
    How is it possible that the years will trickle by, and I can only carry you with me in my mind.
    I so long to have you back in my arms.
    The space in my heart you occupy is now weighed down carrying the bits and pieces of a soul you left behind.
    I hope you’re comfortable in your new confines
    but oh how I long for you to be free again.
    To be here again.

  • The Sound of Grief

    The Sound of Grief

    “There is no grief like the grief that does not speak” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


    It’s not so much that grief cannot speak, its moreso that all it does is scream.

    So much so that I’ve learned to block it out,

    Allowing the days to drown it in monotony and routine. But then there are the times it feels like it’s drowning me.

    Holding my head beneath the waves,

    Allowing them to crest in my lungs,

    over and over, until finally, there is reprieve.

    The swelling of a monsoon that drags everything with it.

    The peace of a moment before destruction.

    A shallow breath before it all comes crashing down.

    That’s what grief speaks like, it’s what I hear all the time.

  • The Sound of Existence

    The Sound of Existence

     

    Silence is nothing more that the absence of sound.

    Death is nothing more than the absence of life.

    And what is life, if not sound, feeling, seeing.

    What is life if not tasting, yearning, ongoing.

    Because even in death we do not end.

    Donde hubo fuego, cenizas quedan,

    Where there was once love, an imprint remains.

    On the world, a place, a home, a person or people.

    Is death the absence of life?

    Then what is it that keeps us alive?

    That keeps us going when the goal for us all is to die?

    Isn’t that the pathway to the grand prize?

    How we all arrive at the eternal life promised to us by the word of God?

    Is death the answer to life?

    Does that make life suffering, in turn making death a way out?

    Have we become so sated with questions that we have forgotten to live?

    Was this the curse unleashed from the tree of knowledge, when Eve made the decision to eat?

    Is this endless crisis of existence the fruit that bore of that tree?

    Endless questions and endless dreams.

    If hope was the last thing that remianed in pandora’s box,

    does that not make it a plague all the same?

    If silence is nothing, and death is nothing

    Does that not then mean that within us lies something?

    That in order to fill a space you need more than what physically exists in this space.

    There is life, there is death and there is after, even if the something we were ceases to exist.

  • Faking It

    Faking It

    Today I dressed up my depression as happiness, until it truly became that.

    Until I was wearing an old skin that I wasn’t sure still fit, and it did. 

    It stuck to me like giggles caught in my throat 

    A smile bloomed in disbelief but nurtured in warmth,

    my cheeks frozen in place with a shit eating grin that was reminiscent of a youth I forgot I possessed. I’m obsessed…with living again.

  • It’s All in Your Head

    Everyday is different, yet difficult all the same.
    Everyday I want it all to stop.
    I know, to you, these are just more complaints.
    How lucky you are, not to have to live this way.
    I know my mood swings are…an inconvenience.
    But, everyday I want to cry.
    To stop trying, stop carrying this lie.
    Because the truth is, I am FAR from fine.
    I have moments, precious moments
    But they’re fleeting, become sparse with time.
    I am the epitome of misery.
    At least that’s how I feel, almost every second of the day.
    It’s come to where I anxiously await a good day.
    But you know you gotta grin and bear it
    Because society doesn’t like sad people
    Face it, you don’t either.
    So you’d rather believe in “I’m fine” than recognize that this ‘thing’ is slowly eating me alive.
    A slow sad poison from within.
    There isn’t enough oxytocin to keep it at bay
    All of the antibodies, slain.
    And somehow, I’m expected to not break down.
    To silently exist, silently resist, silently, anything but loud.
    Because it’s all in your head.
    Your head, your mind, your brain is one thing but it’s making you choose sides.
    Begging you to pick me no pick me
    While it’s more fuck you and fuck you more on the surface,
    Lost in a haze of darkness because the light is too potent, too harsh
    Unlike the silent dark, because that’s what you most wish for, silence, no jitters, no hindsight, no futuristic predictions
    You’ve adopted a predilection for solitude,
    Inherited a knack for loneliness,
    Built an imaginary imagination
    Where the days are easier,
    Where the thoughts have dimmed down to a hum,
    Where human interaction doesn’t make me physically ill.
    I much prefer that fantasy
    As opposed to the reality of having never moved from this bed

  • Sovereignty

    You ever been so uncomfortable your skin crawled? Your eyes well up with tears that threaten to fall. And still, you don’t allow them.

    You out here still being considerate of mfs who don’t give two shits about you and your comfort.

    But you can’t bring yourself to be loud and take up the space you deserve.

    Why, cause you’re afraid to hurt feelings and sit on your throne?

    Are subjects not supposed to bow before their sovereigns?

    Instead, you allow them to frolic in your castle, doing and undoing as they please, and you sit a ways away, seething.

    No wonder who you are now seems so foreign.

    You’ve allowed this to continue without voicing your own feelings, you know the ones that matter most of all?

    You’re allowing them to trample all over you but you won’t do the same to them?

    Why not?

    It only matters to you, to them it matters not.

    Obviously because they suffer no lack of comfort, they exist in your realm because you allow them to.

    But isn’t it time that you worried less about them and more about you?

    Invest the energy into yourself and take back the presence in your throne room.

    There is power in you, waiting for you to heed it, to wield it to do anything but keep it dormant.

    Make yourself known, you are sovereign and they are little more than garden gnomes.

  • Missing Puzzle Pieces

    Missing Puzzle Pieces

    Getting diagnosed as autistic at 30 is realizing your parents tried to beat the disability out of you until you learned to internalize it so it wouldn’t be visible.

    It’s realizing that you were gaslighted into thinking you didn’t need crutches, so you’ve been limping around thinking that how everyone is supposed to walk

    And then you’re told it’s not.

    I feel cheated, mistreated, ignored, unseen. Because I was well enough to be good enough, but I’ve never felt complete.

    Always felt like I was chasing something on the horizon that someone else could see

    I kept trusting that the more towards it I got the clearer it would be.

    But that line just got further and further and more matter how hard I searched I just couldn’t see what they wanted me to look for.

    Could never obtain what they wanted for me, what they wanted me to want for myself.

    Now I know my present options are different, my motherboard has been rearranged so the buttons don’t all work the same.

    But because it was too hard to figure that out they painted my buttons to look like everyone else’s, made me write down each function and label it.

    Blue means laugh, no! Blue means sad.

    I had to teach myself how to act, speak, even breathe like them

    Now I have to relearn how to do those things as myself.

    Unravel the personalities woven into this basket case and determine what actually belongs.