Poems by Sunflower

I write poetry and prose. I hope you enjoy!🌻

[wordsbysunflower]

sometimes I sit in mourning

at the person I could have been.

would all my choices have led me here either way?

I guess I’ll never know.

[wordsbysunflower]

Sometimes I think my mom takes pleasure

in trying to humble me.

I am, to her detriment, not humble.

It doesn’t hurt any less though.

[wordsbysunflower]

all I want

is the energy that I had at 18.

I could stay up all night,

go to class the next morning

and still be ready for more.

Now I struggle to get out of bed

even after a full night’s sleep.

It’s hard to find motivation

to do anything, even the things I used to enjoy.

What happened to that 18 year old?

Where did she go?

I want her back.

— Sunny ☀️🌻

[invisiblevoyager]

Maple syrup, coffee, pancakes for two, Hash brown, egg yolk, I will always love you

[wordsbysunflower]

My biggest flex is that I can play “18” by One Direction at my wedding and it’ll be totally accurate 🥺🥰💖

[wordsbysunflower]

The days feel long and hard to get though.

I’m not sleeping through the nights.

-Tired

—Sunny 🌻

[wordsbysunflower]

I can’t wait for the days when

our goodbyes become goodnights

and long embraces before breaks become

cuddles before sleep.

Absence may make the heart grow fonder

but your presence has the same effect.

I long for the days

when the farthest distance between us

will be at opposite ends of our home.

-I miss you already 🌻

[wordsbysunflower]

This is my reality now and I have the best life ☺️

[wordsbysunflower]

Frosted windows

on late night drives.

My hands are under my thighs to stay warm

and the radio plays low.

We kiss at the red lights on empty roads. The world is still.

-Sunflower 🌻

[wordsbysunflower]

Today it clicked that the reason I shave so obsessively is because these two white girls called me a monkey during basketball practice in the 8th grade because I hadn’t shaved. And that’s on trauma bitchesssss

[wordsbysunflower]

When I received an email

about my virtual 5 year High School reunion,

I sat in a state of shock. “Let’s come together and celebrate!” the email the said.

Where was this sense of togetherness when I sat alone on at lunch or on the bus to field trips?

I think about the girls who followed me upstairs and blocked my locker, tormenting me with their words. Eventually I stopped using my locker.

I think about being one of three black girls in a 100 person grade, not having a class either one until late Middle School. Assimilation for black boys is different.

I think about never fitting in with the white girls because I would always be black before I was a girl. Before I was a friend. I think about being their token at parties and play dates, long before that was a commonly used term. I remember not minding simply because I was there.

I think about never fitting in with the black girls who transferred in in 6th grade. I would always be an Oreo. How could someone who spent 7 years in an all-white school be black, anyway? Despite the color of their skin, and the darkness of our mothers, and the fact that we all lived in the outer-boroughs, not going to country houses on weekends or to Europe on Spring Break.

I think about faking sick in the nurse’s office, just to not have to go to class. Joining clubs to not have to sit alone in the cafeteria.

I think about the two people I called friends who I haven’t spoken to in nearly 5 years. I think about how my overwhelming excitement to go to college led me to neglect them for a brief period. I think about how they never forgave me.

Lastly I think about how it’s been 5 years since graduation. But is five years enough time to change behaviors that lasted for 13? I keep hoping that they are not the same people. I’m not the same person. Maybe I give them the benefit of the doubt. A lot of growth can happen in a very short time. Maybe I should go with an open mind. And maybe not.

[wordsbysunflower]

As I sit on my green plaid couch staring up at my apartment ceiling, I think about how this time last year I was lying on my dorm bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering if I would be approved for the apartment I’m in now. And how 4 years before that, I was sitting in my High School classroom staring at the ceiling as my senior year was winding down. I was wondering what my life would look like in college, wondering about the dorm I was sitting in 4 years later. And I went home from school to stare at the ceiling of my childhood apartment, wondering how my time in school had gone by so quickly, and yet so slowly at the same time. 

Looking back, it’s crazy to think about the things that worry me. And I find comfort in knowing that the things that worry me now will seem so minor next year, when I’m staring at a ceiling that I can’t picture now. Hindsight is 2020. If only the future was that clear.

[wordsbysunflower]

The blue light of the morning peaks through the curtains. You are sleeping and we are pressed against each other, bodies intertwined. The room is quiet and time is still. We are at peace.

[wordsbysunflower]

12.02.19 // 10:57pm

There is beauty and intimacy in postcards. They’re saying:

“I want you here with me in this moment”,

“I’m thinking about you at this exact point in time”,

“Join me- I miss you.”

What a joy it is to remind someone that you are thinking of them, even from miles away.

[wordsbysunflower]

12.02.19 // 10:48pm

The winter sky just before or just after snowing hangs differently in the sky. It sits like no other season’s sky. It is light at the darkest hour and eerily cold when you’re begging for warmth.

[wordsbysunflower]

Every so often I become obsessed with a new color. A while ago it was rose gold, then yellow, then red, and now it’s Tiffany Blue. And each time I find a new color I want to live my whole life in it. It’s like I want to be consumed by it. I buy things in that color to feel alive. And until I find a new color, it works. Sometimes I go back to colors I’ve loved in the past, but other times it seems like the new colors are for the new stages in my life. And this stage is called Tiffany Blue.

[wordsbysunflower]

10.15.19 // 7:21am

How lucky I am

to come home to my best friend

at the end of every day

-You make this apartment a home

—Sunflower 🌻

[wordsbysunflower]

Yesterday I woke up feeling good(???) for the first time in weeks on a weekday. This morning I woke up anxious and sad (LIKE ALWAYS SINCE I STARTED THIS JOB) and I’m almost wishing I didn’t feel good yesterday because I wanna go back to that