White Space

And it felt violated
violated
am I bad?
Am I a bad person?
Do I hold bad intentions,
sitting restlessly in the palm of my hand?
But this seeping,
spilling
over
and out of me
I guess I should try and stop it.
When does 6 hit?
6 months.
Is that alright?
Appropriate?
Why do I find myself
debating
the appropriate
isn't most of it just up to me?
New division.
Not one more
once more,
once more.
Things get hard when your tongue twists over short letters
scribbled out
on a page.
Handwriting sinking,
worse and worse
edits, edits, edits,
if I don't finish them soon
no one else will.

4/4/2016
Riley Welch

4 Mildly Tired 4 Line Saturday Thoughts

8:37 am:
It feels
too early
to be awake
just yet.

11:45 am:
Saying goodbye -
even though being apart is normal
is sometimes sad
and sometimes hard.

6:01 pm:
Suddenly dizzy
and light-headed,
words come quick
and spilling.

8:23 pm:
Night came even
friends and laughs
and lots of fresh greens.
Full, happy, and sleepy.

1/30/2016
Riley Welch

Rushed

I wanted to climb as high as I could before it all got away from me.
If I didn't immediatly
look over every edge
I thought it would be much, much too late.
I am so,
so
small
in comparison to each mountain.
I could look out
and climb on
and I needed to
know
know
know
that,
before I continued.

4/3/2016
Riley Welch

18 Seconds

I think I forgot how to write
how to line up
all the letters I know
or at least
know how to use
which is probably only 23 or 24 out of all 26.

It's as though
when I was in an environment
without writing
and reading
I had to fill the space with my own words.
But now,
that I am surrounded
smothered
drowned in them.
I've lost my flow
that used to come
spilling
spilling
spilling out.

4/3/2016
Riley Welch

Running

I've always loved
taking the long way home at night
after everyone was asleep
so there wasn't anything I could miss out on either.
And I would roll my windows down
no matter how cold
and sing
and freeze in the night air.
But money lately,
has been dwindling, unfortunately.
That means gas has to feel more like a luxury
than a priority
and so sometimes
when I'm coming home late
on a ten dollar quarter tank
I don't go the long way.
Because I really can't afford it,
at least not tonight.

3/27/2016
Riley Welch

Wrap Around

So I rounded the corner
and the mountains spilled out of the horizon
like nothing I had seen before.
The orange of the sun rested a sleepy head
on the tallest peak
and lit up all the clouds.
Pink and yellowed hold
and I felt immediatly thankful
for all that had led me right to where I was.

3/26/2016
Riley Welch

FK

There's something hard and sad about wonder.
How it turns and replicates itself,
hiding in the back of your head.
Usually cast as worry,
but sometimes playing anger
in a never ending, intermission-ess play.

Wonder preys on wild imagination,
and on lonely late night fears.
It feasts on stories you heard once or twice
about other kids - it's scary to see the connections
that end in your worst nightmares.
"But how close is it,
actually?"
"How plausible?"

You ask, hoping you can say, "Well, not so similar."

But you almost always can't.

Wonder just lets you ask questions you may never be able to answer
and let's you build stories
off of nothing.
Nothing at all.

2/25/2016
Riley Welch

Corner Stop

God bless my parents,
because they weren't writers -
aren't writers,
but they made me one
and I don't know what I would do if I wasn't.
And I know it's not always good.
And I know even less often it's great.
But lining up words in a pleasing order always feels right.
And sometimes I read words and cry
and sometimes I write words and cry
and sometimes it's happy
and sometimes it's not.
But on nights I am filled to the brim
I'm so glad there's a way to empty.

And I'm rethinking everything I've ever done
and I think I did it right,
but I also think I should do it differently
to try and do it better.
And I think I should stop expecting perfection
and I don't mean the kind of perfection we should reach,
I mean the outlining of my brain that I've decided is right.
And what I expect from others,
to know how to act.

And I need to stop getting so mad at poetry slams
and maybe use the platform for the emotion it's meant for
instead of checking to see if the poems were edited first.
Because maybe it's a good release to tell a crowd,
mixed of friends and strangers, how I feel.
And maybe someone will agree
and then they'll write poems too.

Because I don't know how else to describe the feeling of pulling my car over on a pleasant spring night and writing as fast as I can because the words have come straight up my spine and I have to get them out and I feel myself crying because my fingers can't keep up with my thoughts and I have so much to say and I'm only 21 and I'm worried that by the time I die I'll have run out of words or run out of time to write the words and if I don't write them I'll lose them and both prospects scare me and sometimes I wish I could take back everything I've ever put on paper so I could spit it out again and feel so proud and fresh of everything I've ever done.

Because sometimes those words get so stale
and I get so bored
and that's not fair.

---

But I guess I got distracted
I don't know what I meant for this to be about
but I think I got what I wanted.

4/4/2016
Riley Welch

1/27

Steam rises off of hot bodies.

Always fascinated by the way
the cool nights take in heat
and spit it out as misty vapor.

Fresh out of hot tubs
and into the cold night,
the sprint from the edge of the tub
to the door
is minimal
but in this weather
it seems like football fields.

It was a night that lacked a narrative
it was all just
temperature
hot and cold and hot and cold.

3/22/2016
Riley Welch

1st

A hat flew away carried by a heavy breeze.
Because wind
has to be moving 11 miles per hour
just to lift a grain.
Soft and delicate crystals
of sand
off a beach.
So maybe
more than a breeze,
it was a gust
that took the hat from it's owner,
and let it face the world
without a body
roaming beneath it.

1/26/2016
Riley Welch

Messed or Missed

Wasting time
with writing
never feels like wasting time.

Even when I know
I should be accomplishing something.
Am I accomplishing something?
Some days it feels like

I write
and write
and write
and turn blank pages
into deep, messy squiggles
that I can barely decipher.

1/22/2016
Riley Welch