honest pleas in crude crayon – Patricia Alcartado
ham-fisted, over-saturated, filled to spilling – i am an old puzzle: pieces missing, colour faded
my conduct is a stutter and my voice contains a fumbling, green thing
there are days where my heart forgets its place
lodging in my throat, pressing into my larynx and choking me with each bloody pump
when the sky unfolds above me i misremember my own name
is it woman? is it immigrant? is it youth?
am i merely the brand burned into my skin by a thousand condemning stares?
am i a glass thing, changing within every fire i am placed?
can i ever be more than they’ve made me?
This poem highlights the feeling that bullies give you with the words they say by using metaphors and personification.
The author also uses rhetorical questions which cause the reader to reflect on their own life, their bullies or the harm that they have caused someone. She does this to make the poem more personal to us so that we can connect with it and understand the meaning behind her words. The metaphor 'The sky unfolds above me' represents how she feels as if the world is swallowing her when she is bullied. The personification 'my heart forgets its place' is showing us how bullying makes her feel and how she doesn't know who she is anymore, only who she is to the bullies.
