My mother always told me
to never start the week off
wearing black.
Why wear the colors of a widow
at the dawn of a new week?
And while the Grim Reaper
and the witch's cat
both masquerade in black,
has anyone ever thought
to ask them why they do?
Perhaps it reminds them of late summer nights
surrounded by your closest friends
and family,
unaware of how rapidly time passes us by,
simply enjoying the moment we have.
Whenever I close my eyes, all I see is black.
But rather than fear and avoid it,
I welcome it with open hands,
ready for it to momentarily whisk me away
from the growing pains I entangle myself in.
You see, black is like an empty canvas.
You can make of it however you so choose.
It can be oppressive
when i'm anxious and afraid
of the world and of people and
of how they perceive me and how i fit in
and what did i do wrong this time and why
must i be like this and and and...
But it can also restore and heal,
or, at least,
I choose to believe it does.
For when I'm snug in bed,
ready to dose off to sleep,
it accompanies me.
Someone to laugh with, smile with,
reminisce with, cry with,
dream with.
So the next time my mother tells me
not to wear my "inauspicious" black track pants
on a Monday morning,
I want to remind her it's not all that bad.
While looking for a mentor poet I could study and learn from this semester, Ada Limón was one of the first names that caught my eye. Born in California to a family of artists and teachers, it's quite apparent to see where she found her love for learning and poetry. What I find endearing about her work is how her own values and experiences shine through her work, telling us the kind of person she is. While she was originally a highly successful marketer at Condé Nast, she ultimately decided after her stepmother's death from colon cancer that if she only had a few years left to live, she would spend all of it writing. Her poems focus on all the smaller things in life.
In most of her poems, she is able to connect nature with the human emotion. In Would You Rather, she compares the emotional hardships of getting pregnant to the freedom of a seal. She questions if she would rather keep trying and putting up with daily ordeals or just leave everything behind and enjoy life from the naïve perspective of a seal. The poem's narrative structure allows us to better understand the melancholy mood of the speaker despite her escapades to extravagant places such as Isla Negra and the Golden Gate Bridge.
In the poem that I wrote, I tried doing something similar to Limón, but rather than compare man and nature, I decided to look at all the emotions that color could evoke. While black is often associated with bad luck and loneliness, it also reminds me of late nights playing with my brother, as well as sleep: our only avenue to live out our dreams. I wanted to show the nuance behind the color and why I personally really like the color black. I tried using different writing styles to evoke different moods, such as a more frantic and "elementary" writing style when describing the racing of the mind during anxiety while using a more relaxed, mature tone when describing all the beauty that black allows you to see.
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