Categories > Original > Poetry
Lost in an endless sea of metaphors and boring rhymes and words that make no sense, I sit and stare at a notebook that’s scribbled all over, blue ink merging with red to make a purple bruise-like concoction of the sweetest kind. All I can do is sit here and stare at my own macabre creation, eyes wide with the utmost admiration and fear. I like the words that have been sloshed angrily across the cheap A4 paper – words like ‘hatred’, ‘loathe’, ‘narcissism’ and several lashings of ‘fuck’. I must’ve written this when I was sixteen, full of raw emotion and self-brewed anger and I wish I could go back and tell little me that stuff does get better.
Shaking my head at the bitter angst strewn across the table, my eyes flick up to the waitress who’s delivering my coffee. She’s a bit of a Barbie doll – skinny to the point of looking ill, perfectly straightened and perfectly fake blonde locks, bored eyes carefully veiled with a sheer layer of perkiness that could come apart in my hands. She shoves the mug in my direction with painted-pink nails that look as if they could shred me in minutes. I don’t even bother with a thank you.
This is what I hate about people. We rush through our mundane little lives, we don’t bother with pleasantries. We don’t say ‘thank you’ to waitresses at 3 AM, who probably want to be at home with their significant other.
I think that was what I was so angry at, when I was sixteen and barely knew the world. I was angry at the world for not caring about the minorities. I was frustrated and filled with pent-up anger because everyone spat at the blonde waitress at 3 AM, who wants nothing more than to be warm, and safe, and at home with her loved ones. I wanted to scream at the ‘popular’ kids who lived their pretentious lives destroying the dreams of teenagers who wanted nothing more out of their existences than to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I wanted to punch everyone who had looked down on someone sheerly for being gay, or having a different skin colour, or believing in some other God.
Even now, eight years later, staring out at a bleak, grey city, those emotions still reside in the empty shell that I call my body.
I stand up, now-drained coffee mug in hand, striding confidently towards the counter with what I hope to be a warm, inviting smile on my lips. I tap the shoulder of the waitress who served me earlier. I watch her spin round, and with a heartfelt and honest ‘thank you’, I hand the coffee mug over.
People like that waitress deserve a lot more credit than what they get. They really do keep society moving – they quench the thirst of the suited businessman, they feed the hungry child that wants to go play outside in the park whilst their mother gossips. They drive society.
The waitress offers me a beautiful smile, and it’s like her whole aura changes. I see the dark roots of her natural hair colour bleeding through the blonde, and it’s quite pretty. Her eyes are a grey-green, sparkling with adventure and mischief and romance. You don’t see that in a waitress’s eyes often. I see beginnings in her eyes, and I’m intrigued. Her nails are chewed at the ends, her skin is spattered with freckles, and her breasts aren’t half as large as I thought they were on first inspection. At first, I imagined her to have a name like Ashley, or Danielle, but now, as we sit alone in a deserted, cold, yet comforting café, I learn her name is Lolita, and that her parents forced her into a modelling career, but she’s run away.
I can’t help but send my heart out to her. I was almost forced into being a geologist, until I found my escape in writing.
I scribble my number down for her, and sign my name underneath, two kisses slashed underneath. She smiles and tucks it into her apron.
At 7 AM in the morning, I receive a simple text – two words. thank you. I send one back and maybe its sleep grogging my vision, or maybe it’s sheer undying first love, but my text reads I want you to be my girlfriend. Xx
Hers reads thank you. Xx
With a sleepy grin, I throw my legs off the side of my bed, and think. I wouldn’t be smiling, if it weren’t for two little words. “Thank you” is such a simple, beautiful phrase, so easy to use, and yet we don’t use it enough.
Shaking my head at the bitter angst strewn across the table, my eyes flick up to the waitress who’s delivering my coffee. She’s a bit of a Barbie doll – skinny to the point of looking ill, perfectly straightened and perfectly fake blonde locks, bored eyes carefully veiled with a sheer layer of perkiness that could come apart in my hands. She shoves the mug in my direction with painted-pink nails that look as if they could shred me in minutes. I don’t even bother with a thank you.
This is what I hate about people. We rush through our mundane little lives, we don’t bother with pleasantries. We don’t say ‘thank you’ to waitresses at 3 AM, who probably want to be at home with their significant other.
I think that was what I was so angry at, when I was sixteen and barely knew the world. I was angry at the world for not caring about the minorities. I was frustrated and filled with pent-up anger because everyone spat at the blonde waitress at 3 AM, who wants nothing more than to be warm, and safe, and at home with her loved ones. I wanted to scream at the ‘popular’ kids who lived their pretentious lives destroying the dreams of teenagers who wanted nothing more out of their existences than to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I wanted to punch everyone who had looked down on someone sheerly for being gay, or having a different skin colour, or believing in some other God.
Even now, eight years later, staring out at a bleak, grey city, those emotions still reside in the empty shell that I call my body.
I stand up, now-drained coffee mug in hand, striding confidently towards the counter with what I hope to be a warm, inviting smile on my lips. I tap the shoulder of the waitress who served me earlier. I watch her spin round, and with a heartfelt and honest ‘thank you’, I hand the coffee mug over.
People like that waitress deserve a lot more credit than what they get. They really do keep society moving – they quench the thirst of the suited businessman, they feed the hungry child that wants to go play outside in the park whilst their mother gossips. They drive society.
The waitress offers me a beautiful smile, and it’s like her whole aura changes. I see the dark roots of her natural hair colour bleeding through the blonde, and it’s quite pretty. Her eyes are a grey-green, sparkling with adventure and mischief and romance. You don’t see that in a waitress’s eyes often. I see beginnings in her eyes, and I’m intrigued. Her nails are chewed at the ends, her skin is spattered with freckles, and her breasts aren’t half as large as I thought they were on first inspection. At first, I imagined her to have a name like Ashley, or Danielle, but now, as we sit alone in a deserted, cold, yet comforting café, I learn her name is Lolita, and that her parents forced her into a modelling career, but she’s run away.
I can’t help but send my heart out to her. I was almost forced into being a geologist, until I found my escape in writing.
I scribble my number down for her, and sign my name underneath, two kisses slashed underneath. She smiles and tucks it into her apron.
At 7 AM in the morning, I receive a simple text – two words. thank you. I send one back and maybe its sleep grogging my vision, or maybe it’s sheer undying first love, but my text reads I want you to be my girlfriend. Xx
Hers reads thank you. Xx
With a sleepy grin, I throw my legs off the side of my bed, and think. I wouldn’t be smiling, if it weren’t for two little words. “Thank you” is such a simple, beautiful phrase, so easy to use, and yet we don’t use it enough.
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