Poetry

a girl's face with blurred blue over top and a background of blue waves

Imposter Syndrome

Away from home with imposter syndrome
Fading far from the plight of perfectionism
Taunted by the unexplored, not on any exec boards
Sometimes struggling to just get out of bed

My roommate wakes up and runs ten miles
While I have clothes heaped in piles
And a hundred unorganized files on my desktop
Too anxious to answer an email

In constant comparison and competition
I’m not motivated by grades or majors
Student governance or unpaid labor
But paranoid I need to fit in

the upper back, shoulders, neck and hair of a brown-skinned person

To the Little Mixed Girl in the Back of the Classroom

You are not “too much” of one thing
and “not enough” of another.

dark amber background, wheat-colored straw-like spidery figures in foreground

Good Girl, Rotting Teeth

The trial never ceased, the heavy shackle tightens 

three little ghosts in white sheets on a stage with red curtains framing them

Ghosts of Fresno

One fateful day, on eve of May, an ancient stage they found

words associated with alchemy melting together in purple background

Creating The Melting Pot

Because everyone knows yellow pain, pressed into American letters, turns to gold

an orange cat, and a book, lie on a table by an open window, the curtain blowing in the breeze

Employed/Housed/Alive

We think, therefore we err.

3 caps being tossed that read "Dreamer," "Next Steps," and "Graduation"

Dreamer: Fill-in-Poetry

Oh, the places you have been.

Illustration of mortar and pestle

Paints for pigments

They mixed it with yellow ochre, then made the faces of God and their saints.

Illustration of tower

Tower

Sky piercer, rain bringer, unifier, deliverer.

Illustration of a girl's crying face on a pink background

Haiku

tell me tomorrow how the things pretty and nice stay once and not twice