sad poets society by Sarah Chaudhry (16, New York)

The funny thing about living is that it’s both a blessing and a curse. There are beautiful sunsets and fresh fruits, but beauty is only a skin-deep game. There’s meeting souls and learning about something more than just yourself and the soil meant to be stood on. There’s the rain-kissed clothes, bags, and flowers emitting the finest of petrichor, and then there’s the raining of blood. There’s pain behind piety and sin behind demure. There are wings to fly, but bullets to shoot it down and hands to clip it too tight. 

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How far until it’s enough, I wonder? How much longer until my name isn’t a standard to be compared, but a standard itself? Since when did we start naming the youth after comparisons? Weren’t names meant to be a blessing to those bestowed upon? It is exhausting to pretend that I’m doing all of this (in the name of living, they glorify) when water floods my lungs for someone else. For someone I’m not. For those with power and authority can seep their poison into what little power I have, an infection that ticks slowly but surely till I am a parasite for their sake and withered completely for myself—gone but alive, alive but forgotten, forgotten but remembered like bitter nostalgia; locked in a cage of childhood memories of dandelions and brownies on rainy days that were supposed to set me free, but all they do is make me write sad poetry.

Who needs to be perfect or imperfect? Rather, be neither. It’s purgative and funereal, but fleetingly, empowering all at once. Who is truly meant for this world? Maybe I was meant for this world, but I was not meant to kneel to others. At the end of the day, I am meant for myself and myself only. 

I disagree with those who claim to be dead inside, for the dead are in peace. They atone for their sins and graces, while the society of the living poets, artists, writers, workers, youth, and students, speak their sadness among the living. 

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