I know this isn't "traditional" poetry, but my teacher showed me this poem called We Are Afraid by Jennifer Knox and it struck a chord with me, so I wrote something attempting to be in the same ballpark. Let me know what you think please!
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We Are Afraid
We are afraid of stepping on sidewalk cracks
Just in case this time it might actually break our mother’s back.
We are afraid being the first one at the buffet table at functions.
We are afraid of singing along to the radio if friends are with us.
We are afraid of being hypocrites
But we’re also afraid of what will happen to us when don’t act like we believe in something our peers do
We’re afraid of those moments before the elevator doors open and it seems like we might get stuck in that tin box for hours on end with a bunch of strangers
We’re afraid of high school students driving
We’re afraid of the bad guys in horror movies being real,
that Jumbi will come to possess us even though we never had an unborn twin or we’ll get sewn with other people into a disgusting, centipede formation because we asked the wrong stranger for help
We’re afraid of buying clothes in the wrong size because we didn’t feel like trying them on
We’re afraid of some authority figure will catch us while we’re stoned
We’re afraid of when winter gets warmer each year
We’re afraid of that monster behind the shower curtain when we go into the bathroom to brush our teeth at 11:30 at night
We’re afraid of reading poems in class
Because we know that everyone is paying attention to something only we came up with
And maybe they’ll judge us
But chances are they’re spacing out and waiting for class to end
That’s what we tell ourselves
