Hidden Words of My Heart

Holding On Burn

Hello, welcome to my poetry book. I'm not really a skilled poet, I just thought this would be fun bc I've written some poetry and they're just sitting in my notes app. Some I've shared on my aroace rants books (i ranted and wrote so much I filled up the first and had to make a second 😭)

Anyways, I think for my first poem of this book it is very fitting to share "Holding on burns".

Some of you know me for my Jatp fics. While jatp inspired this poem and it was what I was thinking about while writing, it can be applied to anything. That's the beauty of art.

I submitted this poem to a contest at my school last year and it ended up being chosen as one of the 20-25 poems/short stories/monologues performed by the drama class for their playwright festival. There's a whole story on that but I've yapped enough, so I'll share it at the end for those who want to read it.

Sorry for yapping so much, here's the poem

"Holding On Burns" by Baylee

You made me happy
You were beautiful
You were wonderful
You were a dream
You are everything.

You make me sob
You make me sad
You make me mad
You are a nightmare.
You were everything.

They say healing is moving on
Didn't you have a similar message?
The way you handled the theme for grief
And healing
I was grieving too when we first met
I thought you magically healed it
But you just distracted me from it
Allowed me to ignore it and all my lies
Lies of feeling better
But like the poem I read in English class said
"Nothing gold can stay"
Robert Frost was right. Gold leaves.
Gold goes away
Gold dies.

You were gold
And you had to leave.
Talking about you was getting old,
Everything was about you
Even after you left
Even after you changed
Even after you died

And all of the sudden I wasn't just grieving from before you
I was grieving everything

You saved me
But you also ruined me.
I hate that you know?
Because you didn't ruin me
You are perfect -were perfect.
It's my own flaws that made me ruined
My own flaws that ruined the way you made me feel

I know I should move on
Move past you
Most would by now
It's been over 2 years since you were stripped away
Yet here I stay
Right at the same spot

Years since we've really talked
And it feels like an eternity
I can't think of you how I used to

Most would have moved on by now, certainly
But how can I when I can't stop thinking about you
Involving myself with you
I say it's time to move on
But you still own a piece of my heart
I always want you to

I hold on instead of moving on
Because you are too important to let go

Holding on is like clutching a hot rod,
But holding on is the only thing keeping me from falling.
Falling into a blazing fiery pit.
Bit by bit,
holding on burns my flesh,
but letting go would burn me worse
Burn me beyond recognition
Would you even recognize me now?
I don't.

____

That's all for this poem, thanks so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed.

The story I have about this poem is I wrote it late one night when I was having hard feelings about Julie and the Phantoms (Jatp). For those of you who don't know, Jatp is a Netflix show that was canceled in late 2021 after only one short season, leaving fans on a cliffhanger and with unanswered questions.

It's not just the cancellation that makes my feelings for Jatp complicated tho. I'm not going to get into here, but if you read my aroace books I talk about it probably too often. Anyways, bc of those feelings, I wrote this poem.

Then, some time later (maybe like a month or so?? Idk) my school announced the playwright festival and I thought about submitting a short story since I'm more of a fiction writer than a poet. But I'm not the best at writing short stories and I had writers block so I decided to submit that poem since I already had it written and was sorta proud of it.

So I submit it and don't hear back for a while and so I assume I don't get chosen but then on a random afternoon I get an email saying it was chosen. I was dealing with some weird emotions where I felt like I couldn't tell my best friend so instead I tell my grandma.

She immediately asks to see the poem.

Not only am I just shy with my work especially around people I know, I knew that my grandma would think it was about my mom. She passed away late 2020, a little bit before I watched Jatp. Which I do reference in the poem bc I think part of the reason I was so attached to the show was because I was grieving and it distracted me from it/helped me through it.

But the poem can not be applied to my mom bc of the line "you ruined me" "you are a nightmare" and a few others. The "you" when I was writing this is not my mom, it's Jatp/my complicated feelings for it.

And even if the poem didn't say those things, I'm not open with my emotions especially about things like that in front of my family especially my grandma.

But I couldn't tell her it wasn't about my mom (btw it's my grandma from my moms side. So my mom is her daughter) bc it being about jatp instead felt stupid. It felt wrong I poured my heart and soul into a poem about my grief for a kids show and not my mom.

Anyways my grandma really liked it, and was like "you could really be an author"

Then her and my grandpa came to see the drama class performance, my dad came too and so did my best friend. The girl who read it was phenomenal 💜

But yea. That's the story. Kinda long for a lot of nothing but I'm just a yapper

Anyways. Thanks so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed. Have a wonderful day 💜💜💜