Untitled Poem by Akara K.

I have all these feelings.

I don't know what they are or where they come from.

It's mostly sadness, but it's other things too. It's misery and it's elation and it's bitterness and it's rage, it's loneliness and the need to be alone, it's a connection with nature and it's a painful and severing disconnect.

But most of all, it's tears that want to come but don't quite.

I don't know what to do with these feelings. I don't want to burden anyone with them, I don't want anyone to see them, but I want to shout them out to the world. I want to scream them from rooftops until I'm hoarse and empty and no longer alone.

I don't know how to articulate my feelings. I don't know who they're for.

I think they're for my mother. They're for my father and my grandmother and my cousins and my boyfriend and they're for me. They're for the people I love and the people I hate and they're for the people I don't know.

I feel things about myself. I feel hatred and I feel love. I feel dissatisfied and disappointed, and I feel hopeful. I feel confused.

These feelings are swimming around in my head and in my chest and most of all in my throat like a swollen lump. They're swimming around like goldfish, and like sharks. They're flying around like vultures, and like pigeons. They're eating and they're ripping and they're nesting.

I don't know why I feel these feelings. I don't know their source. I can't follow them to their head, I can only watch them flow and try to empty out of me like a river but they're stuck, they're caught like fish in a net and they're wiggling and it hurts. It hurts like a hook that pierces, sharp and sudden. But really they're dull, and aching, like eternity.

I don't know how to get rid of these feelings. I don't know how to make them stop.

They rise and fall like the tide. They come in deep and strong and they drown everything, they wash away everything, and then just as suddenly they're gone and it's like they never were.

And I rebuild.