Not Just Another Pretty Face
Jericho, NY
2025, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
velvet red
bleeds from maple leaves—sliced veins drip viscously,
like your favorite orange blossom honey
curling like wax along my collarbone.
the trees sway and scream with every gust,
their breath crackling in the autumn frenzy.
cobalt glass
shattered lake at dusk, ribbons of sky
bleeding through the water’s entry.
i dip my fingers in the mirror and pull up
chips of moonlight, each one gray frosts along my skin
accompanied by the distant ticking of thawing ice.
ash-smoked gray
the dust of mountains grinded down to bone,
they sleep in my lungs. quietly.
the wind teaches me mass erosion
how to lose yourself grain by grain,
pared to a void of gray.
lichen gold
it spits dust across my knuckles.
it breathes sweet revenge.
sunlight infiltrates through feral, damp moss
and slithers up the spines of granite rocks.
i sink my fingers into the silken mold
watch mustard-powdered spores sweat. thick and aching.
salt-white
foam clustered like ghosts at the edge of the shore
twisting mannequins around my ankles, bubbling up and down.
it breathes through my ribs, the salt-stitched froth
crawling up, biting cold, teeth through silk
i taste metallic iron in the waves, like crimson blood.
smoke-ember black
fire’s last growls curl into charcoal teeth
lurking behind the shadows, and innocent veils of foliage.
a slow-burn hymn, where nothing grows, only decays.
only smolders in the cavity of earth,
a wound too deep, too late, to bleed.
how strange is it, to love the world most
when its colors are perfectly exposed?
Reflection
This poem began as the observance of colors—something often overlooked. I started with velvet red: my favorite cake flavor and the color of my fifth-grade graduation dress. I intended to write about nature in a pioneering manner, a lens that is foreign to most of our society. One color led to the other–each stanza a snippet of the fond memories I have with nature. As a child, I relished using the five senses to describe the world around me; that was what was on the surface. I didn’t want to write 50 lines delineating the trivial characteristics of nature, like the nooks and crannies of the forest or the exact curvature of seashells. It feels too disconnected from our biosphere and too picture-perfect. I wrote about the opposite—how nature isn't flawless. Through exploring this theme, it dawned on me that nature isn’t just another pretty face. It has layers and scars, just like humans. Only, those scars are covered so blindly that every pedestrian walking by only admires their appearance; the glossy orange blossoms, mountains with perfect cleavage, and the sun-lit sky and sea meeting perfectly at the horizon. Most people deem it unethical to judge a person solely by their appearance because it disregards their true character. But shouldn’t that same moral standard be applied to nature? Thus, my message to viewers is that we are not separate from the world we live in and walk in every day.