Matchbox | Teen Ink

Matchbox

December 9, 2020
By Lemon-drop BRONZE, Hartland, Wisconsin
Lemon-drop BRONZE, Hartland, Wisconsin
2 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
“I am not lost, for I know where I am. But however, where I am may be lost.” - Winnie-the-Pooh


It’s quite easy to confuse a crayon box with a matchbox


Then swipe over and over 

Til a spark ignites and the page

The scene before you resembles a mess 

That only you can uncage


Only you can see the image that’s been haunting your head

Expressed by an act that could have left you dead


None the wiser you show

Your fake friends with button noses and plastered on cheeks

What your life has come to in all its mystique


They smile on unchanged

Repeating the same phrases they have muttered all week

When squished in the belly or poked at the feet


You look around the remains of a room trying to remember when

Candlesticks became pixie sticks

And lighter were worshiped for their flame


But all that comes to mind is the time you got hurt

Making smoke rings out on the porch

Falling and flailing to the ground sparked by a torch

Where you stayed till the sky got grey

And it began to rain


It was that day you swore to never get burnt by it again

So you stuck to hop-scotch with pop rocks

And threw water balloons charged by an electric current


And maybe it’s here that someone should have asked if you should really be doing all that 

If there would be a lasting effect of driving cars to fast

And wearing flint beads around your neck


But how would they have even spoke

The exhaust had already got their throats


So they look on 

Gaze chilled and warn

Frozen solid through the bone

Hearts chilled over long ago


So you made it your goal to never let yourself cool 

Find something boiling and sharp

To get you through

As your tongue began to glow electric blue


And maybe it’s true 

You stopped by the furnace


That you knew

That you had left the crayons by the door

And that’s why you wanted to color some more


The author's comments:

A poem I wrote in January.


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