Nostalgia | Teen Ink

Nostalgia MAG

November 23, 2023
By maxinezahler GOLD, Long Branch, New Jersey
maxinezahler GOLD, Long Branch, New Jersey
10 articles 0 photos 0 comments

The days are getting shorter and I grow taller

My aura softens as dusk cradles glistening dawn

In watercolors, I search for a trace of grief

But my soul feels no coercion from past wrongs


Nostalgia seeped through faded bus rides

And flooded the midnight blue of my days

It clouded my perception, infected my message

And took my pearl away


I ignored the pleas of my potential

Excuses muddled my mind–I, stirred and shaken,

Thought I couldn’t go on with frayed edges

Deep in my bones, since my creation 


But lately I’ve stopped wishing on stars

And waltzing with distant memory

Under placid waves bubble languid tunes

Singing so very softly 


I’ve studied the lies of my youth

They shouted that I’d been losing my glow 

And the light I paint with my poetry

Will never fill crevices of a shattered soul

They still ask for more, but now they’re lower

Subject to faint tip-toe


Nostalgia no longer implores

–Finally! It fell below the horizon

A new persuasion knocks at my window

And sheds new light into my eyes

A blossoming has overtaken me

Lullabies transformed to triumphant melody


The author's comments:

I wanted to paint the picture of a sun rising in a soft, pastel sky, and I want the reader to feel an overwhelming sense of relief as if they, too, were letting go of the past. Last year, I did a lot of self-reflection and recognized harmful insecurities that I was grasping so tightly onto. This poem was a step towards healing and realizing that I need to release things that do not serve me in order to step into my future. Writing this was cathartic.


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