Teen Poetry Collections
- Overview
- The Most Real I Feel
- My Backpack of Pain
- Nobody Knows My Name
- Until Life is Beautiful Once More...
- The Natural To My Beauty
- No Air At All
- I Feel Like That Bird That's Fallen
- Independent
- My Sister
- Abandoned
- Me and My Board
- Lost Girl
- Longing For Another Life
- Princess Adia'Zalika
- Capitol Hill
- Handcuffs
- Peace and Love From a Natural Born Thug
- The Pain
- Me A Hermit
- Finally Opening Doors
- A Gaining Loss
- Anger
- Do You Really Know Me?
- Not My Real Sandals
- Para Mi Mama y Para Mi Papa
- My Brother
- The Undefined
- Something Missing
- Pre-Summary of My Life
- Really Buttery Popcorn
- I'm Getting Out
- Physical Love
- Made Me Feel Like There's No World
- Wounded Healer
- Memories #3
- The Nightmare That Never Ended
- Dear Ex-Boyfriend
- My Whole World Stopped
- Dear Mom #2
- My Spaceship
- Just Lay It Out
- White Walls & Collect Calls
- Amazing Amanda
- Immigration
- Unwanted
- Worry
- My Life Story
- If God Were Looking at My Life #2
- Lying in My Bed at Night, I Think
- 144 Ways
- Freedom
- Missing My Family
- If Meth Wasn't in My Life
- Lonely
- My Stupid Boyfriend
- Oblivion
- The White Walls
- Life Is a Dream with No Bed
- Happy Birthday
- My Best Friend Was Murdered
- Why Are You Blue?
- We Came from Saudi Arabia
- The Days I Miss
- Dear Mom
- Brother and Sister
- A Good Day / A Bad Day
- My Dad #3
- Dear Family
- When My Brother Got Shot
- Nothing Will Bring Me Down
- Coyote Ridge
- Family #2
- Metal on Metal
- I'm Making a Moving Poem
- The Thunder Is in the Past
- There Had to Have Been Someone
- There Had to Have Been
- Memories
- I Like the Rain More than The Sun
- Finding Summer Again
- Every Guy
- When I Look in the Mirror
- Different Levels
- Worries for You
- The First and Last Day I Saw My Dad
- Changing My Life Around
- You Can't Be Mad Forever
- I Wonder
- Doors of Emotion
- Ice Cream Man
- Liquor Makes the World Violent
- The Coolest Dad
- Letter to Mom
- Virginity
- Black
- The Three Faces of My Monster
- Drowning
- Sides of Me
- The Love of My Life
- Monkey
- My Life
- What It's Like to Have a Headache
- [Preface]
- The Currents of My Emotion
- I Am As Angry As a Boomerang
- They Look Like a Heart, They Beat
- Love is Like All the Colors of the Doors in Juvie
- I Looked at the Butterflies on the Ceiling
- Family
- My Memory Poem
- My Life Is Like a PS2
- If Only You Knew
- What I Think About My Favorite Staff
- Life on Ketron Cottage
- My Sumo Cat
- Cancer Is
- Baby Blues
- Not Titled Because
- Why Me?
- Mom, The Story
- Living on the Streets
- My Mom
- Going to the Dentist
- Why I'm Short and Not Tall
- Conversations with My Eating Disorder
- Life Like a Cat
- I Miss the Way We Occasionally Got Along
- My Passion Leaps Out Toward the World
- I Am a Monster, But a Fairy, Too
- How Tucked in the Corner Was Sadness
- A Salty Longing
- See What Goes On Behind My Masks
- No More Me
- I Lost My Sense of Protection
- Because I Didnt Know the True Meaning of Love
- What Every Guy Tells Me
- Trapped in the Ghetto & The Other Piece of Me
- I Can't Imagine Myself Any Other Place
- The House on the Corner 2
- The House on the Corner
- Poems by Parents
Killing Me Inside
by a young woman in detention
Why this?
Why that?
I’m turning 18 and my brother’s not here.
This is the first birthday that he’s missed.
It’s killing me inside.
It makes me really sad that
he doesn’t get to see me turn 18.
There was days where me and him were doing
grown up things—
smoking weed,
buying Swisher sweets—
and now I’m finally 18
and now I can finally do
those grown-up things legally
but I’m scared that he’s not here
to take care of me.
There’s a hole in my heart.
Without him, being 18:
I don’t know where to start.
Me and my brother were so close
He was half of my heart and I was the other half
Now my other half is gone.
I feel really alone
Now that he’s not home—
Not in his apartment, with his daughter,
Stopping by our house to say Hi.
There’s nobody to talk to about my deepest problems—
relationships, being treated unfairly—
I used to talk to him about anything.
Now I don’t know
who I can trust with everything.