When I was little I dreamed
I would get the prince to
carry me away on a white horse
to a palace by the sea.
***
I would learn and study and
show the world how smart I was.
I would be a doctor or teacher
or anything to help people.
***
I didn’t know my dark prince
was a drug named alcohol,
carrying me away on waves of passion
to being a teenage mom.
***
I’m alone with only a baby and our bottles
sitting in the isolated ocean of
street life and overflowing dumpsters
numbed by alcohol and baby tears.
***
How did I end up in desperation here?
I dreamed the world would be mine.
I just didn’t know the world was so hard
and that I was just more trash on the street.
***
Submitting this to the open links for Real Toads and d’Verse Poets.
Oh how sad…alcohol steals so many dreams, but I would never think of someone in such a state as trash. Such a moving poem of a harsh reality
wow, ouch. except for the baby, that was me.
Believing the fairy tales is a common fallacy, and whose fault is it? No one takes the blame. But also, no one is “just more trash on the street.” Believing that is the opposite extreme of believing in the fairy tale. SO to me this poem shows the right/wrong, no shade of grey, mind-set of a youth (like I was), feeling “the isolated ocean of / street life and overflowing dumpsters”–but I didn’t have the alcohol or the baby. I know that dragging myself up out of the mind-set only began when I hit bottom. The poem depicts this spiral, and the turn-around is next.
Whew, what an ass-kicking poem. Powerful and visceral.
You’ve rendered such episodes that afflicted many young girls. We’ve heard of such tales of inmates at half-way houses who cared to tell so that others are forewarned. Nice write though sad!
Hank
This is an incredibly moving piece, especially these lines:
“I’m alone with only a baby and our bottles”
“and that I was just more trash on the street”
i worry for my grandchildren ~ alcohol and drugs and sex are all too much accepted, too easily available, too often portrayed as “cool” ~ a powerful write!
Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.
♥
What a gritty slice of life, Teresa. The piece that nobody wants.
Very intense poem – well written -ugh -starts as a fable, gets all too real feeling. k.
ugh it can be such a hard world…and you can end up in places you never dreamed and with princes that you never dreamed as well….felt this piece as i know those who have lived it….smiles.
“Numbed by alcohol and baby tears”… That’s the line that got me.
Raw honest and powerfull…. a mirror image of my early years as a teen mum…. thankfully with the help of friends I pulled myself together. I don’t drink at all any more. Haven’t for a few decades.
http://sharonlee-gatheredinthoughts.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/shiver-touch-moments.html
What a let down for a young woman…so sad that this happened to her ~
Just to let you know that sometimes my comments don’t show up here…I just don’t know why
I think it’s sad that so many young ones fall prey to alcohol, or drugs, or peer pressure in either case. I can’t imagine anything complicating that more than being a young teenaged mother. Your poem speaks of how easily they can lose hope, when truthfully new hope can be just beginning for them. It’s so sad they don’t see that. This is a very sad poem…. Well done…..
Sad and powerful. Well done.
Oh gosh this is heart-breaking, Teresa. I hope they’re still teaching abstinence in high school.
xoxo
Sad, and powerfully written.