Elaina, a RISE Healthy Housing and Support Services Supported Housing resident, has submitted another poem she wrote and would like to share. Like many of the participants in RISE programs, Elaina finds that writing is a great coping skill. Thank you Elaina for sharing your poetry with us.
Stormy Eve
She stormed into the room,
Her footsteps, loud, like thunder.
No one dared assume…
They didn’t even dare to wonder.Her icy glare was delightfully vicious,
Obviously, she had malice on her mind.
Those blood red lips looked full and delicious,
Juicy and ripe, like fruit from the vine.She kept her head high,
Eyes, surveying her crowd,
She expelled a long, deep sigh,
Then, finally began speaking aloud.Her words were cold
And as hard as her heart.
Even though she’d grown old,
She could tear mere mortals apart.She said, “If you think me a fool,
You are sadly mistaken.
If you find me to be cruel…
I’m just giving back what I’ve been taking.For these many long years,
I’ve played your childlike games.
I’ve shed too many unnecessary tears,
And will never be the same.The things that once hurt me,
They now bring me a twisted pleasure.
I stand on my own, tall, not on bended knee.
My aloneness is freedom beyond measure.”Quietly, in her own head,
She thought herself quite mad
Though, for her own good stead
She accepted that she was…but, only a tad.It is far easier to be empty
As there’s nothing left for anyone to take.
She no longer felt lonely…
As Eve in Eden, she once trusted that snake.
Elaina has been writing poetry since she was 14. She took advanced literature classes in high school where she learned how to write poems.
Some of her poems were published in a local paper in Vermont where she grew up. In 2013, some of her poems were published in an anthology called Hear Me, See Me: Incarcerated Women Write.
The love of writing poetry has stayed with Elaina throughout her life and she has used it as a coping skill for many years.