Personals

written as an assignment for my creative writing class. This poem is a persona poem, it had to be clearly about someone that was not me, the voice of someone else. The perspective is of a 16 year old boy.



I haven’t slept in on Sunday mornings for the
Last five years in a row, getting
Up before the sun when the cars are finally
Quiet and the college kids have gone to bed.
I put on my converse tennis shoes
Size eleven, rubber falling off like ribbon
Discarded from a birthday box and
Ride my rusting green bike up and down quiet streets,
Throwing papers onto doorsteps.
I haven’t missed a target in 2 years.
(But I’m bad a sports.)
And the sun comes up as I’m working
Shooting lines of gold and orange between
The houses and the trees and the
World feels good and kind, so when
I get home I don’t go back to bed.
Instead I sit on the porch and draw pictures
And eat cereal from the box until my
Hands are cold and the neighbors
With the blue pickup truck leave
For work. I want to go away from here,
Far away where the night is never quiet
And the girl across the street isn’t sad
When she picks up the paper from beside
The red rubber boots and disappears back inside
Never smiling. I’ve drawn the braid that hangs
Down her back a hundred times, but never
Her face. She retreats too quickly and I
Wish that I could tell her she is beautiful
And that someday we will fly away from this
Empty little town and show the world
Even we misfits
Know how to spread our wings.

~C.R. Sutton