This poem began as 20 separate lines, each with specific guidelines it has to follow. It was probably my least favorite thing I ever had to do. The guidelines ranged from 'must contain a metaphor' to 'you must use a line of slang with a reference to a specific person and place and the blood of a rare amazon tortoise'. After painstaking classes working on it, I finally finished, only to edit out all of the really weird and terrible parts to leave this:
Stranger
Going back home is like seeing a stranger in disguise
and they live to pickpocket.
Fake smiles swarm you.
Names you’ve never heard sting your ears.
Foreign hands shake yours and familiar ones grab you
as piles of food are shoved at your face and
the distant scents of familiar laundry soap touch your nose.
Every word from someone I don’t remember
stabs my skin with tiny needles.
So I ran out, untouched, night air streaming into my nostrils.
The humidity silently drenched my clothes,
I am the man on the moon,
casted away from all others.
I am the stranger.
I was as happy as a child on his first day at a new school.
My thoughts undecipherable,
melting together in a boiling pot.
Running, waiting to sleep in my own bed once again,
cool sheets embracing my warm body.
My legs burned and begged for rest but I refused to stop
as the thought of the crowded kitchen spurred me forward.
They talk and talk but I realize that what the strangers say, doesn’t matter.
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