Hair blonde
Eyes brown
Pale face
Carrying a frown
She puts on an act
Smiles the pain away
But you don’t know the impact
She can’t escape the heartache
One day things will get better
Right now I sit here
Writing you this letter
Breathing in the fresh air
I have to be positive
This is my story
And I am the narrative
One day I will live my life in all its glory
Editor's Note
This is a poem with a fantastic, insistent rhythm which really drives it forward. The use of half-rhyme or slant-rhyme, where the words don’t fully rhyme but still resonate with each other (eg away/heartache, sit here/fresh air), adds a lovely richness, far more than ‘true rhyme’ would have, and this poem feels like it would work really well spoken aloud or performed. There’s a really lovely tone shift through the poem from a feeling of difficulty and sadness to one of hope and rejuvenation, and the idea of the speaker being the narrative in their own story is a very thought-provoking and inspiring one!