Samira Daley

Samira’s Poems

• Flavors

  Blue raspberry, red raspberry, green apple, strawberry, Pomegranate, and cake!
  

   Brand new, exciting flavors of a vape; the  cool, new cigarette that you can take anywhere you go and just have to charge it! 

  How many kids have bought it? How many kids have tried it? How many have been caught? How many children have been laced by other drugs, other people, other friends, and died from it?

  You know, it really makes me question it's  worth. Are the sweet, enticing flavors worth self-isolation? Are the few minutes of artificial happiness worth friendships? Is it worth it, to smoke, do drugs, to infect your body with the poison that is greed?

  It starts when you're young. 

  When your minds are more focused on the joy of the moment rather than the outcome. 

  Wanting to hop on trends, you take a hit from someone else's vape 

  but it doesn't stop there, because you soon buy vapes of your own, 

  emptying your pockets and turning your brain to mush. 

  Filling a middle school bathroom with a cloud of poison isn't something you thought you'd end up doing but here you are. 

  Girls like me, too scared to speak up, 

  girls like ME, too afraid to warn them of the dangers, 

  are forced to hold their breath, hold their tongue, hold their mind and watch as you destroy the only thing you can truly call your own. 

  These sights make way for rage in my body, at the stupid choices and missed opportunities, at the mistaken moments that lead to a worse life. 

  I am angry. 

  Angry at the parents shielding their eyes from their child's rampage. 

  I am angry. 

  Angry at the friends who tempt others to a darker path. Dammit, I am angry! Angry at this world that allows so many lives to be corrupted, and defiled, and taken to the point of a meaningless, disastrous, ruin that no one will dare to offer a chance at salvation. 

  But it also encases my heart with a veil of sadness and I cannot stop the same thought  from ringing through my mind; this isn't right. Our bodies are not made for twisted adults to fill up with toxins and cancers disguised as Blue raspberry, red raspberry, green apple, strawberry, Pomegranate, and cake! . We are supposed to breathe life into our lungs, not nicotine. At this age our brains are meant to develop and grow, not turn into the product of disease. And when my heart turns blue, matching the color of my face, it is frightened by the thought that yours could black and turning into the filth you willingly consume.

  Just like Dad, inhaling toxic clouds made him feel like he was on one, spiraling downwards into a mess he couldn't run from, and after all the things sacrificed, taken away for a better life, he still settles for smaller clouds, hooked and sinking into that addictive feeling.

   I wish I could take away from this toxic environment, these toxic standards society has set for us and instead nurture and instead bring happiness to those damaged. But even my optimistic mind, always in the clouds, understands that will never be possible if no one else makes a decision first. Companies, to stop aiming their poisoned arrow at the minds of children. Parents, teachers, adults to at least try to deflect that arrow from reaching its goal. And teenagers. To not take that first hit, to not succumb to the selfish wants of a drug-riddled brain, to not influence others to follow you into an empty, bottomless hole. I know that if something happens, someone gives, then we can change and cultivate our health instead of defiling our bodies with the filth that is a drug.

• Apex Boogeymen

  I want to feel pretty. 

  I wanna be pretty. 

  I want to dress up, feel the cherished weight of beauty on my frame and… 

  I want to radiate a magnetism that captures another's gaze,

  but I don't want that gaze to ever be of older men. 

  But, I’ve been told that thought contains its own undoing

  because 

  how can a 14-year-old girl wear makeup

  and a slightly low-cut shirt  

  and not expect grown men to be attracted to her? 

  And my response is, 

  how can a 14-year-old girl wear makeup and a slightly low-cut shirt 

  and expect grown men to be attracted to her? 

  Why am I supposed to be prepared to be viewed as a piece of meat by men twice my age because of my outfit? 

  My top is blood spilled in a sharks lair

  An open invitation to death 

  because that’s all there is when a predator finds its target

  Watch as red paints our oceans

  How can it be?

  
  why the hell am I told that if anything ever happens to me, 

  It is because I was “asking for it”? 

  As if little girls ask to be bit open and torn apart
  Served as dinner for empty hearts

  These expectations sow the seeds of fear in my heart

  festering until it becomes blackened with rot, 

  Because predators are gluttonous 

  They will do it again and again

  Preying on the dead 

  As maggots curl around their poisoned skull, 

  Feeding the terror of their horrifying soul,

  To their next victim

  They are the worst kind of hunter

  Made of gut-twisting nightmares

  Not Jaws…no sharks, 

  These “pedophiles.” 

  The apex boogeymen that lurk in the darkest shadows, 

  waiting to sink their teeth and drag their claws into their next young victim. 

  Some are vile, some depraved, 

  and some willing to break bones 

  and break minds 

  to have more fuel for the next time 

  they wanna give in to their sick desires, 

  and while others sit there telling little girls how not to dress, 

  grown men are taking every chance to pull off their pants 

  and reveal the hunger that lies beneath,

  the cravings that twist innocence into a grotesque feast, 

  
  But pedophiles don't care because to them, 

  I am nothing more than a lurid obsession

  A repulsive kind of meal to feed their revolting appetite 

  They will never know what it is like

  To traverse these blood red oceans in fear

  Of their blood stained maws

  and their blood stained claws

  and I am tired

  of grasping at straws 

  trying to escape this shark lair of lust 

  Pedophilia ties a rope of “fetish” around my neck like a noose

  Pedophilia laughs as I 

  hang

  Bleeding me dry

  My face and my body turn wrinkled and white

  as the life is sucked out of the sweet innocent girl I once thought I was

  That sweet innocent girl is who I want to be again 

  Again, pedophiles crush my dreams of life and love 

  As though my dreams are nothing 

  But they are something

  They are me and I am something 

  I am more than what they expect from me

  I was not made to feed their sick cravings

  I am more than the sex they desire from me

  More than their screwed up fantasy

  I am pretty.

  And kind, and sweet and pure 

  And I'm sure that's exactly the kind of crap they  wanna hear from me 
  

  But I am done.

  I am done fearing their lechery

  I am reclaiming this body of sea

  and I will never tread lightly

  Because it isn't “my fault” they cannot contain their wicked intentions 

  and no,

  I am not “asking for it”

  I am 14. 

  14 years that will never belong to anyone but myself. 

  Not yours.

  Never was.

  Mine.