Taya Offutt Decker

Grade: 8

Laurel School

Instructor: Kate Webb

Breakfast

Poetry

Breakfast

I miss when mornings were exciting.
I miss the mornings when I could wake up and still pretend to be asleep.
I miss hearing the noise of the coffee machine filtering out the pungent black liquid that would later stain my grandmother's porcelain mugs and glasses.
I miss the light that would creep through me and my sister's door that would shine through my thin and restless eyes.
I guess what I'm saying is that I miss when my grandma wasn't so gone. The years when she could still function properly. The days where she wouldn't forget that her house she lived in for 43 years is her house, or that you can't put pizza still in the box inside the oven.
When did her gears slip? Why couldn't she stay in her big white house surrounded by vivid pink rhododendrons forever?
Now mornings are no longer exciting.
And memories of it fall farther and farther from my grandma's mind.

Room (For One More?)

Poetry

Room (For One More?)

I love my sister, with my whole heart.
I loved to play dolls with her,
I loved to sleep in her warm and comforting bed,
And I especially loved when she would fangirl over her favorite shows and boy bands.
7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.
13.
When she was 13 I feel like everything shifted.
It was as if her world was stuck in moonlit night and mine in sunny day.
She would just close her bedroom door and disappear.
I felt, and still feel, bad for her. She didn't deserve what happened.
I learned to entertain myself. How to let my imagination run free.
I felt like a nuisance and like the sibling she never wanted. She shut me out and never fully let me back in.
I only saw her 3 times in the day.
Morning,
After School,
And dinner.
And that was it.
The gap between me and her is too great. She lives in one reality and me in another.
I looked up to her.
And when she was still home, I looked up to her bedroom door.

Black Letters On White Paper

Poetry

Black Letters On White Paper

What an odd thing to see when I look in the mirror; when I look around at my family.
I was raised around black culture. The music. the food. the hair. And the bond that they have to each other.
I feel like I have never been a part of that special bond. And I feel like I never will be.
My mother's copper-colored skin and my father's pale, ivory skin made me and my sister look different. A happy not so happy medium which made us wonder where we really belonged.
We have coily curls that drape down our shoulders like dark brown and light brown party streamers, and eyes as black as soil, but that doesn't make a difference. People still see us as white. Not both. We aren't dark enough to "pass".
I don't go a day without explaining what my race is. Even putting it in situations that don't necessarily need it because I feel that If I don't say it, it's not true.
If I don't say it, my black friends see and treat me differently.
If I do say it, my white friends see and treat me differently.
I always have to stay in the Middle.
I have middle hair,
Im in middle school,
I have middle skin,
What does middle even mean anyways?
I will always be black letters on white paper, and that is a fact.