Poetry
My poetry is sort of a mess.
a tangible reflection
maybe it’s because i was too short,
the top of my blond, curl-infested head
barely grazing the cracked edges of my family’s mirror,
that my reflection was unknown to me.
unknown, not entirely unfamiliar.
unknown, not mystical.
unknown, not sought after.
unknown, a chasm filled by indifference,
not curiosity.
i knew the color of my hair because its curls wove around my sticky fingers,
tangled pieces of dirty blonde rotini in my peripheral.
i knew the little moles dotting the scraped-up crevices of my skin
because my mom would plant chapped kisses on my ‘little constellations’.
i knew the uneven peach of my skin because i would admire the way my older brother’s stolen aloe vera would coat the suntanned ombre of my skin like a fresh coat of slime.
i knew the size of my pants only in relation to which older cousin’s hand-me-downs i could fit in.
i knew the little gold flecks in my eyes by staring at those of my twin brother
while we hid in the temperamental barricade of our pop-up blanket forts.
i wonder when
i finally looked into the glass depths of a real mirror.
i wonder when
my eyes began to catch on photos of myself– the ones littered on my family’s mantel and my middle school friends’ Instagram accounts.
i wonder when
i first stared at the clear, cerulean depths of Lake Tahoe,
and searched for my reflection
and not the sun-reflective blue caps of water.
i wonder when i realized
i didn’t even have the same eye color as my twin brother,
that the nose that jutted out of the leathery marble of my father’s face was not the same one I snorted at my brothers with,
that my honey-stained curls that sat like a nested animal on my shoulders
looked nothing like the straight brown of my mother’s hair my hands liked to weave through,
that the ungraceful moles that mapped out the soft folds of my body
were nothing like the gentle spatter of freckles that adorned my older brother’s cheeks.
maybe i was too short,
too stupid,
too near-sighted,
or naive
to render my reflection.
or maybe,
instead,
i found it in the curves and divots of my mother’s form,
the jagged crooks of my father’s face,
the little freckles dotting the canvas of my older brother’s body,
and the opposite eye color of my twin brother.
but all the crystal mirrors are entirely obsolete,
for the clearest reflection of myself exists in the gentle irregularities of my family.
too short,
too near sighted,
too naive–
but only in them do i see the reflection of the girl that,
supposedly,
is me.
parentmorphosis
as a kid,
the stupidest advertisement i ever saw
was the commercial by progressive
that had the man who looked like jim gaffigan but with a knock-off ted lasso mustache.
the commercial’s slogan was ‘we can’t protect you from turning into your parents, but we can protect your home and auto when you bundle with us’
and it featured
young couples in cul-de-sacs,
middle-aged gen-x-ers with golfer hats,
fold-up chairs for therapy sessions centered around mid-life crises–
but mostly
the irrevocable
and dreaded
transition of one
into their parents–
receding hairlines and all.
i think as teenagers,
something instinctual in us,
hates that prophesied transition.
parents,
a word with a connotation that can only be described as ambivalence,
are synonymous with curfews that are too early
chores that go too late
arguments that are too long
and apologies that are too short.
parents
are kind of the antithesis of our existence.
they don’t know how to edit the homescreens of their iphones
but know the exact minute we snuck out
and the second we attempted to sneak back in.
they don’t know how to solve an integral
or comprehend molar mass,
but they do know
that the b+ on our transcript
will ruin our lives
and that the words ‘high key’
have no linguistic meaning.
at redwood,
our student population is diverse
but we are ideologically homogeneous
in our determination to be independent from our parents,
to fight the progressive commercial
that we thought was so stupid when we were 13.
somehow,
though,
in the middle of the homecoming dances we skipped,
the calculus tests we prayed our way through,
the eggs we fried on a car in the backlot,
the smart classes we ditched for the beach,
the SAT scores we don’t talk about,
the essays we Chatgpt’d,
and the christmas tree we subjected to the non-natural humidity of the boys’ bathroom,
we betrayed ourselves.
suddenly,
we started golfing,
eating kale salads,
going on hikes,
wearing vests and full-length shirts
drinking tea–
and talking about driving insurance,
it started when we passed our dmv tests and inherited either a beater car or a porsche (depending on the student)– and decided that speed limits were gentle recommendations.
it started when we got our first job and paycheck,
and realized we probably pay more taxes than Donald Trump does, even though we make 16.50 an hour.
it started when we made our first linked-in profiles
and tried to market ourselves on indeed when we had no transferable skills but a need for a summer job.
it started when we forgot our parents’ phone numbers for a second
because it’s been almost a decade since we needed to have them memorized for emergencies.
it started when we discovered that cooking meals from scratch with our friends, long hikes to see waterfalls, and beach days that last until sunset– actually are the best.
somehow,
today,
looking down at the saturated, grassy lawn
we stare at parents that
for so long we have drifted from,
but are finally orbiting back towards.
according to wikipedia,
those stupid progressive commercials
are actually about the unwilling transition into your parents
during a new stage of life.
in fact,
the marketing team met with psychologists
and they,
unironically,
dubbed this concept ‘parentmorphosis’;
a linguistic union of the horrible book we had to read for ap lit
and the word parent.
in the progressive commercials,
this new stage of life
is buying a home.
for us,
it’s leaving one.
yet,
the further we may plan to get away from our parents for college,
the more pieces of them
we take with us.
i apologize on behalf of the class of 2025 for everything awful we did as children.
we love you.
and even if we walked into redwood with a solemn vow of never becoming like you,
we leave
irrevocably
and happily
‘parentmorphosized’.
a second last name
the name Frei exists in my family both as a covert whisper,
buried by the heavy, long letters of my uncles' surnames,
and also as the proud German name my Irish grandma wears.
I wear it like it’s an ill-fitting top,
buried by the larger, all-encompassing coat of my father’s last name, Gehrman
my mom and some of her sisters wear it despite the protests of their spouses.
my grandma wears it despite it belonging to her adulterous, abrasive husband.
one of my aunts hyphenates it,
but the small name Frei gets skimmed over next to the large print of her husband’s name Jenkins.
of my cousins though,
only six of us wear it as a last name.
and only one will,
in a traditional patriarchal structure,
carry it down.
Frei, my dad says, should die along with the mistakes of my grandfather.
the name should simply be forgotten,
the way my grandfather was from our house;
our infectious love, big hugs and wet kisses proved aggressive in evicting his harshness from the home our love built.
maybe my dad’s right.
we should bury it–
the short, German letters scraped gradually off of our ancestors' empty tombstones.
but I can’t help but think that it’s ours.
even after their messy divorce, my grandma kept his name:
a German word to mark her 100 percent Irish identity.
my mother and aunts kept his name,
despite his emotional and physical absence from their lives.
i keep his name, tacked between my three other ones.
the same way i kept him
between my other three grandparents:
overpowered.
maybe Frei is his.
maybe it’s ours.
maybe it means nothing.
or maybe,
German translation and connotations aside,
the name is simply four letters,
too often misspelled,
that could never contain the bountiful complexities of our family
our family–
his
theirs
ours
and mine.
how do you translate 'up'?
when i was a sophomore in high school.
my spanish teacher told me that one of the most challenging words for english letters was only two words:
up.
as a reader
a student
a writer
a poet
i’ve always assumed i knew what it meant–
but the more i think about it
the less i do.
at its simplest,
it is short for upwards,
and thus has a positive connotation.
i wonder,
how our relationship,
characterized entirely by painful pitfalls and progressive downturns,
could be so full of ups.
i wonder,
when we broke up,
was it called that because when the last phone line disconnected,
my voice trailing as the little beep of my phone cut me off,
you sat on your little plaid bed covers
and hung up?
was it called that because somehow,
among the range-rover-dominated streets and rampant academic elitism of our hometown,
we finally left behind those shitty versions of ourselves,
spoiled and intellectually stuck-up kids
who never knew how to shut up?
was it called that because we kicked the childhood stuffies off our beds,
ditched the kids’ applesauce,
donated our placebo training bras
and grew up?
was it called that because our relationship belonged,
instead,
in our dreams–
8 hour phone calls,
love song duets.
maybe we were too perfect
and when my cracked fingernails left the delicate curls piled on your scalp,
your elbows releasing their gentle pressure on my ribcage,
we remembered our own brokenness
and our insecurities woke us up.