Coco Peezy

Coco Peezy has been reading and writing poetry since 7th grade. By day she is a high school English teacher in San Mateo County. In her free time, she is usually surfing or hiking with her dog, Huckleberry. For more of her poetry, you can find her first book, Coastal, anywhere books are sold. 

Poems on Belonging

BECOMING

Haven’t I been whole
          for awhile now?
Then again,
how could I be
when I’m constantly
giving parts of myself
          to people who walk away.

Your time comes
and sometimes
          it goes—
So isn’t this all
          a becoming?

Like the moon
working through her phases—
          Only to be full once a month,
like the Sun rising and setting—
          She can’t shine all day,
like the flower who opens and closes—
          She too needs rest.

Aren’t we all merely rotating like Earth,
expanding like the Universe,
spreading our roots like the trees,
filling and emptying ourselves
like the tide?

There is nowhere to grow
if we reach it all at once.

Copyright © 2018 by Coco Peezy. Used with permission of the author.

HAPPY PILLS

Courage is
staying awake
for two months
and making it
out of bed
each day.

Strength is
not succumbing
to your own mind.

Meditating morning
and night
to realize
that you are
a loving,
breathing
animal.

Softening besides
the ocean;
having no energy
to go in.

Taking the bottle
of happy pills
from an outreached hand:
theirs, yours, mine.

How your “normal”
was said to be unusual,
and happiness
felt abstract;
foreign to your
heavy body,
which now
                    floats.

Copyright © 2018 by Coco Peezy. Used with permission of the author.

A COURSE OF HEALING

Off-balance?
Align yourself
          with the stars.
What gives you tingles?
No one can answer
          your happiness.

Drown out your spirit
          with fear;
keep sinking
until your intuition
          recovers you.

Search for apologies
          you will never receive—
Settle with forgiving.

Compare yourself
into despair;
emerge from it.
You won’t know
what you’re made of
          until it’s been challenged.

Patience in wanting
and waiting—
Sun pokes through
the dark clouds:
here is the feeling
          you stuck around for.

Surrender to something
          bigger—
Putting my pen to paper:
          this is how I pray.

Copyright © 2018 by Coco Peezy. Used with permission of the author.