Lauren Lin

“I am Lauren Lin, a sixteen-year old sophomore in high school. I write poetry to express the veiled aspects of my mind that may not be clear to me until written in verse. I believe in the power of poetry to both inspire and connect individuals from all walks of life. I hope my poems will serve as solace, hope, and kinship to everyone.”

Ecopoem

MEMORIES OF EARTH

Each drop an orb of glass
Upon beds of rippling mirrors
For the splash to earth
Is a reflection of its past

And so she mourns
Deeply in her soul of clouds
From above her tears pour
Dripping like plummeting stones
Each a splatter of bitter betrayal

For she remembers
Remembers like the kiss of fire
Remembers like the stab of lightning
Remembers like the knot of snapped vines

Her gifts sacrificed to them
Those tiny twigs she’d loved 
Who stood on their twin trunks 
And grew strands of silken web
From heads of bursting fruit

They who had spoken
And wrote
And laughed
And loved her

And killed
And took
And clawed

For more beyond
The presents in her soil

They who had sharpened their tools
Drilled into her belly
For the oil in her veins
And her bones of bark

She remembers
The way their smiles 
Twisted
On her.

Until finally
Her body crumbled 
As the air in her lungs 
Faded. 
And her blood
Extracted. 

Only then might they know
And remember
Her love
And their flesh-filled claws
They’d sunk into her blessings

But will they ever know?
How she’d loved?

So her tears plunge
Hoping to soak them
And remind them

But even she 
Loses her gaze with the stars
And freezes her sorrow

Enough tears, she quells

For she cannot bear 
To see in the mirror they paint
The years she gave 
To they who only chewed
Away.

Copyright © 2022 by Lauren Lin. Used with permission of the author.

Read Lauren Lin’s poem, “I am”. Lauren is also a contributor to the collaborative poem, “The Many Voices Word Karaoke”.

Read other poems featured in the Youth & Ecopoetry project.