Author: Sophia Falco
I’ve learned to hold on to my dreams even more tightly unlike that kid who witnessed his red balloon when that string slipped out of his grasp rise up up up into the blue sky—like how I will continue to rise from the depths of sorrow, and how I will never give up. Time is a funny thing and flies like doves, mourning doves, but still at the same time intangible like my moods: you cannot touch them, but they touch me.
Blue like the expansive ocean that mirrors the blue sky, blue and blue multiplying like my sorrow. They say ride the wave, but there is no water currently just sand, sand dunes, valleys of sand. They say hills and valleys, but really the wind swept it away, and now there is nothingness whereas I feel too much. Would I rather feel too much or nothing at all? Is this a blessing or a curse? I don’t dwell into what’s worse.
Living with bipolar 1 for over a decade has not defined me whereas being a poet has. To surpass the mundane, and into other worlds, I write. To transcend from day-to-day into the spiritual, I write. To free me from some suffering, I write. I write to survive, and I write to live.
Poetry is my world, and poetry means the world to me, and that being a poet has saved me time and time again to give me purpose, and a place to try to release some of this sorrow. To pour it out on the page in ink; a place for my sorrows to roam free like snow leopards instead of being stuck in my mind. This is my world.
Within this poetry world, I’ve created my own home built upon letters and words as the foundation, and then built it up some more with imagery, simile, and metaphors. Yet this home of mine is a shape shifter constantly evolving. You cannot pin this down into a definition or take it away from me.
At first this is invisible to the naked eye, and I’ve even put up a protective shield around it. My home only resides in my mind until my poems are born in ink on paper until they then manifest off the page, and start to roam. They are roaming into the hearts of not others, but into the hearts of people who indeed take seriously my poetry.
My poems are like snowflakes—no two are alike. I was gifted a little book about snowflakes by my great uncle who was a kind-hearted man when I was a child. He loved poetry and would, with his eyes closed, recite me his favorite poems in his humble room at the priory. He was a priest whereas I am not religious, however he respected me just the same.
I once wrote a poem for him about hope when he needed it the most, and yet you cannot force anyone to write about hope—it needs to come from within, and at the same time, a helping hand like his can aid an individual to manifest hope. To help bring it out from hiding.
I hope to have made him proud by following my dream of being a poet. I carry with me his smile, and his light that resided in his eyes behind his thick-black framed glasses. He taught me to see the world in a way that hope does exist, and I am beyond grateful to still exist on this planet Earth having just completed my 27th trip around the sun.
Blogger Bio
Sophia Falco
Sophia Falco is a faithful poet since she finds poetry essential to her understanding of the universe. She is the author of Farewell Clay Dove (UnCollected Press, 2021). In addition, she is the author of her award-winning chapbook: The Immortal Sunflower (UnCollected Press, 2019), the winner of the Mirabai Prize for Poetry, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Furthermore, Falco graduated magna cum laude along with the highest honors in the Literature Department at The University of California, Santa Cruz. Her Bachelor of Arts degree is in intensive literature with a creative writing concentration in poetry. She loves to take long walks on the beach to be in the presence of the water, and to witness the ocean’s vastness, blueness, and beauty.