Liva Felter McWhir

An ode to 2018; to being sixteen


I want to write you psalms about being sixteen
about how i'm learning how to save the world,
about red stained carpets,
about carpets 
where no-one is actually sure 
if its blood or not and 
everyone is afraid 
to check
I want to write you poems 
about being sixteen
sad but meaningful
where every other line rhymes 
and everything makes sense
in the end
I want to write you hymns about being sixteen
suited more to dark empty nooks 
in bars and clubs 
then any cathedral I have ever 
been to
About towns I don't know the names of,
towns I have never seen 
but from the inside of sticky floored pubs and clubs.
I want to write you soliloquies 
about being sixteen
about how all my clothes are vomit stained
about the bags under my eyes and 
about how loneliness 
is a word much to pretty
 
And about how nothing makes sense, not even in the end
 
I want to write you stories about being sixteen
about being so full 
of love 
that I don’t think I could ever bear to see it blister
About how everything hurts
all of the time and 
about people who tell me these are the best years of my life
About how my mum always sighs and shakes her head,
looks at me over the top of her glasses
about how she always asks, what happened to you? 
 
And she always pauses as if waiting on the answer, as if she thinks I have any that she actually wants to hear.

About how I love
like I'll never live again
About how sometimes
when the sun sets in your eyes
and all I can see are broken boxes, red stained carpets. 
I think that maybe, just maybe  
it would be ok to never love again.
About how I don't think I can love anything else anyway.
 
I want to write you plays about being sixteen. 
 
About how i'm learning how to save the world, and about how maybe one day I might learn that it is ok if I only ever save myself.


Liva Felter McWhir is a fulltime student, occasional poet and avid shower singer, originally from the east of England but currently studying in the wilderness of rural northern Denmark. Liva would really love to learn how to play the trombone, so she can play carless whisper at parties and annoy everyone into leaving her alone. Her main past times include sleeping, eating pasta and never knowing what is going on.