PHOEBE HOUSER - POEMS

Phoebe Houser was born and raised in Pennsylvania, and is currently a senior in high school. She is the co-editor of her high school’s literary arts magazine, Windscript, and hopes to continue writing in the future.

​Drifting Dreamscapes

Galaxies of eager white
Are penetrated by lazy blue
Cotton kisses caressing
Every crevice of our wings

Infinity lies beyond
Our fogged and faded window
We leave time trailing behind us
A silent companion to our fate

I could fall into this world
I could embrace a sapphire realm
I’d kiss the earth with arms held wide
Before finding my wings again

I breathe six miles higher
From the soil and roots that shaped me
I am released and I am abandoned
By the person I once was

Trapped amid sheer liberation
A spirit tethered to the distant past
This world engulfs my being
Solace resting in the balance of realms

I long to burst free from this shell
Still, contentedness rolls into submission
One breath, one voice, amid many
En route through unpaved skies

Lingering in the engine’s longing exhale
I release a breath of my own.
My thoughts settle like whispers inside me
Existence, a secluded world away

The flight, indifferent, moves onwards
As lazy eyes blink to a close
Heavy souls lifted, passengers unawoken
By the descent which surely awaits us

​

​A Moment’s Observation

Sunlight teases the unbound curls,
So reluctantly framing a stoic face.
Distracted, distant, quite nearly uninhabited;
I watch, because she asked me,
Nonetheless, in such intrusive lighting,
I feel akin to a child again,
Tugging mistakenly on the sleeve of a stranger.
She hides within a layer of skin
That shines like saffron starlight
In her daydreams, she paints it over
In viridescent spires of ivy.
She’s the sun when she smiles,
But the moon when she laughs
A golden girl
With a silver disposition
And a silence so resounding,
It cradles her words like sand in the tide.
She shows the world her shaking hands
She crafts a mask of her most daring oddities
Concealing with convincing ardor
The measures she's taken to subdue them.
She toils for the life she is given,
Chips away at herself to belong,
Unbeknownst to the truth of her presence.
In the sapphire ink universe
That she’s traced over in pen,
She's the most beautiful thing to behold.
Beneath the golden walls,
The silver words,
The crystal wit and glass vivacity,
She watches,
Her vibrant eyes swimming
With desire to capture all she sees.
Unaware that the world watches back,
It’s no wonder that upon the slightest glimpse,
She is impossible to look away from.

​

Memory Lane
​

​She wades in a pool of beloved dreams
Her sigh weaved with silk, a melody in pink
I ponder her shoulders
The shift of her head
Her serene way of scribbling
Da Vinci in chalk
The chirping of water, burned and sculpted in wax
Her fingers graze board games and old photographs
Boots embrace pavement, a childhood phase
Her eyes sing the song of forgotten today
A chipper blue Easter in London’s northeast
She’s a fish without flippers
Too soon divested of faith
In tipping of a spoon
And the splatter of soup
In the halt of her head, anticipating
The respite of a pillow’s succumbing ways
A bright summer’s smile,
A portrayal of sun
In the shimmer of her tan skin
Void of scarlet or blue
Before innocence flew its white banners