[Untitled] by Adisa Grant
March 25, 2026
Life was easier before a withered rose told a story of the life that killed it
Before knowledge infected me with the urge to seek more
A drug bitter on my tongue that leaves a taste just hardly more bearable than that of regret
Life was easier before the winds purpose whipped past my thoughts
Blowing me into the cavernous cave of knowledge carved by every answer I’ve craved
Enshrined in seven stalactites structured with curiosity and sanded by pragmatism
Who am I to claim knowledge when reverie renders me naive
How many people does it take to deem knowledge common?
Is anything that isn’t guaranteed worth pursuing?
How much must I give to art until I can proclaim that I am an artist?
How many rose petals must wither until the sun shines through the cyanines of the blossoms that remain
And any third eye connected to a curious mind is forced to see the color they’ve denied for a lifetime
How many letters bound by moving words can fit under the umbrella of ‘importance’?
Before the limestone reflects brighter than the darkness of night
And light gentrifies our sky with the extreme that only pleases when it doesn’t shine for seven nights
But who am I to command nature?
Who am I to dictate the varieties in my garden?
Who am I to decide when the life of a bloom is over?
Who? Am? I?
Three rainstorms have washed hope away in these coronary caverns on this perilous path
One of seven paths governed by the insatiable craving of knowledge
I have seven days to discover who I am, and who I am capable of being
Because only a fool flies too high in his sky
And too quickly toward the slumber strung up in the sky, bound to a star,
and promised to the sun that will melt his wings as he falls into the cycle of seven sorrows
Only washed away by the river that knows of the bank to which its arrival is promised.
If I have nothing to give but words and society craves a semblance of the story’s entirety
What words can accompany the palms facing a sky with a sun I never asked to see
So that the the quilted quandaries may quit my troubled tapestry
And I will be ok with just being a poet
And I will be ok with just being seventh best
And I will be ok,
With just being, just existing in a world where existence is a valid excuse for fatigue
So that when the flame of glory burns my waxen youth
The third time I will not fight it
And when I stand barely seven centimeters tall as a candle at the end of its life
I will have no more light to give
I won’t have anything else to give
Soon it will be June and nothing else will be expected from an early bloom.
This poem was written by Adisa Grant, a Youth Poet Fellow, guided by mentors Amy Hirayama and Jourdan Imani Keith. Performed at the Seattle Arts & Lectures Words Bloom Gala on March 21, 2026.
Posted in Student Writing Youth Poet Laureate Support