Therapeutic Melancholy

Pry the past off your chest, draw in your breath
and undergo a great expansion, rename nostalgia
to something soft or sweet but completely unremarkable,
transfer its meaning with nothing, so when you say
you are nostalgic,you mean you are nothing.

Befriend a blind dog, tear out your rib and
let him lick your bones clean until
you are a skeleton, can you feel yourself
rattle, clutched in the persistent grasp of
a baby’s palm, glistening in salivated youth.

Wail and cry and sore your throat, relive
earlier times, rip out your tongue and wrap it
in the pages of your dictionary, become so
well-versed in the language of longing
that memory cowers in fear of being drawn out.

By Sidney Muntean

Biography:

Sidney Muntean is a high school student in the Creative Writing program at Orange County School of the Arts. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of a creative arts publication, The Junebug Journal. Her work has been recognized by various contests such as the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and Kay Snow Writing Awards and most recently appears in Orca, Adonis Designs Press, and Sunspot Lit. Sidney also likes to dabble in performance poetry, as she won 3rd place with her team in the slam poetry competition OC RYSE.