Cover of child, when you grow up you can be anything. (please don’t be an artist)

child, when you grow up you can be anything.
(please don’t be an artist)

Lilith Noah poem collage full
Lilith Noah poem collage part one
Lilith Noah poem collage part two
Lilith Noah poem collage part three
Lilith Noah poem collage part four

words like silk,

wistful and white and

i read & read and i wish it was me who’d written it.

the letters flow from

tongue to head, right into the folds of my pinkish brain and

make me feel electric.


didn’t come from my hands though,

never from my hands that always

hit the wrong keys on the keyboard,

whatever i want to say i never spell the words quite right,

whatever i say has been said before,

twice as beautiful.


how do you live your life if you know you’ll always be only second-best,

at best,

that everything that you’ve created has been done before,

oh sweet, sweet disconnect.

even this feels child-like, an attempt of an attempt,

see, to me

praise has always felt close to pity.


yet we write and we paint, we all do,

and sometimes it feels like madness

(and sometimes it clearly is)

and sometimes it’s all that these godless hands can do.

and sometimes in these moments,

when it flows like a february river

we understand it.

and it’s all we were ever meant to do.