buried in
By Maylea Harris
I’ve always hated how gravity distorts
My face when I lie down.
I don’t think my favorite tank top is what I want to wear forever,
though it’s the first thing I put on to feel pretty.
And my spiky earrings or thrifted bracelets don’t fit the vibe.
But certainly not a pretty dress, or clean suit, or tie, I’ll be
clothed in an imitation.
Anyway, funerals are more for the living.
Yet I hope someone puts some long, pretty press-on nails for me,
and does my winged eyeliner just how I learned to in middle school,
does my curl routine so my hair falls just right,
and makes me look just like I did yesterday,
so people can see me one last time as the girl who changed her hair whenever life got rough.
I leave behind a vessel, taking my world with me.
No one will know the random moments that have shaped me,
Like running around at a middle school dance while feeling like I was dreaming, like every hug before bed by my parents until I went to sleep after they did.
I never deemed them significant enough to share.
No one will know the insomnia that plagues me,
and the hours I’ve wasted obsessing over the inevitable.
No one will know my successes, or failures,
the number of tears I’ve shed, the smiles that made my cheeks hurt,
or the reasons why for any of it.
They’ll know one thing that I don’t, though.
What I’m buried in.
Artist’s Statement
When I pass, I’ll take everything I didn’t share with others, my most private memories, thoughts, and emotions, with me.
The self I’ll leave behind will take on a different form in each person’s memory. Because to some, I am simply the girl at school with a slightly unusual sense of style, who keeps to herself and changes her hair color every month or so. To my friends, I am passionate and creative; they acknowledge all my quirks and hobbies, and perhaps even understand the drive behind why I write and create. And my closest friends know me almost as much as I know myself.
But even my closest friends haven’t seen the small intricacies that come out when I’m alone. I give glimpses of this self in my work, which will outlive me—my detailed lab notebooks, scraps of my poetry, my thousands of photos—but I don’t think that this is complete.
Given this tension, I wonder often about my legacy. I’ll never know what the people I love will be thinking as they see me for the last time. Have I made the world, or at least the lives of those around me, better? When I am seen for the final time, will I be seen as who I think I am, or who they think I am? Who am I really? As I consider these unanswerable questions, I appreciate that I was known and loved at all, a privilege and blessing that not everyone experiences.
Maylea J. Harris is a senior at The Rivers School in Weston, MA. Growing up, she always captured the world around her through a camera or her words to appreciate the ephemeral moments. Her photography has been featured in multiple showcases, including the Griffin Museum of Photography and Drexel College, and has won national awards in the Rocky Mountain School of Photography Contest and the Scholastic Art Awards. She was awarded the Photography Prize at The Rivers School for four years of dedication and mastery in the art form. Her written work has been published in JUST POETRY’s teen anthology, and her poetry collection was awarded a Silver Key at the Massachusetts Regional Scholastic Writing Awards. This fall, she is heading to the University of Rochester for Neuroscience and plans to continue photography and poetry at the collegiate level.
