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Youth Are Awesome, commonly referred to as YAA, is a blog written by youth for youth. YAA provides the youth of Calgary a place to amplify their voices and perspectives on what is happening around them. Youth Are Awesome is a program of Youth Central.

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HomeUncategorizedPaper - An Original Slam Poem

Paper – An Original Slam Poem

What do you call a person

who’s flimsy and flat and fragile and fake?

someone who hides behind a silhouette

of what society wants them to be?

one who doesn’t care about anything that actually matters?

someone so two-dimensional

they could be blown away by the wind?

a person so unreal,

the word “paper” is used to describe them?

paper girls

paper boys

playing with their paper friends,

what do you call them?

I call them,

us.


What do you call a town

that’s flimsy and flat and fragile and fake?

a town filled with paper people and paper houses?

a place that seems mesmerizing from far away,

but in the end, like most things, is uglier up close

a town made of paper like the ones in pop-up books,

somewhere over the rainbow where bluebirds

don’t fly

and trouble surely

don’t melt like lemon drops.

what do you call that?

I call it,

here.


You see, we’re all paper people,

faker than Kylie Jenner’s lips!

fake friends, fake love, fake smile,

we’ve all been there,

done that,

so why do we keep believing that we’re real?

even if we stacked ourselves on top of each other,

we’re still just a pile of paper.

but what’s even worse is the fact that everyone loves the idea of a paper person

because with paper people

you see what you want to see and not what’s actually there,

but I guess people like that,

seeing what they wish though it’s probably not the truth

and I guess I like it too,

being the “idea” that everyone loves,

because it’s great to be seen as “cool” or “popular”

I mean,

why wouldn’t we like that?

we’re just a couple of kids who care about clothes and popularity and everything else,

how could we possibly be real?


And speaking of real,

where are the real kids?

the ones not made of paper but of flesh and bones?

where are they?

how are they holding up in our paper world?

what do they see in their three-dimensional point of view?

paper kids?

paper towns?

can they see through my paper mask?

or do they only only see real things?

if they do, they definitely won’t see me!

cause I’ll tell you right now;

I am a paper girl,

so fake even Barbie is more real that me!

I care about things that don’t actually matter,

and yeah, I’m a fake friend,

I won’t lie,

I’m 110% paper

but, that doesn’t mean I was always paper.


I used to be real,

we all used to be real,

but this process called growing up

has made up paper,

made us fake,

made us flimsy, fragile and flat.

that little girl who once believed in fairies and wore mismatched outfits,

she’s gone now, I’m sorry

all the sprinkles and sparkles and the personality I used to show off like it was a trophy,

they’ve disappeared.


Now there’s only one question that needs to be asked;

how do I get that little girl back?

how does a papergirl become real again?

-Hilary


(x)

Inspiration: Paper Towns by John Green

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