By Kayla Sue Warner

🔹 Intro:

There’s so much violence—out there and inside of me. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been living in a war zone, both in the world and in my own head. This is a poem about that kind of pain, but it’s also about choosing not to stay in it forever. About cracking the concrete. About saying no.

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Tired of Tragic

Tired of tragic—
inside and outside of me.

Always some kind of war.

Bombs detonating
in my skull.

Shrapnel slicing through my thoughts.
Smoke flooding my lungs.
Sirens howling—
but no one comes.

I pick the metal out of my own head.
I stitch the bleeding with shaking hands.

It never stops.

There are landmines buried
inside of me.

There are landmines buried
in the streets out there.

Bombs blowing out other people’s brains
over there—
in the places we’ve agreed
not to look.

Will it ever end?
No.

This world was built
to devour itself.

But that does not mean
I have to kneel to it.

I refuse
to wear tragedy like a uniform.
I refuse
to swallow it like a daily pill.
I refuse
to keep folding myself into it—
like I was born
to explode.

There is still color
in this gray, burning battlefield.

There is still softness
when the bombs go quiet.

And I do not have to bleed
to prove I’m alive.

I am tired
of being tragic.

I am done.

I choose something else.

Like a flower
cracking the concrete on purpose—
its roots breaking the sidewalk
wide open.

Like a breath
that refuses
to stay small.

Like a soft rebellion—
a quiet but certain
No.

I am tired
of being tragic.

And I will not
be tragic
anymore.