Anastasia Helena Fenald (b. 1992) is a second-generation Ukrainian-Hispanic-American poet from Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert. Known for her energetic attitude and sad poems, she spends most of her free time attending poetry workshops, performing at local open mics, and exploring Southern California. She currently has a poetry art piece hanging at "Holy Grounds Coffee & Tea" in Alhambra, CA for the Sacred Heart Poetry Wall. She has been published in the Shelia-Na-Gig Online Journal, The Sims Library of Poetry's Anthology Poems in Praise of Libraries, and A Thousand Flowers Anthology and more. Help Me, I’m Here: Poems to Myself is her debut poetry collection by the World Stage Press.

HELP ME

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(It’s 2007. I’m 15.)

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I have nothing left.

I know that now.

I tossed it all aside myself.

I wish I could just die.

I don’t want this pain anymore.

I want it all to end.

I’m sick of it.

I can’t do this.

I can’t be me anymore.

My heart hurts. 

It wants to stop beating.

Make it all stop.

… Is anyone listening?

Please?
 

I’M HERE

[15 years later.]

Can I — can I come near you?

Will you let me hold you?

Can I press your ear to my heart

so the steady beat becomes yours?

You are not alone, Little Me.

I’m here to love you.

I want to hear

every unsaid fear.

Is it okay if I take your hands

and stop them from tearing at yourself?

Please stop destroying this person who I adore.

You are not a burden to anyone.

Your kindness flows freshwater-sweet,

so eager to fill all the broken glass,

to parch the thirsty when we are desert dry.

Our heart is my favorite thing about us.

Would you believe me

if I said you will love living?

That the world is listening,

your story is just beginning.

In every dream, though,

I wish I could hold you,

just for a moment to say:

I’m here, I’m here.