Field Dreamer - By: Emily Brown

A girl sits in a corner, as her parents scream at each other.

They do this almost every night, so she runs to her room where it’s quieter.

She loves how her parents act when there’s others around, but the second they get to their house.

It’s the white picket fence dream, full of lies and secrets.

Where she’s reminded she’s a little girl that has to act like an adult, in a house full of children.

She learned at a young age, that to stay quiet was to stay safe.

So she taped her mouth, and stayed like an animal in a cage.

She never said a word when her father would come home and scream at her for not contributing to the family pay, for sitting on her lazy ass and doing nothing all day, for wasting her life away.

She was 10 by the way, and it was summer anyway.

At that age she was sick, because of the years she was hidden, the quiet and respectful kid.

She felt off and like she never fit in, she talked to much sometimes while with her childhood friends.

When she was alone in bed the feelings would kick in, and she couldn’t cry because she taught herself to keep everything in.

Completely hidden.

She would dream of singing where the wildflowers live.

For she was just a kid stuck in the environment she lived, she dreamt of a place she wouldn’t have to keep it all in.

Where she didn’t feel like the girl, sick and stuck in her messed up head.

She dreamt and dreamt before it went away, and she found the state of mind she would be in when she couldn’t escape.

So the next day like clockwork, her dad got home after a bad day at work.

He stopped to scream and shout at her.

She didn’t look at him and just stayed quiet, which she knew always worked, and she reminded herself that she was a field dreamer.

So as he got louder and louder, she pictured a place she could truly be her.

What she didn’t know is that this wouldn’t always work.

As she got older, and the more times he’d yell at her, the more times it would hurt.

She realized when she yelled back, she was stronger than the little girl in the corner.

The girl that felt like a clock that wouldn’t work.

She knew she would always be the field dreamer at heart.

But for now she stopped taping her mouth shut, and finally found her spark.

Please give a detailed explanation about the meaning and main idea of this poem.

The main Idea and meaning of this poem, is to reflect my experience, growing up in an emotionally abusive household, and how when I was young I would always find ways to escape into my mind and hide. The poem field dreamer, is to show the story of a little girl who had to grow up too fast, and against all the verbal violence around her hid into her mind to survive her environment, and family, but by the end she stops hiding, and starts to fight back against the abuse and no longer just takes it.

Please explain your writing and thought process regarding this poem.

When I was writing this poem, at first I didn't know what exactly to say, or how to word my experience. I knew I wanted to write something about my past, and to confront or describe it the only way I knew how, so I put pencil to paper, and thought about the imagery of escaping into your imagination to keep yourself safe, and thought of wildflowers and roaming into them, then I wanted to use that as apart of the poem to highlight one of my own coping mechanism at that age. That was the main idea of the poem, and It flowed naturally and created itself.

Why did you choose to write this poem?

I wrote it more for myself, just to write creatively a different way to describe what had happened. I didn't really expect anything from it it was just a, lets right about my family trauma and issues, and though the poem doesn't show everything .It was a way for me to just make a story out of what happened, and just start to make sense of it.