Take me away
To your far away land,
Buried like dust
In the prints of your hand,

Where your smile doesn’t crack,
And fade,
Before the hours
Draw into days.

I lay in the bed
Of a perfect stranger.
I played with his words,
Mimicking danger,

And he begged me to tell him
My endless verses,
Beneath the morning’s
Sleepless curses.

His fingers played
With the curve of my side.
I told him of
The day I died ―

A secret I guarded
So closely from you.
I told him the truth.
I told no one I knew.

Written by Anna Williams at Age 17
Washington, D.C.

Young and strong and free at last
From pain. And growing far too fast,
Yet not too young to have a past.
I never speak about it here
I seldom voice a hidden fear
Or whisper to the quiet stars
Or weep for all that beauty mars
Or whistle by the amber mountains,
In search of purple salt-less fountains.
Listen far across the hills
And barefoot by the mountain rills
For a faint and distant sigh.
Torn by time, and death. And lies.
If you glance within your heart
You may tear your life apart.
You may justify your sin …
Search for angel dust within.
It may kill. It may heal.
The treasures of the sky grow real.
Break away mid earth and fire.
Give to glory’s deep desire.
In the frail moments of youth,
Every lie breathes unwashed truth.
Naught matters past reality,
Hard, correct and fancy-free.
You can sing false pleasure’s hue.
You can pierce me through and through.
Draw a blood drop from my eye,
Make me love you, make me cry …
Still I remain, as light friends tend,
Yet the same, unscathed, unbent,
But hardened for the next hard mile,
To the next unfamiliar smile,
And trust it not, as children would.
Though, God knows, how I wish I could.

For I am taught. And taught by thee.
Enlightened in reality.
With little left to do but pray
For the dim and distant day
When naught is yearned or questioned why
But the clouds who roam the sky.

- Written by Anna Williams at Age 17
Prague, Czechoslovakia

Since I still know you…
I finally found you.
A long time ago, you
Wore music around you.

Caught in a spell;
Trapped in time, tied
You’ve gone through hell
Since the first day we died.

Before the skies parted
And gave us our youth
To lose…and the world started
We knew the truth.

Life fell apart, and
We learned to forsake…
And made ourselves hearts
For each other to break.

Beauty abused now, but
Blackness ascends
I’ve grown confused
And forgotten my friends.

I recall when I lived
Only to roam.
All I knew then was I
Searched for my home.

Deep in the desert
Where I watched the sky,
Dancing blue waters
Were lies to my eyes.

Alone ‘neath a star
Or asleep in a tree,
I was lost, faded, far…
Now I found you. I’m free.

Before the light faded
Remember the laughter,
The love we created,
Not the Disaster.

The worlds you made loved you,
And they will find you,
For they live within you
They don’t lie behind you.

- Written by Anna Williams at Age 22

Almost six years ago,
Under the sky,
I watched the stars
And I swallowed a sigh.

You spoke of sunshine
And laughter and life…
I remained red-eyed,
Saddened with strife.

The wind of your woes was
As much as I heard.
I sent you two roses
And whispered a word.

My life lived inside me
When your life was near.
And my heart faded
When yours disappeared.

There were spirits inside
Your eyes flickering like fire,
They would rise, and then die,
And then trembling, rise higher.

Alone in the morning,
I stood with the wind.
I stepped out inside me
And silently sinned.

I spoke into the sea.
I woke wondering why
I saw inside me
The whole thundering sky.

I turned, telling none,
Found the hills, flew away
Far from the sun,
And the brilliance of day.

Many years waited,
And I waited longer.
And yet, unabated,
The silence grows stronger.

And violence still flanks
Us for so many years,
Since we last sank
Into ashes and tears.

I try to remember
The sound of the snow
The smells of December
I knew long ago…

I try to see faces
I forsook too fast,
And to believe places
Of faraway pasts

Are not lost forever;
Forgotten, or wrong.
For I prayed I never
Would forget a song.

Six years ago I stood
Under the sky,
Within it no longer
I’d learned not to fly.
I watched you wilting
And tried not to cry.

If you wander, wondering,
After six years,
With all the world’s thundering,
Wrapped in your tears,

And if you find me,
Hide deep inside me.
Try to remind me
Of what lives behind me.

If you should meet me
Someday again,
Death won’t defeat me
Like it did then.

There’s no one who knows us.
And when the dawn’s done,
You send the roses,
And I’ll send the sun.

- Written by Anna Williams at age 22

- Written by Anna Williams at age 22

Written by Anna Williams at age 22

- Written by Anna V. Williams at Age 14

It had been hated. Degraded.
Hardly heart-defying. Shaded.
Hard warmth. For a moment’s pleasure.
Mindless. Careless. Lady’s leisure.
And yet the strongest of the weak
Can break in sobs and fade grow meek.
None can tell you your belief.
None may soothe you in your grief.
None can tell you where to go.
None but you can ever know.
When you learn that, when you see,
It may break your heart in three.
Yet ’tis not bad to dance alone.
May your eyes remain your own.

- Written by Anna Williams at age 17
in Prague, Czechoslovakia

Three years later, too far from the sea,
Having escaped, having broke free,
No longer a lone poet, surrounded by boors,
I felt a lone virgin, surrounded by whores.

And now our balloons may have never been found,
Lying untouched, as I was, on the ground,
But still hold their meaning, in unwritten words,
Hopefully not having killed any birds.

I faded in comforted silence at last.
Silence like crystal. Silence like the past.
Steeped and forsaken, quiet anesthesia,
In the ambrosia of violent amnesia.

― Written by Anna Vera Williams at Age 17
Washington, D.C.

Written by Anna Williams at age 10
Barnstable, Massechusetts