# data[].attributes.body
Summary of 5 Poems:

Poem 1: Repetition by Phil Kaye

Repeating words slowly causes them to lose its meaning. We repeat words that we don’t want to believe are true so they lose meaning to us.

Poem 2: 21 by Patrick Roche

As we get older, we learn that our heroes have stories that we don’t want to believe. And sometimes, the ones we love the most are the ones who hurt us the most.

Poem 3: When a Boy Tells You He Loves You by Edwin Bodney

When we love someone, we are masked by the good we see in them and we don’t acknowledge the bad. In not doing that, we find ourselves in a toxic relationship that only grows harder the get out of as each day goes on.

Poem 4: Come Home by Kevin Yang

People make jokes about race without realizing what it means. The ignorance in people caused them to be masked by the meaning of what they are saying. They believe their words do not hurt but rather make jokes. And an apology is supposed to fix it all.

Poem 5: Explaining My Depression to My Mother by Sabrina Benaim

Sometimes parents don’t want to believe that their kids have depression, anxiety, etc. We present ourselves as happy kids because that’s what we think they want us to be. When we tell them we aren’t, they don’t understand why. They try to make it better and soon, it’ll be too late to change things.

These poems are relevant to me because in each of them, I found something that I could relate too. In poem 1, the author would say that by repeating words they would slowly lose meaning to him. I find myself doing that to avoid things I don’t want to believe are true. Poem 2, the author described the impact his parents had on his life that starts out great at a young age but ends terrible. As we get older we learn things about our parents or loved ones which we don’t want to know. This made me think of something that I found out about my grandparents that is hard for me to believe is really true. Poem 3 made me think of the toxic relationships that I’ve been in and that not all boys are bad but some of them are. And we like to hide the fact the ones we love have bad qualities that can hurt us. In poem 4, that made me think of middle school. Growing up, people like to talk about race and make jokes about it all the time. You reach a

# data[].attributes.body
Music is something that really means a lot to me. I’m the type of person who can’t really choose favorites in something because I like everything. But when it comes to music, I don’t love everything. My favorite singers right now are Summer Walker and Kehlani. They both are R&B artists who create modern day R&B music. R&B is something I grew up listening to. It was playing all day and all night throughout my house as a kid, and to this day I can catch my mom putting it on sometimes. For me personally, listening to Summer or Kehlani, I find myself just at peace. I feel stress free and calm and the music just allows me to sort of escape and forget all the things I need to worry about or the things I need to fix or change. It creates this time and space in my head for me to just vibe along with the music itself. I think that culturally, R&B music has a new face. The face of R&B today is larger and more vast than it was in the early 2000s, allowing it to be liked across a broader platform of people than ever before. It is finally getting the love and recognition it deserves. R&B has been around for so long and I think that the style of changing with the time is important. And looking at the lyrics deeper, they speak to you on different terms than other songs. They are words or phrases that I find myself really relating to. Sometimes, I just like to sit down and really absorb what the artist is trying to tell me and when I do that, I can relate to what they are saying. Everyone has their own music that they choose to do whatever with. This is what I do with mine.

# data[].attributes.body
The cultural idol who has really affected my life is a singer named Kehlani. I started listening to Kehlani my freshman year of high school, but she didn’t really affect my life until the summer before my junior year. I found myself listening to every song she had ever made, over and over again. I loved them. Each and every one of them made me happy, made me feel real emotions. I would listen to lyrics and really get a grasp for what they meant. During February of last year, Kehlani released a new album called While We Wait. I waited weeks for it. I stayed up until midnight the day it was released. I remember listening to it for the first time and crying because it was so good. Her music gave me a safe place. A place I could go to at any time when I was feeling sad, happy, angry, etc. I would put my earbuds in, listen to her music and everything would just be okay. About a month ago, Kehlani released another album called “It Was Good Until It Wasn’t”. This album is my favorite. The songs have so much meaning to them. They speak to me in a way that no others do. I can relate to each song. Whenever I'm driving, I’m listening to Kehlani. I could list anything I do and if I’m listening to music, I’m listening to Kehlani. Part of the reason why I got through high school was listening to Kehlani. And honestly, I don’t expect things to change in college.

# data[].attributes.body
I chose to skip week 5.