When I was fifteen, there were only three more years
until I could leave.
I numbered the days like some people count calories
or steps
or breaths
onetwothreefourfivesix
counting until there was no air left.
Out of breath, out of step, out of line,
one more time;
try a little harder,
push a little faster,
be a little better, a little stronger,
smarter
sweeter
tougher.
Braver.

I'd spin in circles until I was dizzy,
around and around andaroundaroundaround
before starting all over.
Out of control, too fast to ever really stop.
And then back to the beginning again
where I first began,
reduced to less than nothing,
just a slip of the person I'd hoped to become.

When I was fifteen, life was a game
where there were winners and losers
and then people who didn't ever quite make it.
Neither a winner, nor a loser,
neither a hero nor an enemy,
just nothing at all.

I ran around, afraid of everything,
hoping if I ran fast enough, whatever was lurking in the shadows might never catch me
consume me.
I ran until one day, I slipped and fell down the rabbit hole,
past where anyone could see
or hear
or reach.
I fell through the cracks I sidled around everyday walking home from school,
books in one hand,
memories in the other,
clinging to both for dear life.

I was just a sprig with dead leaves and a damaged stem,
no petals or blooms,
flowerless,
my roots growing in the wrong direction, defying gravity.
Empty hands reaching up into the air,
grasping for something to pull me back to earth,
push me forward into the world.
Desperately searching for something to believe I was enough,
believe I was worthy.
Believe I wasn't a mistake,
a surviving **** in a blossoming garden.
Hoping.

When I was fifteen, there were only days
weeks
months
Every minute accounted for
yet all forever lost in one sleepless dream,
in one fell swoop.
Time lost, standing still, forgotten,
my watch the only thing keeping each day from running into the next.

I am not fifteen, anymore.
I have found my roots,
my time,
my place,
It's safe, it's home.
There's hope.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Time is not forever,
but neither is this.

It'll be okay.
You'll be okay.

That day turned out to be the most beautiful day for her to cherish...
Her pale face had finally got a reason to smile..
Swinging with amusement in her semi stitched rags..
She was utterly colored with the rainbow for a while..

The pocket she had, could feel the coins jingling..
*It was like the first shower of rain falling on the land of her heart..
Finally, She could answer her 'a week old' hunger..
Someone pitied her poor hands and gave her life a short lived start..

Purple is often misunderstood 

People confuse it with pink or blue 

They cannot comprehend change

The synthesis of something new

Purple has been picked to pieces

Analyzed with Pantone paint chip cards

The public is vexed, this defiance of ***

Twirled around by color guards

They say that violet delights have violent ends
That from this “choice,” there’s no return

But they’re the ones who set us aflame

And we, in their triumph, burn

The coffee had settled to a temperature few could drink with any pleasure. The cursor impatiently blinked against the empty word document as he sat defeated by the previous one hundred attempts to write a single sentence.  He could not be a writer, he thought, writers do not spend hours in front of blank screens, staring blankly and drawing blanks. They are full of original stories which overflow from the gray matter of their brains, spilling out from the tips of their fingers as they beat atop plastic keys like Mozart realizing symphonies as he glide across the ivory teeth of a fortepiano. He was right; he was no writer, not yet. In this instance of doubt like Schrödinger’s cat, both men, the writer and the not-writer inhabited the same chair, the same space in time waiting to be woke by a single decision. If he decided he was not a writer than all potential realities collapse into one and the writer dies in that chair. I'm no Edward Lorenz and I don't know much about butterfly effects but what if this is one of those microscopic events that changes the initial conditions and forever alters the data set? What if a masterpiece is lost on a whim? I so badly want to communicate all of this to him but I can't, because I am remembering a distant memory of the moment I lost the man I was suppose to be.