The seasons are changing, am I allowed to change with them?
Can I bloom like the flowers do?
Or am I stuck in winter's shade where things cease to grow?
That's how it feels, trying to get over you.

Old ballet shoes,
Yearbooks with letters wedged into the cracks promising friendship until the end of time.

The yearbook signatures that promised to call or catch up,
and the signatures that actually should have ended with "good bye".

Children's books and children's clothing,
Tiny t-shirts and itty bitty shorts.

Ticket stubs and concert tickets,
ID cards and senior portraits.

Long lost poetry and crinkled letters
To boys I thought I'd love beyond the time I did.

Photographs of us in our youth
And some of us apart, outgrowing each other.

Homework from freshman year,
Art projects I thought deserved life beyond the magnets on the kitchen fridge.

Baby blankets and old rosaries
for when I thought Jesus could keep my faith in all that's good.

Books I haven't read in years
that still make me smile when I roll my fingers down the spine.

My grandpa's memorial announcement
and his old fishing hat.

The CD's we used to make dances to,
and perform for ourselves in my old costumes.

Friendship bracelets from girl's names I can't remember,
and friendships I lost
Numerous diaries with long entries about being older,
and how someday older will be better,

How age will bring me adventure, maturity, love, resolution, clarity, a sense of myself, happiness.
Here I am with more age, and these endless memories make me wish for the time when I could still fit into the little shorts and stick my tongue out in pictures.

The someday I wrote of is today
and I'm teary-eyed over what used to be.

I'm missing the old you and the old memories,
the old friends and the old ways of happiness.

I'm here, older now,
and I wish I knew if older was better.

Who are you to advise who I should be?
Why have I been told to not be who I am?

Do not pursue teaching, you'll work a luckless and poor career. You'll devote your life to an occupation that won't put food on your table, you better marry rich Megan.

Do not love like you do, it's is overwhelming. It is too intense, too encompassing. It is the ocean- unpredictable and vast. Do not love me like that, I can't handle your love. Do not cry oceans, do not have streams down your cheeks. Do not feel, do not express yourself. Please don't.

Do not love who you want to love. It is too difficult to explain, accept and live with the fact that you may love someone with the same chromosomes as you.

Do not dance at your leisure, you cannot hold the beat or sway to the rhythm. There is a time and place for expressing your joys, remember that.

Do not cut your hair for it was so beautiful when in cascaded down your back.

Do not pierces your nose, people don't like metal in your nostril and god forbid you puncture a hole and stick a diamond in your pretty face.

Do not wear the short shorts, the baggy tshirts, the sandals with socks, the buns on the sides of your head, the face make up. You know those all mean you want it, you're lazy, you're unfashionable, you're a wanna-be, you're a try-hard who cares too much.

Who decided one day I couldn't be who I was born to be? Who decided I wasn't able to being myself and being okay as is?

Today I decided I will be the high school English teacher and I will change lives with my big heart and encompassing love. I will inspire through my educating hands and words. I will love who I love with all I have in my soul. I will dance in dead silence, in the rain and in the middle of a song. I cut my hair and it'll grow back. It always does. Metal in my nose made me no less beautiful, I was beautiful before it and I can be beautiful without it. I will wear the ******* shorts and let my thighs shake, I will do my hair as I please, I will wear the baggy tshirts because they are comfortable, I will wear and say and do and be whoever I want to be.

I am a combination of atoms and particles made from stardust and centuries before me. I am made of hope, acceptance, knowledge and ultimate love for myself and others. I am made of spontaneity and the daring risk to be who I am meant to be, I am infinite and you cannot bottle up stardust. You cannot contain me with your mere words.

Who are you to tell me who to be? Who am I to accept that? Who am I to let you tell me anything about my bones and brain, my mind and soul? Who am I?

You only wish you knew.

I feel like you're my baby blanket or the socks from when I was 3,
The children's book I loved when I was 6 or the jump rope from when I was 10.

You're the diary from middle school and the pressed flowers from bike rides through fields when I was 13,

You're the photo booth strips from the movie dates and all the wallets of my friends from senior year;

I always look back on you with a fondness and a melancholy, a nostalgia with heart and ache-

I want to go back but I know that time is gone and over, and it's for the best. I want to go back but I know it doesn't exist anymore, like us. I miss you but I know that I'm here now and you're there now so I keep going but like the flowers and socks and wallets, I'll always have a nostalgia, just for you.

I didn't know my heart strings could extend from the ribcage and attach to the corners of my lips.

This might be why it's so hard to smile and laugh when my heart feels like it's impaired and laden with tears and rips.

moving on came full circle when I finally stopped walking cirles around you in my dreams,

and started treading my own path, started unsewing your thread tangled in my heartstrings

we at least smile in photos, for quick flashes and seconds-

my want for a happy family never comes true, though my hope is continually beckoned