I am not partial the cold in my bones, the muscles that quake, or the shiver that trails down the spine.

*But these are the things that let me know I'm alive.

She has,
Copper skin and blood that runs red like little rivers.

She is,
Terrified of what is inside and who she is, only because she is rejected by what she is, and whom she has become.

She faces the lie of "I am fine", and thoughts that plague the fill-in-the-answer, dotted lines, crossed I's and dotted t's that scream: "I'm only tired."

She is tired.
She is tired of lies forced upon her body like scars that engrave in her brain. She is tired of the lack of determination, the learned helplessness of failing and failing and failing again.

She is tired of the elongated sighs and eyes trickled with crocodile tears.

She is tired of the future that leaps out before her, yet is so far out of her grasp.
Yet, she is tired of the haunting past, so she sits on the corner of "Where and when?" as if waiting for an old friend.

She waits for a friend that will never arrive. Time and time will pass by, until the moment her heart leaps out of her chest and into the bottom of the sea, where she longs to be free.

So in words shrouded in darkness and fear she writes the words and listens to poems that read, "My Dear," in hope that the aching of her chest will cease the blood orange rivers from tainting her copper skin.

She vows that one day she will win.

But one day is not today. So she continues to sit on the corner of "Where and when?"

Where will you life begin, you dandelion rose? When will your life begin?