I stare at the tiny little dots of starlight that filled the otherwise dark bleak sky, here I sit on my mothers balcony, smoking and I find my brain begin to wonder. Thinking about what others might be doing right now. Some fast asleep off in dreamland others wide awake. Some falling in love, some experiencing heart break. I think about my grandmother... the reason for the trip to my mothers and I find my mind wondering to the inevitability of death. “The only thing promised to us in life” I’ve heard many say. Some times I feel so caught up in the thought of death and when my time will come I forget to live. Not enjoying and experiencing the moment the way I am meant to, the way I should be. I am trying to live in the moment “be present” but my brain is a spinning hamster wheel that never seems to stop, the thoughts spin and spin with no end in sight. I stare at the scars on my hand as I take another drag just another reminder how I’ve failed this body I call home. How I’ve tortured her and masked it as taking my control, how I’ve let her grow weak and pretended it was okay, pretended that I was okay. When I was younger I use to eat sunflower seeds whole with the hope a garden would grow from my body and I’d finally find myself beautiful and now I just want to be planted underneath the garden. I wish my existence to be silent like the flap of a butterflies wings not a sound made but here I stand throat raw from screaming for someone to hear for someone to help for someone to see the girl in the dying garden whose fading away.

You sparked matches and set my heart aflame.

You crawled your way into my dreams and carved yourself into my soul.

You did these small things that pulled me in.

Like when we would dance in the small kitchen light late at night to our own beat.

Or when we would just sit there in silence your eyes staring into the deepest parts of my soul.

And now as we lay under the night sky, you hold my hand in yours.

We listen to the music nature has provided for us as I fall, slowly more deeply in love with you.

You turn and look into my eyes telling me the stories within the stars.

You told me about the wise centaur who mentored Heracles the son of Zeus and how they were the intellectuals of ancient Roman mythology

As I lay there listening, you told me I reminded you of a siren.

You told me how my voice dragged you in.

and even though you knew you would fall, you still let yourself be enthralled by me.

You have entangled yourself into my life, becoming apart of me.

I knew my heart would belong to you.

Stars were held in her eyes and flowers grew in her soul.

She enjoyed singing out loud on car rides and preached about self-control.

She loved long nights and had a wild personality.

She was the girl that you couldn’t help but love, who helped everyone around her.

She held a morbid fascination and saw the beauty in art and literature.

She use to say that we are but machines born to die, machines that must learn to love and be humble before we can be rebooted into the real universe.

It wasn’t her beauty that drew me to her, rather little things.

The way her lips would curl when she smiled or the way the sun shone on her through the window and made her hair look like a forest fire.

I would play connect the dots on her back while she slept silently beside me. Tracing each of her freckles.

A broken girl with smeared mascara lines and heavy eyes once stood before me.

Tears streaming from those eyes that once held every shade the sky possessed from dawn until dusk.

It was more than crying, it was the kind of desolate sobbing that comes from a person drained of all hope.

Her programming wasn’t meant to learn about all the pain she went through.

As I stand over her open casket, staring down at those eyes that once could make sunsets and galaxies jealous; now dark and lifeless.

This is my farewell to the self-destructive, overly emotional, sad little girl I have become and my invitation to the person who I truly wish to be.
This is my farewell to my father who tried to mold and shape me to fit in his mold.
To the father who told me I wasn't good enough.
To the father who broke me and made me feel like nothing.
This is my farewell to all the bad thoughts I've had.
Farewell to the wounds and scars on my body that will fade leaving little trace that they were there.
Farewell to the nights spent crying instead of sleeping.
Farewell to not being able to look in the mirror without crying.
Farewell to not being able to accept myself for who I am.
Farewell to this unhealthy body I inhabit.

Even as I say farewell to my past and who I am while inviting the person who I wish to be; I will still remember who I was and everything that's happened. It's my story.  how I ended up where I am now and a big part of my life. In the end, I will survive the impulse to forbid happiness.