What has made that girl so strong?
They asked me
The truth is she wasn’t always strong
There once was a day when she had no idea what she was doing
When the words from her lips were as forced as the smile on her face
Where the bracelets on her wrists were as much to hide the scars
As they were to add a little more to her outfit
There is nothing you can say or do to hurt her
That she hasn’t already done to herself
Those words you used to insult her?
She’s repeated them a thousand times as she lay in bed
Unable to sleep
Unable to breath past the thoughts in her mind
She’s had people leave without a reason
Without a goodbye
Closing the door without a glance back
She’s broken her own heart more times then she can count
She’s felt lost
Like she was drifting out in a sea of nothingness
No lifeboat to be seen
So the reason this girl is so strong
Is because she’s gone through all that
And still has the strength to smile and laugh
Like nothing matters in the world but this moment

Who is she?
The stranger asked
Motioning to the girl
Who's colored hair streams out behind her
As she gazes out over the water
She is nobody and everybody
I replied
Why is her gaze filled with such sadness?
Because she sees more than you and I
The stranger looked confused
She sees the world as it once was
And as it could have been
She appears happy and carefree in conversation
But you will never hold her full attention
That girl has one foot in this world
And one foot in another
Forever torn between the two
Forever feeling emotions from both
How do you know all this?
The stranger asked
I just smiled
Because, dear friend, that girl is me

There’s a field by my house
A big open empty field
People hardly ever go there
However, there’s a girl
She weaves through the stone
In the hours after the sun sets
No one else seems to see her
But when I waved she waved back
And I knew she was real.
This went on for years
Every night I'd wave to her,
She’d wave back
And we’d both smile
But I remember one night in particular
As I drove past the field with my mom I waved
She waved back
Then there was a screech
The blinding flash of headlights
Then darkness
Now the girl and I weave through the headstones together

There are girls
Made of glass and sunshine
And when they smile
The whole world goes blind
Except for this presence
This person of light
Because when you smile so wide
You can't be sad, right?
But how about when that smile
Hides the pain and the truth
Of a girl who is broken
And wasting her youth
With tears of the past
And things she can't change
when the world beats you down
And her own face seems strange
The places she loved
no longer feel like home
And her soul cries out
Just let me drift away with the foam
Because the truth is this
Glass is still glass
and hers shattered along time ago
and no one sees the pain
behind each hello

Empath
Everyone thinks we have a cool superpower
They romanticize it
Call it a gift
It's not
Its a curse
Becomes how can you deal with pain
That isn't yours
Not knowing where it comes from tears me apart
And makes it so hard to get rid of
It feels like a hand has your heart in an ever-tightening fist
And you can't get free

Get me out of here
before I crack
Before I say something I'll actually regret
Before I shatter into the million pieces of rage that I am becoming
Get me out of here
Before there's none of ME left

I hate when people ask me
'Are you ok?'
No, I'm not
And you would know this if you actually paid attention
If you looked passed my smiles to see the pain in my eyes
Watched how every other thought causes me to wince
Noticed how I barley sleep
Seen past the terrible lies of 'I'm just stressed'
And called me out on my badly fabricated stories of why I can't see to pay attention
But nobody does, no matter how many hints I give
And I will never reach out
Because in my head it will forever be
A bad time