Everyone you have lost is gone forever.  
If you try to call the dead, the phone won’t ring.
You won’t hear their voices.
The ground will shake like your wrists.
You will realize this sometime, when you’re in the bath and every nerve in your body is screaming at you to put your head under and count to a thousand.
You are more than a suicide note.
You are more than a suicide attempt.
You are more than cuts and bruises, and friends that abandon you and don’t even say hello in the hallways anymore.
People will leave you, daughter. People will leave you alone and shaking.
You’ll find solace in the most unexpected places, in the boys that look like they belong in the 1970s and in the vinyl that whispers to you while the sun is going down.
Eventually you will find the people that will bend the sky down to you so that you can touch the clouds.
They will become your motivation, they will become the glow in the dark stars on your bedroom ceiling.
You will forget that they are plastic, and often mistake them for the night’s sky.
Memories do not always hurt, it’s okay to be nostalgic but do not drown in it.
Do not drown in anything but love, daughter.
Love every leaf, every lover’s vein.
And every single time you think you’re going insane.
You’re not.
Remember that the door is always closed, but always easily opened.
Remember that you can leave.
Remember that you can take the next flight out, start a new life.
Remember that the world is in your piano hands.
You’ll meet someone and call them love because they don’t know the difference between the dull and sharp edge of a knife.
You’ll write poems.
Lots of them.
You’ll write enough poems to fill the walls in all of the rooms in all of the houses you have ever lived in.
You’ll scrawl them on the tree stumps you find temporary homes in while walking in the forest.
You’ll engrave them on someone’s bones after they tell you that they would rather die a thousand deaths than go a second without your energy warming their cheeks.
For every accomplishment, erase five shortcomings from your mind.
Be yourself before you forget who that is.
Be, daughter, be who you want to be;
Be who you know yourself to be.
When the world is sleeping on your shoulders at 4 in the morning, don’t wake it up.  
Take a deep breath, rock the earth into a deeper sleep.
Tell the walls your secrets because they don’t whisper.
Don’t tell anyone with a tongue something you wouldn’t want to end up floating back out of their mouths like a catchy song.
When you’re standing up on stage, waiting to start your poem, do not avoid eye contact.
Make everyone nervous with your metaphors.
Make everyone nervous with your passion.
You are the strongest soul you’ll ever be.
And when I die, shall we not meet again,
Remember that I am your mother, daughter.
And mothers, *always know best.

Sometimes I catch myself thinkin’ about you with my fingers crossed.
And my eyes closed, like I’m wishing for something.
This is funny to me, because I learned recently
that my brain does this weird thing where it’s incapable of feeling superstitious.
I have always wanted a black cat.
You have always been a wishing well begging for the famished to come and dip their hands.
You wear a sign that says
“Take something, or leave something, doesn’t matter, just leave feeling won”
Leave feeling like you won.
This is how you will leave me.
When my fingers are crossed. Because then the promises don’t matter.
When my eyes are closed. Because it will hurt more to watch you leave
than to wonder if you crawled or if you ran.
When my teeth hurt, from all the chatter, from all the shake, from all the wisdom they extracted.
You know I’ve been leaving bite marks in the crust of the earth,
trying to find a wormhole that will take me to the moment you thought,
“hey, this girl’s gonna write poems about me every Friday” and
“hey, she won’t win me, but maybe she’ll win something”.
I'm the award winning heartache, I'm the pain they thought would last forever.
I'm my grandmother's years of Elvis & Jack Daniel's coming to the surface
and passing themselves off as vertigo.
You're the sum of the times you and the earth were in disagreement over your leaving.
You're the only thing that will shine when the sun dies.
We are Samson and Delilah. You are so sunshine.
I am grateful to the doctors that gave me second chances, I am grateful for the opportunity
that someday is engraved with.
This is how you will leave me.
I pray with my fingers crossed.
and my eyes closed, like I'm wishing for something.
I don't say Amen. I say thank you.
Thank you.