You loved me like the sun
always expecting to be burned
hiding away in the shade of your mind
but desperately needing my warmth
just the same

You loved me like the moon
dancing at my fullest
forgetting me at my dimmest
expecting my tides to take you
farther than they could

You loved me like the stars
a light that you could see
but never understand
the mysteries of my galaxy
questions you'd never thought to ask

You loved me through a telescope
marveling from afar
the vastness of my universe
yet, as you zoomed in closer
you found I wasn't much at all

here i am again, in jeans so tight they take your breath away and a half-buttoned shirt, waiting for the answer to fall from the sky on a glittering trail of broken glass along with a note that says, here's what you've been looking for. everything is okay.

because i am not jackson or willow or august, i am not any of the names that have been given to me or any of the ones i've stolen for my own. i never found a home in seven letters or five, because i am something that's never occurred to you.

i hold my own hand and wish on the trail of a comet that i think is a shooting star; i wish for six fingers instead of five, because i have never been content with what was given to me. i was never content with who i was told to be.

i was told to act like a five-fingered human, but i am a six-fingered alien. i came to this earth in my unidentified flying object and i brought my love and spite and wide blue-green eyes with me, and still those eyes are wide and dead and the scars on my four-five-six fingertips are fading into softness and weakness and the mind of a five-fingered conformist.

i am beginning to hate the way i love. i am beginning to wish that i swooned for five o'clock shadows and chiseled abs and broad shoulders; swooned, instead of gagged and laughed and kept my mind on the scent of her hair.

i wish i was like everybody else.

but when i'm older i will drive a yellow car along the beach and drink decaf like it's water and i'm stranded in the middle of the ocean. i am an old soul and a six-year-old mixed into one blue-green alien, and i am still waiting for the answer to fall from the sky. a glittering black-and-white trail and an answer.

Seems like we have reached our destination
A land of unknowing and questions
But no one else knows
And no one else has the answer.

i've held the sting in the back of my throat, stared up at the ceiling, swallowed though my throat doesn't want to close. i've smiled and pulled at my hair the way i always have, but everything i do is empty and i am just barely holding back this flood inside me.

i've touched the fabric of these midnights as if they don't matter and blinked away tears and laughed coldly at the way our world has fallen into ruin, but now all of my carefully built dams are crumbling.

you promised safety to all of us but now you show your teeth and your words that mean too much. now you show us that freedom doesn't mean happiness, that everyone doesn't include us. we are separate from your image of the land of the free.

you are binding us in chains and inescapable changes, all while singing your songs of love and equality.

we are so tired of fighting. we are all sinking to our knees on this blood-soaked battlefield and begging for you to see that we are only people. that we want to love and be ourselves, just like everybody else.

just like everybody else, there's only so much we can take.

i've walked the same streets alone and cold since the beginning of january. i've walked them with my head low and my eyes on my boots and my hands pushed deep in the pockets of my jeans. always alone.

but now you come along and you take me to places i've never seen, tingeing the air with nostalgia as you flaunt your pink hair and bright smile and profanity as you yell at the gps and take me back to a place i've missed since i was nine years old.

you take me back home, and now i'm realizing that the thing i missed wasn't a tiny nowhere marijuana town but you, you and your cheerful despair. and i hate that the crumbling fireplace of my childhood belongs to someone else now, but maybe it's for the best. maybe you're what i really needed.

remember when you were seven?
you were at the store with your mom or your dad.
you saw the gumball machine and youd beg your mom for a quarter,
when she'd give it to you,
you'd bolt to the machine and insert the quarter as fast as possible.
you'd be disappointed when you get an orange gumball
instead of a pink or blue one,
but you'd still pop it in your mouth and chew.

it's different now.

it hasn't been a very long time
but it's definently different.
there's less going to the store with your parents
because you dont want to miss your favourite show
or because you want to play a video game.
there's more yelling because you refuse to clean your room,
or you dont want to get out of bed.

think about that again.
spend some time with them,
go out for ice cream,
go for a bike ride,
have a conversation with them.
acknowledge everything they do for you.
acknowledge that they're trying their hardest to give you a good life,
a good future.

tell them you love them.

smart, popular boys in third grade,
with their stupid khakis
and dumb sweatshirts.
i didnt want their popularity,
i wanted to be a boy.
a smart boy with stupid khakis
and a dumb sweatshirt

the kind, pretty girls in fourth grade
their pretty hair
and painted nails
i didnt want to be a pretty girl like them
i admired them
but i was too young,
and it was too wrong

it was wrong to want to be a boy,
to want to love a girl,
want to be a smart boy
with pretty hair
and painted nails

i should've been the perfect daughter,
but im a smart boy
with pretty hair
and painted nails.

in an old blue car
driving on the highway
in the snow
i gripped the steering wheel
my knuckles turned white
like the road
my heart didn't beat
it trembled
crying, mirroring
the weather
i think
god would've wept today
if he
were
here at all

my smiles have been glowing and holding in my *****
so i wanted to read a pretty little sonnet
gasping and choking on laughter mottled by blood
the words come in tears, the poems in a flood
it's been ages since i cried, i was doing so well
but every sad poem brought back my screams of hell

my demons didn't go away, i just painted them gold
and i'd be fooling myself saying i had a hand to hold
life is a joke, who gives a ****?
it's just a mix of bad timing and luck
so i kept laughing and choking and holding my own hand
remembering some song from my new old favorite band

telling me love is a labor and to slave 'till the end
swinging life away with scars and a friend
so i didn't have to read a happy poem today
i just had to write one and send it your way
so smile with me, break open your face
'cause life is just a vat marked toxic waste