I write my name
My label, my identifier
My word, my definer
I write my name
And it looks wrong, outgrown
Do I have the power, the control
The grip
To change it

Get a grip
Stop slipping
State the facts
Stop tripping

You’re 17 and you’re young
You’re 17 and you have metal in your head
You’re 17 and you have metal taste
Stuck on your tongue
Dripping off when you talk
Forming the puddles in which you walk
Pooling in words that burn
They are a curse slipping through the smile
That reaches your eyes
Only because you painted it there

With brown eyes you can't make friends
With brown eyes you cried until you couldn’t
With brown eyes you smile like it’s free
You quit dancing
You quit schooling
You quit pretending
You started pretending

I am not the same as the infant born 17 years ago
I am not the same as the name that they gave me
I am not the same as the others that held my name
I am separate from that title
I am something new, beyond
Something true and someone gone

Scar after scar twinkles in the light
Hair after hair is torn out every night
What do you call a work in progress
Incomplete is not my name
I am not quite obsolete
To many I appear petite
To many I should just retreat
What a privilege to be given something to cling to that you never desired to own
No, rain is not the same as snow

A name is not a name
My name is not my name
It is a label I stole from fame
Nicole Kidman is not my role model
But her role was my model
My mother was her model on set
But this is a stage on which we are players
And I will not give a verse a name that is not of my own creation
I will not credit the broken, glue-coated, splinters of myself
To some foreign and separate person
No, not to someone else

If you give a girl a with a big heart your broken pieces,
she will gently pick them up and carry them in her soft hands,
and pay no mind to your sharp edges.
She will try to glue you back together
and she’ll do it in a way that made you forget you were ever broken.
With scratched finger tips and ****** palms,
she’ll lift you up to the sun,
letting it's blinding rays shine through you
to show you that even the worst things have things to love in them
and that even the shattered can again be whole.

If you give a girl with a big heart your body,
she will study you like an archaic God.
She will learn your curves and surfaces like braille,
she will adjust her hearing to the pitch of your laughter
so that no matter how far apart you become,
her ears will perk up like a dog's when you giggle,
and she will smile, knowing that you smile.

If you give a girl with a big heart your time,
she will make each second feel like infinity,
and each sunset like the end of the world.
You'll forget that the universe is as vast and wondrous as it is,
because you will be so captivated by the light that she emits
right where she sits,
by your side.

And if you take from a girl with a big heart,
please,
for the love of God,
do not take it all.

If you take from a girl with a big heart,
please remember that her love is not a renewable resource.
The wind and the sun and the water will forever be there to serve you but
she will run dry, and become another fact of history that will one day be forgotten.

If you take from a girl with a big heart,
please remember how sharp your edges were before her,
how lifeless your body was before she touched it,
and how meaningless time was before she made it into something magical.

(maybe i'm a mistake)
mistake
mistakes happen all the time

just erase them and they'll be gone
erase the mistake
erase it
erase her
(erase me)

i wonder what being erased feels like
to feel nothing
but not in this way
this poisonous way
this painful way
of feeling nothing

i wonder what it feels like to be nothing
but not dirt nothing
not sludge nothing
not this nothing that stings

i wonder where the nothings go
where the mistakes go
when they're erased

i have to stop running
i run from the right things
and to the wrong thing
or is it to the right things
and away from the wrong things

it's hard to tell
when everything is in motion

can't we press pause
someone press pause
please
someone just press pause

i am spinning and falling
but i don't hit the ground
the dirt
(i am the dirt)

i just keep spinning
and i flip over and over
without touching anything
without stopping
without pausing
(someone stop me)

i keep running
(make me stop
make me sit tight
and stay in one place
make me fixed
not a mistake)

(erase me
erase me and replace me)

replace (me) with the correct thing
the right thing
the finally-makes-sense thing
the feels-right thing
the safe thing
the not-so-crazy thing
the stable thing

(erase me
and send me
to the place the nothings go.)

The bite was probably the worst part
                      It rained everyday I thought about you
                      And poured everyday I tried not to
I ran for miles hoping to get close enough to see you
But you had left weeks prior
                      I couldn't scale even your shortest wall
                      Because there were already too many trying to climb it
                      So I've been waiting outside your door
                      Hoping you might remember your promise
                 And let me in
           Before another snake tastes my heel
     While I wait beyond your towering walls
Watching all the other girls you push fall