My old ghosts are haunting me again.
They've crept in without me knowing or hearing.
They plant seeds of doubt and fear in my head.
I try to block it out, like so many times before...
but it's not working.
I struggle, but they overcome me,
filling me with woe and dread.
And all at once, I feel as if I'm drowning.
I can't breathe.
A tear spill over, hot and dangerous.
If I let more fall, they won't stop.
But if there's anything I've learned,
it's that I when I lose control,
it's almost freeing, in a way.
So I let them flow,
and pray for them to flee quickly,
and that they take my ghosts with them.

The sun warmed my body
and the sky was the deepest, clearest blue
without a cloud in sight.
The green grass hummed with activity
as the breeze and the bugs crawled through the blades.
I looked up and thought to myself
without sadness, there cannot be happiness.
Without pain, there cannot be pleasure.
And without the struggles of life,
we would not know
how strong we really are.
Without the rainy days,
we would not appreciate
the sunny, perfect,
beautiful and clear days.

You complain that I don’t tell you anything.
I’m a secret and a mystery to you.
You’re my daughter, you say.
Everything should show plainly on my face
and my heart needs to be planted squarely on my sleeve.
Well, I’m sorry.
I’m sorry that I need to prove to you I’m worth it.
I’m sorry that I don’t trust telling you anything
because I’m afraid you’ll squash
my moments of happiness.
I’m sorry I could never be
who you wanted me to be.
But you never saw me for who I was.
You never accepted me just as I am.
“You need to be better.
You need to be thinner.
You can’t sing for the rest of your life, it’s not a living.
You can’t
You’re not
You are forbidden.
We always thought you’d get C’s in school.
What’s that on your face?
Let me pick at you,
because I can’t stand to see any blemishes.
(Never mind you’re a teenage girl,
that blackhead has got to go.)”
And you wonder why I don’t go home much anymore.
I think the things that hurts the most
is that you didn’t have high expectations for me.
You didn’t push me to be the best that I could be,
you pushed me to be who you thought I should be.
But now, I’m someone who you don’t recognize.
Because I realized the most important thing:
I can’t be anyone
but myself.
P.S.-I had a 4.0 this semester.
So much for the C’s.

Thinking of you makes me remember
and wish that I could forget.
I stare at your picture
and wonder if you’re sorry.
If you still think of me.
If you miss me,
so much that it feels like
you’ve burned a hole
in that part of your heart
you didn’t know existed
until you met me.
I wonder if you laugh the same way.
I wonder if you regret
all the things you did
and all the things you said
that made you erasable to me.
I wonder if you wonder
if you’ll ever get over me
the same way I wonder that
about you.
I think about how much I loved you.
It was a love that overcame all,
but you didn’t want it.
You didn’t know just how deep it went.
*I *didn’t know just how deep it went.
I wonder if you remember
how it felt
to slow dance with everyone watching.
If you remember the glow
of the bright lights on the stage
as we played the parts
that I wished we played in real life.
And how it felt to be the only person I could talk to for a while.
I remember everything, and I wish I didn’t.
I wonder if you stare at my picture
and know that you’re sorry.