I find the world the most beautiful when it rains
And I do not mean light summer drizzles with soft cotton clouds
I mean earth destroying claps of thunder
I find the world the most beautiful when it pours
When the sky is ballpoint pen navy and the clouds onx stones
The worlds utterly breathtaking when the cosmos seem to rumble and tremor
The world is so gorgeous when the wind whips across skin like barbed wire tearing across the surface
I am not a religious person but the closest I’ve come to believing in god is standing in the middle of his storm
Palms turned to the sky drowning in his salvation singing praises of hallelujah
Hallelujah thank you lord
The closets I’ve come to feeling religion is seeing the tempest being realesed like a holy beast for the swell of rain is not gods tears
It’s gods anguish
Sputtering out in the form of bone splintering white-hot static
Angels have often been portrayed as soft wispy creatures
But they are really the children of typhoons
Weeping their fat chilling tears into the soil
For they are crying for our sins The haunting call of ***** music ripping through their vocal chords raining onto the pavement
These rain drop bullets are not signs of gods sadness
They are signs of gods wrath
Tearing up the earth like a war zone
Punishing us for our misdeeds
In these times god is reducing us back to the simple creatures that we are
Because not even humans can control his vexations
We in these moments are brought back down to our knees in prayer
Our petty ‘Forgive me father”s slipping down our tongue like water droplets
Pleading begging screaming out over the crackles of lighting
Screaming out over gods wrath
But by God this sight of destruction is nothing but beautiful
And yet
The world is the most beautiful when it pours
But it is utterly ethereal in its aftermath
In the still clean quite like an empty chapel
The sun rearing it’s head from behind wispy feather clouds
All is calm
For this is the worlds post-baptism
It’s rejuvenation
It’s rebirth
Water droplets trickling down stain glass pink petals
The dove re-emerges calling out its choir song
The bluebird responds humming out his own hymns
The closest I’ve come to believing in god is in the wake of the storm
In the hush of washed out sins repainted pale blue
For in this moment we are all reduced to nothing but Gods children
In the peace after the storm

Every time I attempt to sit down with my mom and talk about my mental state
She somehow warps the story into the idea that I am simply stressed out because I am not trying hard enough in school
And I sit there and take her words
Shoving them down my throat in an attempt to make them fact
But they do not fit the gaping hole in my chest
Her words are mismatched puzzle pieces trying to portray two different pictures
But she’s not wrong
School is one of the causes of my anxiety but not in the way she thinks it is
I walk into school every day
a new lollipop flavor in my mouth
Hands shoved into pants pockets
A false swagger used as a shield
So they don’t know that I cried myself to sleep last night
I have created the perfect girl
She walks into the room
Smile bold and blazing like the summer sun
A new joke slips past her lips
Causing her classmates to hunch over in stitches
And in those seconds she wipes the remaining tears from when she cried because she looked in the mirror for too long
The girl I come to school as
Has a heart of gold
And her arms wide open to embrace everyone she sees
She holds them close to her chest so they don’t see her cry
She walks into a room
Bold and brash and brazen
Shouting
Look at me I am a star
Look at me I am shining
Why don’t you see me shining?
Notice me
Notice my happiness
Notice my confidence
Notice my high self-worth
I shout and I shout and I shout
All so they won’t notice the cracks and creases on my exterior
This girl that I am from the moment she steps into the building
Until the moment she touches down on her bed
Walks like the world is her runway
Flashes her painted on smile like it's her ticket to happiness
Her skin is stitched together by quirky comments
Corny jokes
And faux vibrato that reverberates in her chest so she can shout my words out to the room as if she is the Queen of the world
The fictional heroine I composed
A character I have created because no one wants to be friends with the girl who dreams of killing herself
No one wants to be friends with the girl who shoves her fist in her mouth at 2:00 in the morning
Hoping to choke down her sobs so she would not bother anyone
No one wants to friends with the other part of me
The one who puts the lollipop in her mouth to block the screams from ripping out her throat
To cease the quivering of her voice
The one who twirls the stick in her fingers so you won’t notice the violent shaking of her hands as she looks for something to hold onto
Something to control
Something to rip
Something to shred
To hopefully not tear out her hairs and huddle into a ball in the corner of the classroom
So she keeps ******* on that stick of comfort
To steady her nerves
To not cry out
Help Me
For this is not their problem
Not their baggage to drag behind them
Her shoulders have become pedestals for her pain
Because it is hers alone to carry
They do not need to see it
I have come to the conclusion that I am a pathological liar
a body snatcher who transforms into the person she dreams of being every ******* day
and you may call this identity theft because she’s not truly me
The little girl that I truly am deep down inside is still afraid of the dark
Still scared of heights
Still petrified of clowns
But she’s even more horrified by the thoughts that run around in her own mind
She’d rather face a thousand killer clowns on the top of Mount Everest in the middle of the night
Than sit alone with her thoughts in her hands
Weeping out the story of a girl who’d rather die than keep breathing half of the time
Tears clog my eyes and blur my vision
I can feel the oxygen slipping out of my lungs
I can feel the heat pool in my chest
I can feel them start to shrivel
Hyperventilation occurs
As I begin to heave my chest outwards hoping to fill this void
I can’t breath
I can’t breath
I can’t breath
I can’t-
I grab a lollipop out of my bag
Fingers quivering like fall leaves
I Rip off the wrapper and throw it into the trash
Just as if it was the little girl
I place its perfect pink roundness between my lips and hold it there
I inhale
I exhale
And I feel the smirk plaster itself onto my face
I sense my eyes flicking to a lighter color
I sit back down at my desk
Twiddle my thumbs
Insert a sly comment into the conversation
And they laugh
They laugh so loud that they don’t hear the cracking of my heart
The little girl is sleeping now
And I foolishly hope
She won’t wake up
Ever
Again

11:59 pm
It is strange
how time can tick in such a way that brings forth a new
day
In seconds
the heartbreak
ill-fated
remains of yester
cease to exist
As time passes forward
to a page free of disappointment
Nothing has gone wrong
An hour where nothing can go wrong
An hour of emptiness
and fullness all at once
Nothing to gain
Nothing to lose
Where time is slow and languid
Because there is nothing,
nothing that can make this moment
Wrong

12:00 am
New

Smile more. The curve of your lips is beautiful
2. Your eyes are the most enchanting thing on the planet
3. Stop thinking about all the bad memories, flood your mind with the good times
4. Stop being afraid of new opportunities
    a. Stop being afraid to love people
    b. Stop being afraid of your nightmares, they can’t really hurt you
    c. Stop being afraid of the future the past isn’t any better
5. Remember to breathe once in a while
6. Write more poetry. take meaningless words and make them beautiful. Create metaphors out of the ordinary. Paint pictures with your mind.
7. Stop saying sorry all the time
8. Apologies to yourself more
9. Don't shut yourself away into darkness. Open your heart and let people in
10. Hold your head a little higher. Straighten your back a little more. Push your shoulders out a little farther. Hold yourself not as if you are small and breakable but as if you can move mountains with just your words
11. Love yourself the way you love everyone else. Love yourself the way you love strangers. Love yourself the way you love idols. Love yourself wholeheartedly and endlessly.
Love yourself the way I want to love you

When I was nine
My mother asked, “What do you want to do when you’re older”
And I told her
Honestly
With my nine-year-old smile
As wide as an ocean
My nine-year-old heart
As deep as infinity
I told her, “mama, I wanna touch the stars, I wanna find pirate treasure, I wanna climb mountains and live in the treetops”
My mother,
She looked at my nine-year-old smile
She held my nine-year-old heart in her hands
and she whispered,
“Baby, how are you gonna do all that?”
I didn’t have an answer
You see,
At age nine,
I didn’t think about practicality
Or actuality
Or logicality
Or any big word with an -ality stuck to it
At age nine I had aspirations that I rode like angel wings
Dreams that would carry me to the stars I longed to hold
I was nine years old with a mind full of colors
And a mouth made to love
My heartbeat was the drum I marched to
The melody to my song
I told my mother once again “mama I wanna touch the stars”
Flashforward
I am a freshman in high school now
I stand before you,
Age 15
A year and a half away from driving
3 years from applying
4 years from finding what I’m gonna do with my life
Since then
My nine-year-old smile has dwindled
My nine-year-old heart has shriveled
These dreamers shoulders have hunched
Under the weight of textbooks and GPA's
The fingers that spewed color like a 64 pack of Crayola crayons
Aimlessly type out the final paragraph of an essay
The cavern in my chest, that was filled with infinite possibilities and wonders and questions that I longed to answer
Now sits
Empty
Instead of looking for mountains to climb
My aged nine-year-old mind
Searches for the college that will accept me
Not even the real me
Not the seeker of possibility
Not the tree climber
Not the wannabe fingerprint artist
They will take prim and proper not-nine-year-old me
the one who tells her mom she’s gonna major in finance but she hates math
The one who’ll have a steady 9-5 that’ll numb her skull and make her contemplate if death can come from boredom
A coffee tainted room of pencil skirts and high heels
Instead of her favorite blue jeans and Chuck Taylors
A nice job that’ll pay well but only for the price of her nine-year-old originality
But she only tells her mom that because it sounds like a real job
A not nine-year-old treehouse living
Cave exploring fantasy
I mean, I have to move on from that dream.
It's time to be practical
Actual
Logical
Now instead of making up new words
I learn definitions of the ones that already exist
Instead of painting with my own colors
I use the ones handed to me
Because its practical
Actual
Logical
Its how it should be.
I am no longer nine years old
Far from it at that
And yet,
I still long to touch the stars,
just a little less
I still want to search for treasure
But just as an afterthought
My eyes are still glowing with wonder
Just a little bit duller
Nine-year-old me isn’t dead
She just
grew up