To the boy who broke my heart.
Thank you.
Because you have given me something so much more sweet.
The way her eyes reflect my ear to ear smile as we joke about
Our futures.
Who we want to be when we grow up
And who we don’t.
The way she can always make me laugh harder than you ever could,
My stomach sore.
But not from the skipped meals you forced me into.
Because I was never beautiful enough for you.
The way my parents confuse my heterosexuality for homosexuality
Because my “love poems” are always about her.
The girl
Who knows my soul like the back of her hand
My darkest secrets.
My biggest flaws.
And she doesn’t use it against me.
Romantic feelings are not the key to life I always guessed they were
when you have found the person who can make your life worth living.
Your best friend.
The one who kissed the reflection of you engraved in my wrist.
And no I will never be gay.
But I love her.
She always knows what I need to hear.
When I look like I have never looked in a mirror she still udders the word beautiful
And knowing that I will never believe it she still tries.
She is just as stubborn as I am,
And she has dedicated countless hours to repairing me,
The job you always said you’d take in the first place.
Telling me that the most broken are the most beautiful.
And I know that is true,
Because she is broken just as much as I am.
She has put her problems aside for me,
Spent countless hours rewiring the desire to go back to you.
And now I cannot help but realize that I deserve better.  
To the boy who broke my heart I am happy now.
I am enjoying the small things for the very first time.
As we go camping and I show her the best way to light a fire,
And she does my makeup to where for a moment I feel I am beautiful.
The Monsters cracked after we have stayed up for an exam,
The late night conversations that are always the ones most memorable.  
These are the best moments of my life,
And they weren’t shared with you.
To the boy who first broke my heart.
Thank you.
But gratitude is not forgiveness, and I would not advise coming near me again.
Because she has had a target on your head since the very first tear.
And I know that even when you’re gone she will always have my back
Because that is what true friends do.
To the girl who has made my life complete –
I adore you.

Please, do not touch me.
I am fire, and darling I burn.
Do not stand too close or you will be consumed by my flames.
Because I have grown tired of being restricted to just this pit of self-doubt.
I am tired of failing at being adequate in a mold that I was never designed to fit in.
I have let my self-worth be defined by those whose only aim is to put me out.
My flame has been kept for years locked inside of myself
Losing the oxygen it takes to keep it growing
Fighting, surviving, growing dimmer so that I would not shine.
Because the brighter the glow, the more attention it attracts.
And it is was easier to just be invisible.
But this light of mine has taught me that no matter the circumstance,
It will keep glowing.
For years I told myself that if I could only put the flame out I would be safe;
Never having to worry about what they had to say.
Eventually, fire would become ash, fading into the background.
But I realized that no matter how dim the flame, as long as there is chance for a spark, they won’t be satisfied.
In the heat of the moment I rose up from the ashes.
The pressure finally broke and I let myself become who I had always been too afraid to be.
More brilliant than ever before.
A force to be reckoned with.
I broke through the pit and burned down every insecurity.
Growing only stronger
Forever.
My friends,
Do not let them smolder you.
Every word said out of hate,
Out of envy,
Out of lack of humanity
Do not let it run like ice through your veins.
Consuming the fire within.
And if you believe you are too far gone,
Don’t worry.
Fate has taught me that even ashes can rise up again.
It only takes a spark.
To ignite the flame that has been burning your whole life.
It is there, everyone sees it but you.
If they didn’t why would you be such a target?
Use the words they sling at you and use them as kindling,
Relighting the fire inside of you.
Because you are capable of being brilliant.
As passionate, strong, and self-willed as a forest fire.
Escape the pit.
Let your light shine like the sun.
And burn like nothing will ever put you out.
Because unless you let it
Nothing ever will.

Plastered everywhere you look.
Covergirl, Cosmo, Seventeen,
Every commercial you will ever see.
Photo shopped models enticing you to starve yourself.
Anorexia and Bulimia are well known cures for being “too fat”
So that you may one day look as beautiful as a person who only exists through computer enhanced images
As real as the antagonists in your favorite novel
Confused with the protagonist.
Though they bring no empowering messages to the table.
Take your self-worth
Divide by every extra pound you have that is above your BMI,
Add your cup size
But subtract your IQ
And then multiply it by how much you can bench
Put it to the power of how many boyfriends or girlfriends you’ve had
But to the negative if your dress size is above a six.
Because if your bigger than a six, no one could ever love you.
Once you have found your total
Only then will you know your “true value.”
Surprised.
Me either.
From the day we are born
We are force fed the mutated idea of a perfect person
Because only beauty queens get on TV.
And singers have to be pretty, right?
Dreams are dictated by looks.
Supermodels, Bodybuilders,
Lusting the lives of those who are artificially flawless
Comparing ourselves to everyone we see.
Think about it.
9 out of every 10 teenage girls are unhappy with their body.
We spend countless hours finding exactly what we are not.
We are not thin enough.
Not tall enough
No pretty enough.
We forget to remember what we are.
Strong, Capable men and women
Who are ready to make a difference!
So my friends
Put down the magazines
Turn off the television shows
And take a stand.
Shed the newest clothes
Be a trend setter.
And maybe, just maybe we can stop the next generation
From feeling worthless.
Be proud of who you are
Thin, Thick, short, tall, big breasted, flat chested,
Whatever race you are
Look in the mirror every morning before you go out
Find every flaw you can see on your beautiful face
And tell yourself.
I am the most perfect person around because
I am real.
And beauty comes from within
And in all actuality
We are all imperfectly perfect.

From my bedroom window,
I can see a lime green ribbon
Constricting itself around a tree.
Lynching the last inch of life
From a being
That stood strong for a half of a century.
As each leaf wilts and falls it is a reminder that nothing is ever permanent.
Everything dies eventually.
In our family,
Green is worn proud
Above our hearts
The star of David guiding us on our way
But something to be ashamed of.
A color that condemns our family to endure your sympathetic stares
That follow us everywhere.
It is as if we are the main attraction of your circus:
Come see the dying, the crying, and the bald.
But to us, one ribbon wrapped around are hearts
Represents a million words wrapped into one.
Especially the ones never said.
The I love yous
The I need yous
The I’m sorrys
And the goodbyes
It is an endless cycle
Of CAT scans, and chemo, and radiation, and surgery, and blood tests, over and over.
If only to slow the process of
Cells detonating themselves
In a body that was never strong enough to fight it.
Strong arms cannot hold the weight of their daughter’s broken hearts
Or their sons missed football games,
Or their wives plan less anniversaries
When they carry their own mortality
We never knew that our man of steel,
Would become our man of sleepless nights,
No longer able to carry his children to bed at night.
The only person to guide through our disjointed lives
What ifs become your safe haven as well as your nightmare?
And your reality becomes mixed with fatality.
And eventually, you don’t know the difference.
Prayers become a lost hope,
Church becomes a last resort
And treatment becomes useless
Because it is a diagnosis that no one can escape.
I never understood “When someone is diagnosed with cancer, everyone around them is as well.”
And dad know that when I look into your lifeless eyes
Mine will mirror it.