you came into my life during a rain storm
i thought that i needed you, nothing else mattered,
my self esteem was shattered, i just wanted to be with you.
i fell for your lies about sunsets and beautiful skys,
but you left me like a hurricane,
and i should have never believed in you.

Today I decided gold was my favorite color
I think that says something about the many ways I have finally begun to really accept myself
Because why not decide that I am allowed to own something so fine as my favorite?

gold in the way that I am always trying to be a reflection for the world, of that sun shining down on me
gold in the way that I have finally accepted that my body is not an apology
that my body is not a prize
not to be plated over your pillars
to be seen truly as an earthy miracle
I am golden, not your gold medal

like the element
I require 2000 degrees of your effort to get me boiling, and I take no shame in that
and like the element
I am malleable, but hardly fallible
in my 20 years of life there have been things that have tried to break me, to pound me down until i shattered under their forces.
I will bend and adapt to all spaces
I will keep reflecting that gold light to the eyes that scan with bad intentions

I have dug so deep for this
Made of a fluid fused in the core of the world
Emergence of scalding rock
This is my birth
A fire-y eruption
Searing in the style of my favorite color

You used to chew tobacco on late nights like this,
on late nights when we couldn't find the stars in the sky.
You would always say you hated the world
and then kiss me when you remembered I existed.
Then suddenly you fell in love with a new kind of light-
no longer the ones that burned in my hands
but a name like a hushed prayer
on your lips
that no longer met mine.
Nights like this became worrying
as I sat by the piano-
quietly playing your favorite song-
hoping I'd hear your
car in the driveway.
Nights like this became following the smell of alcohol
up the stairs to our bedroom-
you said over and over again about how you
were too tired to talk
and I was always too tired to argue.
Nights like this became blurry vision from wasted tears
and pressing cold meat to my eyes--
but I never stopped waiting for the constellations
to appear
hoping that the stars I once found in your eyes
would return.