Today, I will be brave.
I will admit to the fact that I still haven't found that happiness I've been searching for.
It could be the fact that I haven't looked hard enough, or maybe I've just been looking too hard.
It could be the fact that there's a hormone in our bodies called serotonin, but my therapist says that I don't produce enough and that's why I have this thing that she calls depression.

So I take pills to make me feel better and that might be weird, you can think that if you want because the truth is that I think I'm weird too. Sometimes I think my weirdness is good, I can make people laugh if I really want to and I think that's pretty cool but there's also a bad weirdness to me that makes me feel really sad even though my life truly isn't all that bad but I can't help it. I can't just tell myself that everything's going to be okay because sometimes I don't even think I believe that anymore.

But today, I will be brave.
I will admit to the fact that yes, I have scars. But you know what? I have a birth mark on my right leg. I have freckles on my arms, I have ten fingers and a heart that pumps blood into my lungs and my lungs help me breathe. I have brown eyes and approximately one hundred and fifty hairs growing out of my eyelids that protect them from dust.

Yes, maybe I have purposely tried to hurt myself but so what? People say that whatever doesn't **** you only makes you stronger. Well I must be pretty **** powerful because every day is a war between life and death and I may not think that I'm beautiful, or smart, or worthy, but I have a broken heart that's still beating and a terrifying mind that is still able to think about the children in Africa and the people suffering from cancer and the lonely girl in my class that I wish I had the courage to talk to and tell her that we are all human. We may not feel that we deserve to be alive but we have blood coursing through our veins and purity in our souls and mouths that are capable of speaking every single language in the world and brains that hold an infinite amount of knowledge and bones that allow us to move and hearts that can love.

So please, be brave.
Put the gun down. Step away from the bridge, throw the pills away, untie the knot and stay with us. Use your bones to lift your hand and place it to the left of your chest and feel the vibration of the most important ***** in your body pulsing, keeping you alive. And that, my friend, is called purpose. You are still here despite everything that's ever happened to you. You survived the day when your best friend stopped calling and the day you waited two hours for that person who never showed up and the day you got picked up early from school to have your parents watch you get beat up on the playground and that's the day when they realized that their daughter is a loser but it's okay because you survived. You ignored the monster in your mind that is constantly knocking on doors but never being let in because you had the courage to say "stop. I deserve to be happy. I deserve to feel good about myself."

You are not a freak. You are not a loser. You are not fat, you are not ugly, you are not stupid. You are sixty percent water, sixty-five percent oxygen, eighteen percent carbon and one hundred percent human. Do not hate your body, you're beautiful. Do not hate your scars. Love them. Learn from them. Be the person who can say "yes, life was a battle and I didn’t come out untouched. I was beaten down and torn apart and bleeding from the skin and the heart. But I won." You conquered the bloodiest war, and you are so brave.

Yes, life is full of grief, and tragedy, and so much pain. Life is full of evil people and sickness and days where all you want to do is just get out of this place with so much hatred and cruelty and unfairness. But I have seen someone helping a stranger on the sidewalk, children holding doors open for the elderly, and love. So much love. And that's gotta be enough. We have to find a reason. We have to discover that one thing that will save us; that one good thing in this world that will give us hope. Hope that some day, things will be better.

But today, we will be brave.
Braver than yesterday, yet not as brave as we will be tomorrow. We will wake up with a smile on our face, and we will look in the mirror and say to ourselves:

"We are not our parents, we are not our siblings, or our teachers, or our friends, or our enemies. We are only ourselves. But one day, we will become doctors, we will become writers and lawyers and activists and dancers and rock stars. We will be mothers and fathers and lovers. We will not be perfect. But one day, our bruises will heal and our scars will fade and our pain will lessen and our smiles will become genuine. We will admit to the fact that bad days happen, but we will have so many good days and those are the ones that matter. We will not be our past, we will not be our mistakes, we will not be our fallen tears or our heart aches. We will be human, and one day, we will change the world."

I want to watch all
The teeth fall out
Of my mouth
My eyes sink
Into my skull
Every hair
Fall out of my head

Brittle nails and blue fingertips
Yellowing patches
And skin
Clear enough to see rivers
Flowing beneath
Canvased tight,
as if my bones
Are just hoping to break free

To cut through
The canvas with
The knife my grandfather
Gave me
Spilling everything

Every word
I could never get out
Every time getting
Caught on
The tip of my tongue

No glass half full
Or half empty
I want to be as shallow
as it gets

When the waves
Crash against the shoreline
Making their way up
To meet your sand-covered toes,
That is as shallow as
The water gets

I could never
Be so versatile
As the ocean

I have to choose,
And what’s the point of
Such strong feelings
If they are always trapped
And writhing
On my inside

- S.G.

August 4th, 1992
That night
My heart began beating
To the rhythm of
Two words
Samantha Shea
My baby girl
She was 9 pound 6 ounces
Of pure love and joy

Her mother’s eyes
My ears
But her smile
Was all her own
She seemed almost wise
Just staring blankly back
At me
Like she knew me
Better than I knew myself
I have never loved anyone
So much

I tried to give her all I could
Make her feel like a real princess
Make her feel safe
And loved
She grew up with things
Her mother and I
Only dreamed of as children
But she was never selfish
Never unkind

I never knew
How much she hated herself
Until I noticed that her arms
Made her look like war veteran
And her eyes
Like those of a ghost
A lost soul wandering around
Lost and Suffering

Could it be that hard
To be a teenage girl
Could it be that hard
To have everything
Handed to you
Everyone love you

That night I saw her as
Nothing but selfish and unkind
I mean how could she do this to us
To herself
I looked her in the eyes and asked
Why
With a single tear running down her face
Resembling a winter’s first snowflake
Or a desert’s first raindrop
She let out the words
“I wasn’t meant for this world”
No you were meant for me
You are my world

I wanted to wipe her tears
And heal her scars
Her years of fear and self-loathing
Was no match for my love
My compassion
My understanding

I spent the next two weeks
Helpless, lost, and confused
By the time we had found her
The bath water was as cold as my heart
The floor stained with drops of
Complete sadness
No note
I cried until I was
Red in my face and
Blue in my heart

A parent should never
Have to bury their child
So we had her cremated
We figured that
She spent 16 years
Stuck in her own box
She shouldn’t have to be
Buried in one

I’ve never loved anyone
So much

sunset blushing,
bleeding, rushing,
can i come back into the garden yet?
gradient fade,
where i once laid,
and lost the thorns to protect me.
time was fast,
on that dirt path,
and now i'm covered in you.
where i once bloomed,
and laughed and swooned,
is where i've now turned into weeds.
ever mowing, ever growing,
i can't get rid of me.

XXXVIII

First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since, it grew more clean and white,
Slow to world-greetings, quick with its ‘Oh, list,’
When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here, plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed,
Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed!
That was the chrism of love, which love’s own crown,
With sanctifying sweetness, did precede.
The third upon my lips was folded down
In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed,
I have been proud and said, ‘My love, my own.’

Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long.
The ball fell in my hand, it sang
in the closed fist: Open Open
Behold a gift designed to ****.

Now in my dial of glass appears
the soldier who is going to die.
He smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
The wires touch his face: I cry
NOW. Death, like a familiar, hears


And look, has made a man of dust
of a man of flesh. This sorcery
I do. Being ******, I am amused
to see the centre of love diffused
and the wave of love travel into vacancy.
How easy it is to make a ghost.


The weightless mosquito touches
her tiny shadow on the stone,
and with how like, how infinite
a lightness, man and shadow meet.
They fuse. A shadow is a man
when the mosquito death approaches

Brave girl
Beautiful smile
Casually graces  passerby's  with her infectious laugh

She is
Perfect
She is
Flawless
She is
Just what lifes about

Of course that would be perfect if the story ended right now
Turn off the lights
Close the curtains and
Wait for the sandman to call

But theres a dark light that haunts her angelic  soul
A
Beautiful monster
Graciously grasping her who-o-le

If she just knew
How perfect she was
If he just knew
What he wasted away
what 1000s of people wish for on a star each day

She is
Gourgeous
She is flawless
Beautiful
She is perfection

Ooo
But she she doesnt realize
She is the girl in mind for other guys
A princess awaiting her arrival in his mind
Her glasses blind out her beauty
Take em off
See what i mean!

If only you knew that
If only he knew that
If only she knew that

Blue eyes, blonde hair, red lips, intense stare,
self doubt, dark soul, your eyes bore a hole,
hard kiss, quick ****, over fast, no luck,

leaving now, going home, so cold, so alone,
shiver shake earthquake, so unreal, so fake,
tears trickle down my face, so slow, quicken pace,
still there on the brink, another drug, another drink,
block you out, so numb, want to hide, want to run,

Far away, leave it all, the more i think, the more i fall,
Shut my mind, shut you out, feeling sick, full of doubt,
Too hard, you’re always there, look at you, try not to stare,
Fake smile, cold hello, nervous laugh, hard swallow,
little hope drains away, another moment, another day,

Time goes on, hope it heals, because I hate how it feels,
But for now, I crave your touch, I want you now, miss you so much.