i don't regret
meeting anyone that i've met
anyone that i have loved
i will not forget
they have broadened my playlist
introduced me to all different styles
i have come to appreciate my playlist
that has been growing for a while
someone introduced me to indie
someone else what they played in the 60's
and Mr. current listens to classic
appreciative of music without lyrics
i've never known what to listen to
i grew up on rock and roll
so thank you to all those i've loved and will love
you have deeply affected my soul.

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."

a familiar tightness and shortness of breath
slips into my chest...
college always does this to me.

it's not even the work.
i can do the work
like a prisoner doing his time
it's the people that i can't do.

why am i so socially awkward?
i am a triumph among those younger than me
but people my own age
make me feel like a snail
hiding in a shell in plain sight
where i could easily be stepped on.

i must sink into my comfortable stereotype
yes, that will help
i am a gamergirl who wears batman shirts
and plays assassin's creed in the library
move along, ugg boots.
nothing to see here.

My uncle slit a man's throat with a box cutter in my childhood home and didn't apologize.
Sitting in a circle filled with crack smoke and stale beer breath.
This is a shining example of what I've lived with
and the lengths I've had to go to escape the thing people call "destiny".

Thievery, lies, pressure, and violence
has been calling my name for the longest.
But I know the voice too well to be taunted.  

Words are my freedom and words are my piece of mind.
There is not a single substitute.
Whether poem, prose, or paragraph,
This is the only calling I've ever had.

I've lived with a hoarder, addicts, senility, and ignorance
in a variety of different combinations and forms.
At times, power, water, freedom, money, necessities, have all been an unachievable thing to me.
Lost to the vile goals of those folk I love.
I am the only one who sees the beauty in the fragile and odd.
The others see only a mess on a paper, and move their eyes to the nearest glowing box.

My father drowned when I was six.
My grandfather followed soon after.
My mother felt the stab of this and caved so many times.
I witnessed and shared the burden of her pain and grief.
My grandmother forgot everything she ever loved or knew, and short after passed as well.
Pets and possessions,
friends and followers.
All gone with a drastic breeze.
I am the one with the vision, but I am trapped in a shell of a city,
covered with that wretched stink of refined soy.

Will I be able to unburden the world from myself?
You all give me such great courage and allow me to share the beauty as I see it.
You all have such great skill with symbols and it makes me feel like home isn't far.
I want this. I want this.

If I keep breathing like the rest of the world
I feel I may miss the sound of the world's heartbeat.
But my death would not bring a solution for the ones I love.
Only a warrant for more death.
I need this. I need this.

With my words, I conjure up hell.
And hell brings with it the familiar.
Run little kitties, run.
The Doubling House and The Sequential Church will not hold forever.
My havens are temporary, but the craters are forever.
I will struggle till the pain becomes all I am
and I buckle under the weight of what I shouldn't have taken
from the mighty Atlas.

I do this for me.
I do this for you.

Decrypted Version:


We both knew what we did to each other was out of revenge

You're in the next city over, and she is here, making me feel again

Staying up in an Adderall talking fervor, and the passionate love we made the second night

and there was Mike, singer of that band named after the local graveyard, passing out expensive beers

I never want to call you, oh center of my universe

But every day, before you left for school, I would, ridden with guilt

I never wanted to leave my room again. Alone I stayed in fear.

-

Every time you left for vacation, I felt like I would *****

A paradise on the beach along the Carolina shore

You said you wanted to be single and free

Your March birthday rolled around, I was gone, and you were just alone

You left the girl I love at that beach with the charming fellas

You brought back something far worse, and numb

-

You've found a new love, and I've seen how he tries to out do what I did

The words and promises of us that you drew all over your walls now painted over

Now that you and your family have left that place

Megan wrote on your ceiling the night we all stayed together. It made you laugh

I'm in your backyard, wishing I could look back and in.

-

The new love in your life has become a perfect copy of me. You sculpted him that way

You know longer feel weak when an insult comes rushing to you

I really did make you tough and numb

Because no one could say anything more vile than I did

-

I guess this really is the end for us

We'll never see that spark we had reunite

I can't replace you, I don't want to replace you

-

Were the three years we spent together a waste?

I'm descending into another deep hole

-

I'll never come out again.




Original Version (Which is still available on my page):


An eye for an eye was the reason we acted

You’re so far away and I can’t stop the fireworks

Talking the night away, the exhausted second meeting

A sip of ale from the singer in the graveyard

I never wanted to call to the Sun

But every morning I would cave in

I buried myself in an empty room

-

The trips were acidic to my tongue

Beaches filled with trinkets and sands

“Fish swim, forever free” you tell yourself

Now, Pisces, who is the one swimming?

Buried in the sands is what I remember

The other half is lost

-

Am I the one to defeat now?

The words that stained the walls are now sparkling white

Abandoned

“Now close you eyes and sleep” she wrote

I’m somewhere between the ponds and the highway

-        

The mimics and shadows match suit and play their roles

The words do no sting or stick

Tough as leather, from the arrows

That flowed from me like a river

-

This product is finished

Ignition improbable, idiot.

No courage and hardly a motive

-

Triplet years

Falling backwards

-

My head is buried

I'm sorry you had to steal
what was already freely given.
I hope your heart never burns
like mine did the day I wrote that.
I give to you freely
what you honestly deserve,
that is a second chance,
and a word of advice.
Give from yourself,
no gift can ever be poorly graded.