Flames will fade too,
Burn bright and hot until a smolder
Until fleeting breaths of wind or water
Put out it's last embers.
And I, I am this fire
Ceaselessly burning,
Incandescence,
Flames twirling,
Dancing as if nobody had extinguished me yet
Until someone does.
Until the water is splashed
And my fire dies.
But as oxygen is to flame,
Willpower is to determination
And my embers will not be put out
I will burn what has given to me until incineration.
I ingest this wood, these obstacles,
As a hungry child
I engulf forests for breakfast
Because fire is natural
And you cannot tame what is wild.
You can douse the coals after my destruction
But I can rip through your town
I will sear your very existence
To the ground.
I can be put out, as if I was never there
But the grass around me
And what I have left in my path
Is not the same, nor will it ever be.
Oh yes, embers die, too, you know-
But keep in mind that while you may strike the box,
I'm sure that you never lit the match
With the intent to start a fire.

She'd started watching 1950's informational videos.
You were accepted for being outside the box
And she was everything except in it.
Class president kids used to be reviled
Elections were exciting, polls came in,
And now... now what was it?
Something she should be ashamed of.
Because she cannot dance in a short skirt in front of a crowd
But instead because she plays the music
For the girls in the short skirts
Band uniforms like shells she can hide inside
Because while it's not something the other kids love,
It's what she loves.
Tennis dresses like skin without makeup
Student council shirts that finally fit,
That she feels like she can finally fill out
Unlike the jeans that she can't.
Golf jersey tossed aside, brushes and pencils picked up
Volunteer work piled in
Piling into the plays and new experiences
And acceleration, constant growing,
Growing out of shells that she used to love
And gaining skins that she loves even more
Looking back and seeing that the girls in short skirts
On the sidelines, on the gym floors,
Had not shed anything yet
Had not grown.
They were walking, she was running
Toward the end of high school, toward a goal,
To see how high in the sky they could get,
To see how high in confidence and compassion she could reach
They shed clothes, she shed skin and shells
They were permanent, fearing change
She was evolving, embracing it.

To love as freely as a child again.
Like a child, afraid of going to school
Afraid to leave their mother and father
For fear that they won't be here when she comes home
Fear of cooties from the boys
Boys that eventually become an elementary crush
A crush that blossoms into middle school feelings
Feelings that will be brushed off by friends
Friends who leave her unattended at the most vulnerable times
Where vulnerability renders her temporarily blind
Temporarily stuck in a hopeless place she can't escape
A place so desperate she can't imagine life without it-
And to imagine- she isn't even done with freshman year.
To hope that the years will roll by fast enough
So fast she can't acknowledge that they go by
Can't acknowledge the feelings she's putting herself through
She's killing herself, and nobody seems to realize yet.
To feel as if whatever-God-is-out-there must,
To listen as if prayers were flooding in minute by minute
Prayers to end the pain,
Pain that she shares,
But cannot share because nobody will hear her
Her prayers drift by silent ears and go unnoticed
And when turned-off ears fail to hear her,
Her anger doesn't fail to boil up, to create something horrible,
Something horrible that has never really been her
Something she never realized she had
Until she realized something else.
To let anger and sadness take control in such a strong way,
Something else had to stop being in control-
To love as freely as a child again.
Not only to love others,
But herself.

I handed you the knife that hurts me to this day.
Every piercing word, you twist it deeper
Until it flirts with the part of me that is lit on fire with a certain lust
That, while infuriating, is hot enough to make me want more
To this day I continue to hate every utterance containing your name
That name belongs to me, it is supposed to be mine,
As you led me to believe,
As you shove a sword deeper into my gut
Farther, until the fire and coals that were lust and love
Are poked out with the dagger I gave you.
And to this day I walk with wounds
I sit with scars and burns,
Engraved with your name, every time,
Every time I heard your name- scalded
Every time you said the words- knives twisted
And even when these coals were at their hottest,
With no qualms about fading out,
They were managed to be calmed, to be soothed,
Into what I have become today.
To this day I am scarred, burned, and with sword in stomach
But I am here, with new knife in hand,
And you cannot burn me again.

I am the person your mother warned you about.
I am the person you are not supposed to get on the motorcycle with
Because I cannot drive,
I do not have a motorcycle
And I am rebellious enough to have no helmet on my unkempt hair.
I will take you places late at night
And sneak into abandon buildings
To show you the abandoned pieces of my heart
And the parts of me that don't belong to anything
I will show you where to put them and desperately hope
That you can put them back for me.
I am the kind of person that came to sweep you off you feet
In whimsical dreams even Dorothy would love to have
And I will take you to beautiful places over the rainbow
You will feel things over the moon.
But I possess this unnatural power to break beautiful things
And even though it seems we are happy,
My brokenness cannot be mended by someone so special
So I continue to break another perfect thing.
I will break you and the beautiful places so unintentionally-
it's almost graceful
I will hurt you in ways so you cannot return to these places
Not with me, not with another girl or anyone
Because I tried to be mended and rebellious
To keep our wrists and hearts intact
But I am another broken person who is afraid to drag you down with me
I fear of breaking your heart so hard that you cannot be mended either
I am afraid to hurt you on the motorcycle that I wish I could ride
I do not want you to fall in love with the person I want to be
I want to be spontaneous enough to take you to beautiful places
To kiss you in them and to open my heart
I want to be these things because you need wonderful things
The same way I need to understand you want to help me
I want to be these beautiful things for you
But I am not the person your mother warned you about.