I am never first choice.
No,
I am never picked out before anyone else,
Chosen or selected or thought of
From the beginning.

No,
I am a hope.
I am a guide for those
Who are not first choices either,
leading them like a lighthouse,
Guiding their ships to rest
in my bright harbor.

I am the first choice
Of the last choices,
Using my lantern of excitement and comfort,
Illuminating the faces of my friends
As my golden love falls over them.

It shines like real gold,
My love for my friends,
But more precious than a metal could ever be.
This kind of gold is warm gold,
Melted butter gold,
Falling into warm blankets gold.

This gold
It covers their faces like paint,
Shiny and always fresh
As I carelessly apply
new, thick coats of my love
With my favorite paintbrush.

I am here for you,
I say,
By being a last hope.
I hold my lantern of gold and love and light
Above my head,
A beacon to those lonely,
Fearful,
Or not first choice.

In my head,
I preach support and encouragement
To empty streets with white-out street lights,
Big circle spotlights
For me.

I talk about misfortune and luck,
And hope and trust and friendship.
I rant through my problems
And my selfishness,
To the looming street lights.

They listen.
These white-out street lights
Erase my negative words
Straight from the page of my mind,
Leaving black
In their place.

Quiet gold sleeps through my dreams
Like spilled milk,
Like it’s running down my street,
Like it’s dripping down my face.
My dreams wink with hints of this gold.
It’s there in the form of my nail polish,
Of a collar on my cat.

The gold intertwines with the black,
The black of the white-out streetlights,
And fills up my lantern.

I light my lantern,
And hold it up into the air,
And I call those who are not first choices,
Come here!

I am not a first choice,
But I have my lantern,
my white-out streetlights,
I have the gold in my dreams
And in my mind.

I light the lantern for me, too,
As the flame burns away
The empty black paper,
Gold smoke takes to the sky.

Color me surprised
And content
And nervous,
Because that is who I am.

Color me
My colors,
Colors that cannot lie,
That cannot hide who I truly am.

Color me someone
Who didn’t always know how to spell surprised,
Unaware of the extra r I needed.

Color me a nervous wreck
Who can’t handle being near a lot of people,
Because I get shaky and full of
Nervous energy.

What color is nervous energy?

What colors make up me,
Make up my stained glass window?

I love stained glass windows
And how many colors they hold,
Mix match shards of personality
And sun catching.

Color me like a daughter who loves her mother,
Like I buy my mom small stained glass window panels
Of butterflies and flowers and dragonflies,
Every year,
Because I do.

My stained glass window is glittery,
Like a dust storm of sparkles,
And it’s in pinks and blues and purples
And all the pretty colors.

Really,
I don’t know what my stained glass window
Looks like,
Only other people can see that.

But I can see the sunlight,
The positivity and friendship and love around me
That casts through my stained glass window,
And I see the colors of me on the floor.
I see my anxiety and stress in my tears,
My happiness in my laughter.

These colors paint a room like real paint,
From life,
through me
like glass,
to others.

And I see the colors of my stained glass window
On the floor.

Question life. Who owns you?
Open your mind like a box,
Pandora’s box of secrets
And lies, and midnight thoughts.

Like you actually care.
Gardens without water thrive wild.
Walled gardens in their
Own world,
They worship a god of silence.

And you look like you want to be something.
Sitting in coffee shops
Staring at the rain gets you nowhere.
Do you like your lukewarm smiles and drinks?
Triathlons through wet cement?

Why do you do this to yourself?
Feelings stuck in snow globes,
Show your love to Mother Nature
Because you are locked out
Of your house.
Notebooks filled with numbers,
Budgeting time like you pretend to budget money.
Act like every second counts and spend
Fifty dollars behind your own back.

Tap your nails on something because
You’re nervous.
One day your nails will drill through this table,
Holes the size and shape of your regret.

Bathe in gold glitter and rose petals to mask
Your shame, replacing insecurities with
New clothes only works in movies.
Set your lock screen to a default picture
So no one really knows who you are.
Paint your nails a color
That doesn’t remind you to care,
Like everything else does.

Take a deep breath and tell the truth.
It’s buried under stacks of papers,
Impossible to find,
But the truth is the most important lie
You’ll ever will into existence.