Your hands wrap around my neck
Like a warm knit scarf in Winter.
Your kisses touch my cheek
Like a bee on a flower in the Spring.
Your body touches my skin
Like the suns warm rays in Summer
And you fall for me like I fall for you
Like the leaves in Autumn.

I understand.
People may say that makes me just as crazy as you are, but
I understand.

I understand why you need to feel physical pain to match the emotional pain.
I understand that you didn’t know why you were hurting before, but now you do.
I understand that it makes you feel justified in your sadness.

But I don’t understand why you do it
From here it looks like you have it all.
But then again, I also can’t see your scars from here.

I can’t see the scars that score your skin
Like a game of tic-tac-toe, that go
Deep as a river, flowing blood as dark as the circles under my eyes
Because I stay awake at night, thinking of you, and wondering why
I’m not a good enough friend to help you stop.
Asking myself why I’m scared, too.
But not as scared as you.

This is a poem about any teenage girl.
When she tries, sometimes she fails,
But most of the time, when she thinks she fails,
She really didn’t.
Even so, when she fails, she cries.
When she cries, she hides it.
When she hides it, she’s pretending.
When she’s pretending, she isn’t being herself.
When she isn’t being herself she becomes one of millions,
Lost in the sea of girls who are only trying to become people that they’re not.
Tossed by waves of propriety, undulating in the tears she keeps to herself and those of others.
She can’t find solid ground to stand on; there’s no way she can stay afloat.
She reaches out her arm to try and grab onto someone, someone she thinks is strong,
Only to find that they are slowly sinking too.

I hate horror movies.
I hate the way they keep me awake at night, because
I already lose so much sleep thinking about you.
But I’m here now, holding your hand
And it makes it all worthwhile to feel
Your fingertips dance along my knuckles
And your grasp, tight around my hand when you know you want to scream.

I hate horror movies
Because they don’t have happy endings.
Because, even though the beginning starts out great,
By the end everyone is alone, lost, and helpless
Without the life they led before.

You walk down the streets of Manhattan, confused.
You don’t know where you’re going, and you have no idea where you came from,
Just that it was a dark and abstract place,
With pictures on the wall that you didn’t understand.

You follow the sidewalks and the cracks in the pavement
Down to the subway and you get on the 6 train.
You don’t even know where the 6 train goes.
But all the same you take it, because it is the only thing in your life that has direction.

I am not a number.
I am not an eight hundred, a seven-twenty, a six-fifty –
I am definitely not a five-forty.

I am a girl, a student, an athlete, a daughter,
I am a friend.
I am someone with hopes and dreams, wishes, doubts, and insecurities.

I am afraid.

I know that you will look at me differently,
Judge me by my faults, and the fact that I couldn’t figure out number twelve,
And set direction for my life based on that fact.

I am helpless to the system,
The one that has claimed so many futures, and
The one that tells you you’re not good enough.

I am afraid I’m not good enough.