She walks next to me
like she'll walk next to me
forever.

You, sir, are talking
To the child who has raised children.
To the girl who worked a full time job when she was eleven.
To the girl who has won fist fights with men twice her age and size.
Who walked away with bruised ribs and never cried.
To the girl who has gone more than four days without eating.
Who has slept on the moth eaten couches of strangers.
The girl who
When she was fifteen,
Took her fourth grade education
Taught herself multiplication
And now studies particle physics for fun.

When you look at me.
What you see is a weak,
Insecure, little girl.
But I've fought my way through hell
And have come out victorious.
While you've been sitting on your
Trust fund sofa.

You think you have the upper hand
And that will make winning  easy.
I'd rather be a friend,
But make no mistake
I'm a formidable enemy.

Don't think for a second that you can
Treat me the way you did today
And walk away unscathed.

He took a snapshot of me in the rain
in front of the vacant house where
ghost lifted the dust and
suspended the rocks like a puppeteer.

He called the shot
A Thousand Different Versions of Your Soul
and he swore, if it takes a community to raise a child,
then a thousand different people ******* me up.

I walked back to my house under an umbrella
with the polaroid of my incertitude tucked close to my heart
I pulled down every Vonnegut book from the shelf,
took the Holy Bible from its case,
called Plath up from her grave,
and asked them what the hell my life meant, anyway.

Vonnegut told me to travel to Titan.
There I will fall in love with the beautiful Sirens
and die with the aliens of Tralfamadore.

The Holy Bible told me to carry His cross
to Golgotha,
so He could die for
the salvation from my sins.

Plath told me to keep on writing.
Then I will live until I'm thirty,
and die in with my head in
my kitchen oven.

All provided valid arguments
on why my heart keeps beating
and why the thousand different versions of my soul
haven't crawled out of my throat yet.