So often we hear stories about love. It is a word that slips easily off the tongue as if it is made of only the finest silk. It has become a mumbled concept that we poke fun at, the joke someone tiredly decided to crack at a birthday party because everyone has already memorized the punchline. Love, the deepest of all popular clichés, sits prominently upon pedestals within the stanzas of sappy high school poetry and in the elderly eyes of companions that have spent decades of their lives blooming in adoration. Love, the only child of fear and fearlessness, is the friend you invite to the party out of pity because your mother told you to. Yes, we are all drastically different people; from ethnicity to personality, and language to beliefs. Diversity is potent, harboring oceans of colorful ideas that define the nature of beauty itself. It keeps the human race buzzing with truth, extremely vital to the development of who we are all becoming. And just like ourselves, there exists many different kinds of love. Loving ourselves. Our families. Our friends. Our passions. Another person whose existence gives life itself infinite value. Each other. As people, we cannot be defined by labels. We cannot be packaged and wrapped into pretty little categories of where we fit solely based on the events of our pasts. We cannot only exist interpreted by where we have been and what we have seen. We are not just where we truly feel the most at home or what we choose to fill the empty space where the puzzle piece we have spent years searching for belongs. In fact, we are not just anything. You cannot define your worth by the way you sign your name, because when all is said and done, the only thing that is visible is the curvy loops in the way you penned the first letter with only ink and paper. No skin. No bone. No fight. No dream. The roads you have traveled to get to today’s destination do not matter as much as you think they should. A recovering alcoholic. The girl who survived an arduous battle with cancer. The teenage guy whose future feels impossible to decipher. A middle aged man who quit his job in order to seek true happiness. These are just fragments, broken glass pieces of who we are. Only a cropped, blurry photograph. Never the full picture. Love allows us to zoom out. Love permits us a chance to view the bigger picture, to expand our hearts in order to make sense of not only ourselves, but the chaos that has surrounded us for as long as we have been conscious enough to remember it. What does a sixteen year old girl of an uneventful town have to say about love that is so important or even worth the time of day to listen to? The answer, like ourselves, cannot be answered so simply. It sounds silly, unheard of, for a young woman of such a tender age to believe that she has the wisdom to understand the many facets of the foundations of love. However, there is so much electricity she has stored from the hands of time, the gifts of observation, and priceless experience to bleed out into words so that the people who told her she was too young to possibly understand a fraction of its meaning will realize that she did. She does. Or at least, she is beginning to. This one is for you. Perhaps you have been taught to treat love like a swear word, the estranged family member that disappeared from your household Christmas card collection. Perhaps you are trembling to experience it for yourself, rather than hearing what it must be like to hold the hand of a silhouette that does not desire only to let go. Perhaps you have spent years believing that love is only a feeling. Only positive. Only fluttery. Only romantic. It is not always such. It is a force that, much like a Category 5 hurricane, cannot be reckoned with. But “cannot” hardly ever resonates with “should not,” and so I beg you, that when the winds disturb the shutters, sometimes it is beneficial to keep the window open. Let love envelope you. Let it love you. Whether you like it or not, you are the home that will not crumble in the gentlest of breezes or the most treacherous of gusts. You are strong enough for love because that is what you are made of. Not just blood or tears or cheek-to-cheek grins. You are made of love. This package of love is the only category we should cease to be afraid of. Love, of all forms, is who we are.

When the air around us becomes still, I begin the hunt for guarantees. Perhaps they are hiding, terrified, within the glimmer of promise that always seems to catch me moments before the fall. Maybe they are written somewhere inconspicuously, in the spaces between the fingers that hold me together better than gravity ever did. Savor this, I repeat to myself, a broken record that only remembers how to play the same tune over and over, over and over; but for some reason, I keep it running. Savor this. Savor this. Savor this. But when your lips greet the apples of my cheeks with a fire that cannot be extinguished, time is all that crosses my mind.
You whisper the volumes of reasons why you love me and I am only thinking of the moment you will tire of it. You shelter my joy in a canopy of trust, but I am far too busy counting seconds until the minute I become just another pretty story for you to tell when I have been set aside to collect dust.
I have discovered art in the curvature of your temples and the way you shook my father's hand with honor that night you kissed me under the illuminated blanket of God's great masterpiece. I have discovered it in the way you hold me close on the days I feel light years away from myself, the days when my body feels more like an abandoned orphanage than something that is meant to be alive.
You promise me forevers decorated in contentment and I am waiting for the day you regret it.
We are youthful and electrified, juggling candles at the tips of our fingertips and expecting not to burn.
I tell you that I want a yellow house with light blue shutters and a swing on our porch that rocks gently in the breezes of April.  I tell you that I have visions of us warming our feet by the fireplace in December snowfall, consuming peace within the melodious laughter of the children we will have. I tell you that when it storms, we will build forts out of quilts and hold competitions of brightness between the lightning and the glow of our own love.
I almost tell you that I need this, but I only find fear in my disappointment when I realize that there are no guarantees, and until tomorrow comes, we are holding our breath in limbo.
Instead, I tell you that I love you presently, and while we slow dance in our backyard a thousand eternities away, I am losing track of days spent grieving a dream that has not yet, or never will, come true.

We exist within—  
the hollow spaces between dissonant piano keys,
love notes hidden under dusty bookshelves,
the underside of the mattress
that has never been dreamed upon.

I gaze,
not at you—but through you,
translucent skin beckoning to encompass
the opacity of my own being.

I can no longer pass minutes
without blurred illusions of your face,
laugh lines and rose petals in silhouettes
that beg to be understood.

and there you are,
a familiar face in every fading photograph
I keep tucked within the musty pages of my journal,
in crowds of strangers and static radios,
within the cardinal’s scarlet flight
and oceans of words that can no longer describe
even fractions of your importance.

I can keep pursuing synonyms
to paint you porcelain poems of my love,

but then it is cheap,
nothing more than a human
worth writing about.

and you are everything
and everywhere— you and those hands
that refuse to loosen their grip.

on days I lose track of time,
you become a mirage stuck somewhere
between heaven and reality,

the remaining shadow  
of everything I cannot bear to lose.

Though my hand remains intertwined with yours as we lie perfectly like plastic figurines in the middle of an empty nowhere, I am wondering where you are. You are not here, not really-- and by the memorized angle of your brow as it focuses up at the hypnotic veil of heaven enveloping our fragile bodies, I can sense that you have drifted gently, somewhere far away. Perhaps you have already built a comfortable cottage for us within the tiniest crater of the moon, our own little claustrophobic wonderland without envy or indifference. Or perhaps you are sitting upon the most pristine carousel horse at a London carnival with a woman who does not share my name, or my face, or my essence. Maybe, as the song plays its lighthearted melody and the lights create a memory of iridescent dizziness, you find yourself trying to search for fragments of me in her. I am nowhere to be found in the smoothness of her puckered lips or the salsa of her fluttering eyelashes, batting away the only expired yesterdays I exist in. Maybe you have ventured off into the limitless abyss of outer space and have discovered the loveliness of a parallel universe where we do end up together. A place where I am the beautiful woman on the carousel, buried forever in the familiarity of your childish laughter that resonates like rainfall. I have built myself an entire kingdom somewhere within the muddled walls of the heart I taught myself how to adore. Because despite the calmness of the present, love has always felt like sipping down a mug full of chamomile tea while the hot mist still collects upon my cheekbones, yet still biting my tongue the moment I realize it is destined to get burned.

I saw it coming then. I see it now, our figures floating together in the absence of distraction,
two humble souls existing as the tired stems of ripe cherries that have forgotten the taste of eternity.

Even the sturdiest trees in my backyard quiver like mad in the breath of a strong breeze. I am like them, as I panic over the thought of watching you brush effortlessly past my shoulders, the way hurricane wind has the power to sweep a grown man off his feet. I am cautious, tiptoeing around the idea of your absence like fallen power lines in the rain, trembling as I carry the precious moments I have spent with you in the safety of my own coat pockets so they will never feel the agony of electrocution. I am electrified, as I seek shelter from the storm within the comforting warmth of your arms. There are places where the sun flutters her fiery eyelids against waves that kiss shorelines like familiar relatives. There are places where park benches call us by name and ones that long day and night for our feet to grace their unexplored streets. There are words that hang in the atmosphere like hot air balloons waiting to carry us to newborn horizons. It is strange, how there are places where the skies do not bleed threats or cry in languages we cannot understand. How I know that we are metal statues standing embraced in a field during a lightning storm, and yet I would rather get struck with the energy of a thousand prayers if it meant that I could stay, frozen in time, for an eternity we are not guaranteed.

On the evening of my sixteenth birthday
I remember curling my hair with an iron and
burning the tips of my fingers pink,
mumbling pained words under my breath
that I probably shouldn’t ever repeat
unless I desire to live beneath the shadows
of adult eyebrows being raised so high
they might never come back down

as if they had never said something like that
before

that night I put on a silver dress,
and lipstick so red it almost gave the illusion
that I had been bleeding from the mouth
but I felt unstoppable, so why not?

“why not” was the question
that was always replaced with stone-cold silence
and the shrug of a shoulder
instead of an answer

that night, I blew out sixteen flaming candles
and felt beautiful,
surrounded by the smiles of friends I had met in high school
and ones I had known since the days when our only worries
revolved around who had the prettier Barbie doll
and who held hands during recess in the fourth grade
and these thoughts caused my stomach to somersault because,
now that we were illuminated by candlelight and the brightness of celebration,
everything had changed.


I blew out my candles and did not wish
for a car, or a new wardrobe, or for more
faces to call my friends, but rather,

I wished to be taken seriously.

I knew there was a deep-rooted problem
when I became acquainted with real love for the first time
And everyone said that I was too young, too incompetent to understand
What that word even meant,
That I was silly for believing that such a concept could exist
When you’re sixteen and five and a half feet tall
and not that great at chemistry or parallel parking
and can barely even hold up a strapless dress
as if somehow that dictated
that I was too small, too stupid to realize that
love was something much bigger than I am
but I did.
I do.

And there is something so contagiously twisted
That lurks in our society like a epidemic
The idea when your age lies between thirteen and eighteen
you are not really a person
that instead, you are a shadow of ignorance that sleeps all day
and clothes yourself in different shades of apathy
and that the only things you care about are
alcohol-induced parties on Friday nights and
losing morals and hours of sleep while gaining temporary highs
as if that is the highest I will ever go in life

you have to be kidding me.

because you might look at someone like me
and snarkily remark that I never look up from the screen of my phone
and you might think that my taste in music is repulsive or that
I’m only holding his hand because I love the thrill of letting it go,
and you might think that people my age have brains
that contain only a spoonful of intellect and the rest is just
empty space filled up with disease
but maybe it is time that your pedestal falls
and you realize that the older the wiser
is hardly ever true at all

I have witnessed lives spiraling out of control

the truth is not that we are dirt
and no, I am not taking pictures of myself unclothed
or chatting with strangers in online rooms
maybe the reason why I’m on my phone
is because I’m talking my best friend out of killing herself
and I’m researching time travel and why the happiest people hurt the most
and a cure for my own depression
and better words to fit my poetry
I am not equal to the garbage you see kicked to the curb of the street
Or scenery while you ride on by in your horse and carriage

I am just as great
As someone who has spent 80 years of their life achieving
And if time is uncontrollable
Then why am I being treated like somehow,
I have not chosen to be here long enough to know anything at all

And one day I dream of having my words praised for the truth that they are
Rather than having eyes roll back in guilty judgment
Because I have not lived as long as you have
And yet I am the one writing the words

Because yes, I am sixteen.
I haven’t even been here for two decades
but I do not search for happiness in empty glass bottles and clouds of smoke like you think I do
and I do not play with hearts like they’re made of matches
because I know that they burn
and when I tell him that I love him
I am not doing it to **** time
and I know that life is sacred and
impossible to retrieve once it’s gone and I am not going to waste
the precious seconds of my own aching until someone decides
that maybe, I am worth listening to.

Because I know that I am.
And on my sixteenth birthday,
as I smiled scarlet in every photograph
I was right--
I am unstoppable.