To 2016:
I'd love to say that I hated you, but to be honest, you made me grow.
You gave me direction. You pulled me out of a 4 month long rock bottom depression, showed me what I wanted to do in my life and sent me on my way.
You gave me two semesters of college, and a decision.
You gave me my first teaching experience, and you taught me the true value of patience.
You brought some new friends into my life and reunited me with old ones. You also got rid of a few, but I trust that's for the best.
You explained to me how easily I can be used.
You showed me that relationships don't define me, and that even if I think I am in love, life goes on and that I am an independent woman.
You blessed me with a baby, and then you took it away. But within that you gave me hope.
You sent me through hookups, drunken texts, hospital trips, gallons of tears and two D&Cs.;
You helped me on my wavering journey in my walk with God. You led me to being Baptized and you gave me the one chance in my life to feel that I was my family's priority.  
You taught me that it's okay to not always have the answer to everything, including the question of "who are you?".
You taught me to accept the word queer and make it my own. Like a beautiful pair of glasses, this is how I see the world.
You taught me the value of family after my dads accident, and then again after the baby.
And even after all the drama, fights, murders, and injustices, 2016, you taught me that a bad year isn't always a bad as we make it seem, and that even on our darkest days, there is a lesson to be learned.
And to 2016: Thank you.

I have replaced my liquor with hot herbal tea,
the lines on my skin with lines on the paper,
my razor blade with a pencil,
and this time I'm not using the sharp metal end as something destructive.

I have a rubber band ball snapping apart in the inside of my heart
And in my mouth, hitting clinched teeth
Being full of screams

Their vibrations tumble down
And I can feel each and every sound

They pull on my veins
And play them like guitar strings

They tingle the scars
Each one lighting up like stars

They ring like church bells
The sound unavoidable

They sing a lullaby

‘Scream and cry, scream and cry
Don’t you want to die
It’s not easy to say goodbye
Isn’t that why you lie?

Break the ties
Muffle your cries
Turn all of your screams to sighs

The anxiety will be over
It’s just a lullaby'

The Good Book says not to deceive.
What I say here is true, I believe.
     Upon some reflection,
     When it comes to injection,
It's more blessed to give than receive.

Concerning life's woes and its weals:
The women who know how it feels
    To be used. and then left
    Forlorn and bereft
Should recall that time wounds all heels.

Did anyone ever stop to think that maybe mother earth has anxiety?
We say that nature can be cruel and work in mysterious ways, but she is mute. A language is always mysterious to a foreign tongue.
Perhaps my dear mother earth has anxiety.
The earthquakes are outbursts like an autistic child’s, she is begging to be heard.
She screams with thunder and any words she can muster up are nothing but whispers in the wind.
Tsunamis are angry fists slamming down on the dining room table, but no one cares to listen.
She grasps towards the heavens in attempts for everything to stop spinning, so that maybe the chaos within her will depart in one single blow.
No one cared to listen to the mute child in the corner or the room, who has always been in the corner of the room, who has been ignored and forgotten, only acknowledged when something is needed from her.

We were the voices in her head.
Each individual person chipping away at her sanity, and leaving tire tracks in her down trodden forests.
Maybe mother earth had anxiety,
maybe mother earth is dead.