As an infant there was always more tears than laughter and despondent empty eyes from people who were supposed to look at me with eyes full of future and love. The first thing babies automatically know how to do regularly is not smile or laugh, but cry.  
I'm not sure if we all cried for our sins in our past lives or for the ambiguity of the life we were entering.

There were empty rooms in that house, too many for me to count. It always smelled like coffee in the mornings and we made shadow puppets on the walls, he taught me how to make butterflies with my hands before I knew how to love.

Maybe the shadows were made out of needles instead of hands.

Our first best friends are rarely the ones we see beside us on our graduation day or cheering us on at the altar. The ones who kissed our skinned knees with such innocence when our parents weren't around during our first year of school are not the ones that kiss our bruised hearts and broken minds when we lose our stability later in life when nobody is around.

I remember your eyes.

It wasn't the ocean, it was a knock off. It was the most beautiful piece of something cheap compared to a million dollars of crystalized beauty, maybe you saw that thing you love(d) so dearly within it and that's why we went there so much, but it will always be framed inside of my mind. You left the car when I looked at the trailer trash sea from the back seat like it was the most golden beach. The sunset reflected the pulse from the bodies that would be close to mine later in life. I've never felt a sunset like I did on that day. The highway was a different shade of gray on the ride home. I haven't seen that color since.

The first insults feel like bullet holes and sound like nails on a chalk board. You learn with age that you are only what you see yourself as, you are not these combinations of letters and sounds and syllables used to make yourself turn against yourself.

I remember the light on the front porch and the way the air felt. I remember the way I barely saw your face and the way your voice cracked. I remember I kept my body in the warmth and my head outside in the cold where your entire body was, and maybe that's why my head hasn't been right ever since. I remember feeling something sad and not understand why and realizing almost every day since then that goodbye's can be forever and not just see you later's.

We will throw our caps in the air, and there will be a barrier with many cracks in it between me and what once was. There will be an open road with forevers laced like a dotted line straight down the middle in front of me and I will scream goodbye to the sound of my favorite songs,
and I'm sorry, but I don't know how long I'll be gone.