Sometimes, you feel so young, so fragile --
         you're going to break apart, and shatter
          into a million, billion, pieces, enough
          so you can't ever be put back together --
but somehow, you always are, and so here you are still,
far too old.

Crying while sleeping,
Dying while breathing,
Hiding while living.

But it's starting to get better now, somehow.

And -- it's strange. Not being miserable.
Foreign, to sleep through the night;
Odd, to be able to laugh so easily,
New, to not always be terrified.

Strange, but good. Right?
Except you don't know how to live like this,
when your hands wouldn't stop shaking
for five hours last Wednesday,
and two last Sunday and just Yesterday,
and you couldn'tbreathe and couldn'tsee,
but in this world, you returned still intact.
Still able, to see the view on the horizon,
which, you couldn't, before.
(it's Beautiful.)

So you can't be shattered glass,
Because your jagged pieces
Don't cut you, anymore,
Don't steal blood, out from your veins --
Just poke, and ****, and pierce,
make you fall down to your knees,
but allow you to get back up,
however slowly.

And so maybe, you're an archetype of clay.
The glass that was half-empty
ran wrong in the kiln,
melded with that ***, over there,
sitting collecting dust
until it got fired by accident,
got transformed, into something stronger.
Better, maybe. Less breakable, definitely.

And this item of misshapen pottery,
You are not suddenly invincible.
You do not even want to be,
Can barely move in this new skin,
Can barely understand yourself,
when you can feel your jagged pieces,
sometimes, just beneath the surface --
except now, often encased, entrapped.
The clay is starting to save you, and
Maybe, you're starting to believe that, let it.

Because you texted your friends,
on Wednesday and Sunday and Friday,
with a seven hour time difference,
hands trembling and unsteady,
and you said, please.
please, convince me that I'm okay.
And they told you they couldn't
but they did, and you're pretty sure that otherwise,
you would have been swept away to an incinerator.
And be gone, right about now,
instead of glued together, and kept,
become partially ceramic.

And this is a thing you will not forget.

Maybe, someday, you'll be an alloy of steel,
or an un-cracked cup, or blackened metal,
or even wood, splintered but growing.

Or you could stay like this.
Could learn how to live, again,
without the helpless sense,
of your own desperation choking you constantly.
Til everything good
isn't quite so foreign to you.

You'll learn how to be better, and maybe it'll stick.
(because afterall, you hated it,
      always being on the edge of tears,
      and constantly fake smiles,
      not being able, to see the light in day,
but you're used to it, your own fragility.)

You're scared it's not going to last.