you only invited me because you hate parties.
you've been in the corner for an hour with some bitter biting drink
and you're pretending you're not crying,
and i'm pretending i'm not trying
to comfort you.
happy nineteenth.
happy birthday to a girl born just to know
how it feels
to be ripped in three.
happy birthday to a girl born to be the confessional
for every sinner on the street.
junkies catch your arm just  to be sick on your skirt.
you tried to fell a forest with a silver axe and ended
with bent metal and blisters on your hands
you ******* fool,
you never read the fairy tales
that i drank until i could spit them on command.
you never read the myths that made better friends
than anyone i've ever met.
you opened the bottle
when the demon inside promised you love.
you didn't run when it jumped down your throat
because the movies taught you romance
is taking a sick man inside your belly
and letting him push the lining till it bursts,
you let rats gnaw your achilles tendon to shreds for fear of letting them starve,
sometimes
you can't tell if your soul is gallant or gaunt.
you can't tell if you're the crusader
or the ***** the savior forgot to heal.
the only ocean you've seen is the one the hero is thrown into
from his storm-caught ship
sometimes it's hard for you to imagine water any deeper
than a foot above your head.
let me tell you a story -
once i fell in waters ten fathoms deep
once i tried to breathe underwater
and panicked when i could.
sometimes the most frightening thing is knowing you might survive.
don't be afraid of your weakness,
be afraid of your own monstrous strength:
the bruises you find when you wake are caused by your own fists.
throw your silver axe back to the fae.
you could rip these redwoods up from the roots
and fell the whole forest in a night.
stop painting salt mazes on the walls for the slugs to follow,
this room is only a prison because you won't try the door
you're afraid of how you'll carry yourself when the muzzle of a gun
is not pressed in the small of your back.
be afraid.
be so afraid you run without thinking. be so afraid that you care about nothing
but self-preservation,
and abandon the hero who needs your blood to fill
some empty part of him.
if he needs your pain to learn, he can stay ignorant.
i found two baseball bats beneath my bed
only one belongs to me,
the other must be yours.
bludgeon the demon in the bottle.
leave the body to the wolves.
you don't have to be the protagonist
to be the hero.
one more year and you'll have conquered two decades.
we can make it that far.