for the past three months i have been trying to climb back up to the top of the cliff i fell from a year ago that ended with a ****** mess. i have been trying to reach the top and jump off of it myself instead of being pushed off into a free fall. the other day i reached for the wrong jagged rock and it cut me and i saw my blood and realized that i'm actually still alive, you see, my body and my heart is stronger than i thought. as soon as i realized this i let go and hit the bottom again. as soon as i did i stood up and ran away. when i looked back i realized i had been jumping into a pile of leaves rather than off a cliff and there were remnants of strands of my sweaters and hair everywhere and you couldn't tell the difference between them and i saw a pile of flesh on the ground and soon realized it was your fingers from the hands that once held mine because they broke off your palms like the pieces of my metaphorical heart did. i began running away after the fingers started crawling back towards mine and i know now that i was not made to be held by the hands of another, only to be held by the hands of my ambition. and the pile of last years leaves i had been jumping into soon became a pile of this years leaves and instead of falling into them and hiding i am building crowns out of them for the love that still resides in my life, for the friends, the family, and the familiar faces and important places. i wandered deeper into a path away from the leaves and i impaled the memories upon the antlers of a deer. i was soon shot by a hunter who shot so slowly and skillfully through the center of my heart. i pulled the arrow out. i am not his trophy. my bandaids became highways and conversations with those who seem to be just as broken as me but still laugh like there is a god. i hated the moon for ninety days and the sunrise made me sick. now the sun makes the leaves the color they used to be to me and the moon shines down through the trees. i could only see darkness but now i see that the shadows the moonlight through the trees create are one long withstanding path to my repaired heart and a home within myself.