At times, I forget that my arms are fragments of fraying rope and my cupped fingers are chipped porcelain. My body fools itself among solid beings, only allowing reality to seep through my bones in dead silence.

When you don’t know how to take the first step, plunge into the deep end. Channel your fear down to the peak of your head and take a leap, trusting that the laws of physics will bring you down where you were meant to be.

2. When your chest grows heavy, do not show courtesy to your neighbors by letting your desperate words gently trickle out from your fingertips. Let the syllables erupt from your eager lips until the lines of anger on their faces transform into lines of jealousy and desire. If their passion grows as brave as yours, they will lift their voices to join your own.

3. Keep quiet when your words grow tired. Do not string together syllables to fill the silence; the bitterness in the sound will only spread. Allow silence to trace your skin, settle around your frame, surround your limbs in a warm embrace. Silence is not be feared.

4. If your heart and spine feel like foreign intruders, allow the stars to make your atoms feel like they've found home. They are the only ancestors that can decipher the strange homesickness that wracks your bones on a silent Tuesday night. They are eager to comfort, if only you allow your heart to fall in love with the stained night sky.

5. If you hold your words close, you will notice. Do not be afraid of what you learn; do not be afraid of what the world so eagerly offers. The silence of a starry night, the gentle swaying of towering trees, the vibrant colors of a beautiful sunset, the eager chirping of invisible birds on a Sunday morning- if any phenomenon makes your heart clench then make it your paradise, your bliss, your home.

6. Every being is bursting at the seams with passion. It runs through our bloodstream, fills our lungs, traces our lips, rests on our fingertips. Do not let it escape through the holes that hatred so ruthlessly bore through your body. Allow it to heal the burns.

Do not touch.

Do not touch.

Do not dare spoil this flawless property, now reborn with a fresh coat of vibrant color. Do not let your fingers dance along the surface, smearing the paint and allowing the grimy former coat underneath to show. You are not a blessing to this structure, you are a curse. You will tear away the new skin, allowing the dark poisoned layer to dominate this body once again. This structure has not been waiting for you, it has been waiting for liberation from the skin that has confined it for so long. After so many years, it has been given the chance to remake itself, to be vibrant, to be free, to be loving, to be adequate, to be extraordinary. Do not ransack its new-found independence.

Wet paint. Do not touch.

Let this paint dry. Let these wounds heal. Allow the new coat to make its way around every atom until each one sings with euphoria. The putrid coat of hatred that once coated this body has been shed. This body is protected now, bound in a steel-enforced suit of acceptance and unapologetic pride.

You must wait for this skin to heal and adapt. You must wait for this coat of paint to dry. Then, and only then, may you touch.

Step One.

When you are taught that human beings are riddled with gaping holes and survival is nothing more than attempting to stay standing against the rough gusts of wind, allow this fact to coat the surface of your skin. Memorize the mesmerizing patterns of movement of other beings as they struggle to remain on their trembling feet despite the vacancies in their chests, and mimic them with precision. This is the dance of survival that your vacant body will learn until the holes grow too large and the remainder of your body caves. This is how time passes, and this is how time continues.

Step Two.

You are born as a vessel, waiting to be infested with the words of those around you. As you absorb the dancing syllables and learn how to breath in the emotion infused in the air, ensure that you fill yourself up to the brim with this knowledge. Hold these precious collections close, for they are the substance that ensures your body remains seen among the bustling bodies of billions. Then betray your body and allow these collected words escape through petty cracks, knowing that each freed syllable is a step towards invisibility. When you allow all turbulent emotion through the cracks of your lips, you will return to an empty vessel. The silence of vacancy is fatal, and time will persist around your deterioration.

Step Three.

As you grow your body, allow your eyes to stray towards other beings growing their own. You will notice that the curves of your body are not unique, and are merely a slight modification to a standard model. Each word that exits your lips has been uttered before, and each declaration has been confessed long before your body has made its debut. As you allow your fingers to wander around the concave of his body, understand that your body is merely an interruption to the air around it. Any body could take your place, for you are a combinations of tireless repetitions and patterns. When you have allowed this realization to poison your lungs, you will pass as all the other beings have and your time will end. Another repetition will take your place as you have done, and time will go on without you.

Where your eyes view comfort, my eyes shy away in fear. Those fingertips you wish to lace with yours, as you lay dreaming on your aged duvet, are the embodiment of an age-old prison. Those fingers lacing mine like thick nylon rope laced through fingertips and wrists. Soft voice infused with poison constricting my body with the force of two angered hands closing around my neck. Harsh lips like fists against malleable skin, leaving ***** stains and marks of possession on a once-white canvas that has marred itself beyond recognition. Insincere words spilling from vacant hearts, swearing of a beauty neither can see, yet you consume the words like a holy salvation. What little comfort lies in a body created for the very intention of torture.

Come with me and seek comfort and love from the fabric from which we were created. The comfort of a universe that lies on your very fingertips. The particles in the center of my right thumb created in a deceased star whose light is just now visible to my eager eye, the atoms vibrating on my stark white scalp arriving on my body after travelling farther in the universe than any human eye has witnessed, the pounding molecules rushing through every inch of my body as a thick red liquid originating in the center of the universe (an unimaginably breath-taking home). These particles have touched surfaces the human mind has yet to dream of touching, yet they have chosen this surface- your body- to faithfully support before resuming their flurry of activity. A deeper love than that that can be provided by an insufficient human body.

To the human who bears the marks of an angry partner, the young adult who struggles to humanize the body that others have objectified for so long, and the child whose mind bears the seeds of poisonous hatred waiting with baited breath to burst with life as the offhand comments increase in number. Take the sharpened blade with conviction and place it far from your traitorous fingers. Believe my words, blood pulses through your throbbing veins, not the black ooze of hatred. Your skin will never be a canvas to taint with red. The red will collide with the peaceful cells, and the violence will not be a masterpiece. You are not just a number, you are a ******* gorgeous universe encompassed in mere atoms that strive to do your essence justice. Gather your soldiers and prepare to fight the enemies that make your body an anomaly or your struggle commonplace. Those horrible nights, where only the moon bore witness to the horrors you carved, are not “typical” and should not be a widespread ritual. You are beauty incarnate. I implore you to lace this statements around each particle in your body until your cells sing with conviction, and fight those who have brought you to your knees. You do not belong there.

On nights like these, I get drunk on gently crafted syllables

spilling from a young woman’s lips on a dimly lit stage,

the sputtering stream of words layered by a muted burst of applause.

I wonder whether her thoughts pulled themselves together with ease,

easily folding within themselves into quantifiable amounts,

or whether she had to douse her shame in a drunken stupor before allowing those blunt words to spin from her lips onto the pale bedroom floor.

She carves the very definition of beauty into the air

as her voice rises and falls with disgust and pain to rival the moments of sweet softened whispers of happiness and love.

The very act of speaking turns into an inexplicable art from, making the very atoms of air around those lips grow heavy with implications and suppressed accusations.

Somehow, from those lips, the words **** and **** have never sounded so breath-taking.

I repeat the curses from my own lips as the worlds tumble down onto the pale bedroom floor, and I douse my shame in someone else’s words until I’m drunk enough to feel comfort and power in those four letters.

Somehow, on nights like these, my conscious closes her eyes and allows the shame to wax and wane with each wayward tear, and my heart beats faster hoping that these coarse lips of mine, by some horrid trick of the light, transform into lips like her’s.