And so it was,
A bitter thing,
Like licorice: black and sour,
The two of them,
The worst of friends,
The mood severe and dour,
One jeers and spits,
The other hits,
They're falling blow by blow,
Extinguished flame,
No one to blame,
A breath and it was so.

So, I've decided to talk in pen, because pens are smoother.
Pencils scratch, pens slide like honey out of your spoon in to a cup of tea.
A pen does not stumble, a pen does not falter, no, a pen makes a bold mark on a blank piece of paper.

It stands out.

A pen is shouting loud into the sky,
"I am here, I am permanent, I am not to be taken lightly, I matter."
A pen can make mistakes, but they are ******* hard to erase.
Because, you know what?
A mistake is part of a pen's path, and what it has written before matters just as much as what it writes next.

I have decided to write in pen, because my voice is never going to be erased.

I am a ragdoll stuffed with two-cent cotton imitation in a factory in China.
My arms and legs moved by hands seen through mismatched button eyes.
my only desire is to be like other dolls: Barbies, Polly Pockets.  Big eyes and plastic bodies.

My pills come in a bottle like a gumball machine, dispensing one brightly colored sphere at a time.  

Pills to make me, like them.

The artificial emotion seeping into my veins.
Sweating out my pores.
Plastering smiles on my face, and ironing rainbow patches behind my eyes.

A giant sugar-coated crutch shoved under my armpit.
Force-fed lying happiness.

Here comes the choo-choo into the tunnel.

I am a cat eating grass to make itself *****.

I want to move my own ragdoll arms, sit up without a metal pole behind my back.
I want a straight line stitched on my face so I can choose to make it go down.
Or up,
Or diagonal,
Or shed my potato-sack skin and metamorphose into a trumpet.
With freedom to resound over mountaintops,
Dribble liquid gold from my singing mouth.

But I am a ragdoll.

Whose head is stuffed with two-cent cotton imitation on a factory floor in China.

Whose only desire is to be real.

Can we appreciate our differences and evaluate ourselves not based on others' accomplishments in comparison to our own?

Can we take each setback with a grain of salt and let it blow away as we exhale our failures?

Can we see a person with what they want as successful, not competition?

Can we see those with what we want as friends, not stepping stones on the path to our own ambitions?

Can we appreciate the validity of each individual's desires, and cheer them on as they strive to reach them?

Will we ever learn to love the differences that make us human?

A heart is such a funny thing, it moves to its own beat,
A thrumming, drumming, pulsing thing, that's pumping blood and heat,
And though it is a part of me, I still feel disconnected,
The heart that lives inside my chest knows it has been rejected,
And so it sits, yearning for you, and here I am beside it,
My thoughts a blur, my heart a-stir, for love that's unrequited.

Your legacy lies behind closed eyes,
The wind teasing eyelashes that would only part for God,
And though you are gone, I remember,
The songs that kept you alive,
Irish folk songs from previous generations,
Sung to you by a family,
That you only remembered half of,
And my voice mixing with yours,
In harmony,
And melody,
And verses upside down and out of order,
We’d laugh,
Then we’d leave,
Then we’d cry,
As we remembered yesterday,
Your eyes were full of life,
True blue to the end,
And though waxen and still,
You belong in our hearts,
Forever.

Late nights with itchy fingers and waiting paper,
With trampoline eyelids and legs still mid-race,
With home so far away you can't talk to it with a can and a string and a secret,
And silence,
Filling your ears with cotton ***** soaked in maple syrup,
Late nights with rusty elbows and creaky knees,
The darkness a blanket of barbs coating the air that flows in and out of your mouth,
And chamomile dreams just a hair too far away to sip,
Those are the nights where happy meets a cliff,
And sad comes rushing up to greet it,
Entangling and intertwining,
Birthing a melancholy mood that dives into your pores,
Prolonging those late nights.