Since we were kids, they kept a chart to measure our growth in terms of the length of our bones to the weight of our skin. And over time, we stop measuring ourselves and start measuring our self-worth. So instead of measuring the density of calcium in our skeletal structure and the height from the base of our feet to our crown, we measure ourselves in words, and voices, and the way our eyes look into the eyes of someone else. We measure ourselves in the curvature of our features and the smoothness of our palms. We measure ourselves in the value of our things and the whispers we hear in our heads. And they stop trying to define us by our nature and start placing us in carefully labelled petri dishes for the right moral and chemical composition that we radiate through the way we walk and the bends of our spine and the number of times we blink in a minute. We placed words in our palms picked from a bowl of chance and they do not speak to us to measure our worth. They measure us by our use of multi syllable words and our ability to manifest sides to a view even though it all seems the same. They measure us by our dexterity in creating complex ideas to explain intimate details between the grass and the moon. They measure us by our capacity to absorb and apply and absorb and apply like sponges and liquified knowledge that come from theories  we made up to feel connected. They measure us by our longevity which they deem to be privy to the lifestyle they have taught us to lead. We measure ourselves by the deepness of our love and how we sometimes would rather have knives in our back instead of place one in anyone else's. They forget that we are worth so much more than numbers and sheets of paper. They forget that we sometimes stand on two feet so that we don't fall and not because we are fighting for our survival. We forget that sometimes what's inside is dead set on the idea of a short wick and that open windows are not portals to new lives. We forget that even though sometimes more is less, less is not more and never will be no matter how many times we scream to ourselves silently about the heaviness of the eyes on us. So we start measuring ourselves as bodies of water and throes of passion. We measure ourselves in the leaping flames and how far we would go to achieve the serenity we think we need. We measure ourselves in the storms that destroy our homes and whether or not we will be able to tear the buildings down without hurting a soul. They measure us by the degree of saturation of our face value souls and the colour of the bits of our hearts that they collected eons ago. They now measure us by the frequency of sounds we listen to and the irradiation of the electromagnetic spectrum on our skin as light reflects a different side. And short of tape measures and rulers, they try to measure our worth without hearing the voices calling out to them about who we really are that are trapped in the back of our minds. So tell me, what are you worth?