at a young age,
most girls took the time
to plan their future wedding
with cakes and flowers
and music that kissed the crowd
and lights that danced the night away.

but me,
I was too busy
wondering why
anyone would want that
in the first place
because where i come from
the only thing that dances
are the shadows
in the corners
i found myself hiding in,
and the only thing that gets kissed
is my father's ***
whenever he was two beers deep
and feeling pretty entitled.

the only future i ever saw for myself
that involved another man
was getting away
from the ones in my life

because where i come from
the bruises and the *****
are far few in between
and love was only shown
by a dollar sign
nagging at my hand
crying take me
this means love
when it only really meant war.

the only thing i ever felt
remotely good at,
was hiding away
in the dark depths
of solitude.
and i made a promise to myself
a long time ago,
i would never lose myself
to gain love the way i saw it
and i would never feel love
the way it was shown to me
and i would never let someone
not hear what i have to say.

i told myself,
that if i ever fell in love
it would never be someone
like me, or my father
or any of the men in my life.
so i fell in love
and fell in love hard
but then just as i felt myself falling,
i slipped on the ground
i was stuck on to
and i reverted to something much simpler,
solitude.

and all those promises i made to myself
got flushed away,
by lack of affirmation
and my fear of abandonment
because i'm not sure what's worse
not being able to formulate how you feel,
or being too scared to feel at all..

I have been taught only
what i was willing to teach myself
and I was too busy
trapped in  dark corners
and tip toeing around circumstance
to teach myself how to feel properly
and my environment was so dark,
i never gave myself a chance to see the light
I have done many things wrong in my life,
and you are not one.
but why do I feel so lost inside myself
like the hands of time
are grasped around my neck
as i choke on every word i wish to say to you
I have become terrified of truth
and obsessed with affirmation
that soon i will lose
the only thing i hold sacred
and thats you.

.... but I don't want to.

i look down at my body and realize i am not the plain i make myself out to be. i see my hipbones, ribs, toes, collarbones, kneecaps. bumps and dips. so much variety. i am such a diverse being, with mountains and canyons upon my skin. you are just a boy. you are irrelevant compared to the earth that is me. i have galaxies inside me, worlds waiting to be opened, and here i am with stained cheeks because a boy doesn't consider me enough. i am enough. someday i'll find a boy with crevices and flaws just like me, and otherwordly beings inside, and we will join like clasped hands.

The traditional story has a beginning and an ending. Between these two are strife and conflict and dragons and witches and handsome knights and beautiful princesses. The middle, they say, is the heart of the story, the journey which rises or declines to the ending. This is where the carefully crafted beginning is torn asunder, where valiant heroes attempt to stitch it back together, where most of the time it only ends up flayed further open like a wound.
Or an unread letter. Or a broken fist. Or shattered chains. Or dying stars.
And.
And it is the storyteller's choice how it ends. Whether they all live happily ever after or they all become nothing but windswept ashes. Most of the time the story is just beginning, middle, and end—not necessarily in that order. One will never know how it really ends.
And.
And that is the happiest end to any story. Start with the middle, continue with the end, and end with the beginning. End with the knight on the dragon's back screaming a war cry, or with the princess locked up in the tower, or with the witch falling asleep. End with a sentence cut into a phrase, with an invisible ellipsis, and no 'The End'.
One will look at a universe of different endings. Here is a galaxy of sadness, here is a solar system of bitterness, look, there's a star drawing its first breath, perhaps this is happiness. It will be like looking at the vast expanse of the sky and seeing stories written in the clouds, in the silhouette of mountains with their hunched backs telling a different ending of their own.
You will see a princess in every woman, a knight in every man, goodness in a grain of sand.
Or a drop of rain. Or a blade of grass. Or a pebble in the riverbed.
And.
And they will say you are a dreamer, disillusioned by forestalled endings, but dreamers are the happiest people in the world. They live in captured moonlight, thrive on dappled sunlight, see emeralds in leaves and gold in autumn's touch. They fly in oceans and float on tempests. They walk on treetops and ride horses crafted from twigs to the burning sunset.
This is a world of endings.
And endings are always the best part of the story. And if it remains unknown, all the better.
Look here, at the ink that traces every letter of every word, dancing with utmost gaiety like a raptor in unbound flight. Swooping down, down, down, and spiraling up, up, up, gliding through the clouds, resting in the breeze like an eyelash on the cheek.
Look here. The ending is nowhere.
The ending is everywhere.
But look here, at this words, because this is a story that will never, ever end, only swirl in eternity like ink in water, billowing like, perhaps, a valiant knight's cape as he perches on top of the dragon, roaring a war cry along with the beast, while the witch falls asleep, and the princess waits in her tower.
Look. Or read. Or stare. Or write.
And.
And so they lived…

There is a calmness after a storm to remind you nothing is permanent; not even the storms that once roared so fiercely, not even the calmness after. There is no calmness when he walked away but there was no storm either, his footsteps werent puddles and he wasnt a rain cloud. The house didnt shake and the furniture didnt rattle the only thing that did, was your frame but there was no calmness because inside you was a hurricane composed of regret and remorse and confusion and longing shook you in every thought you harboured and ached in every breath you took until it was too much to contain and you see the storm in your eyes and hear the thunder in your screams. You wonder what you can do the calm the raging storm what can you do; sixteen is not an adequate age to be handling storms well enough to not leave a mess of an aftermath. But all storms will eventually cease and so will this, and in the silence of the night you are kept awake trying to remember the calmness before the storm, and after it. Outside the wind is howling and it is a beautiful sound; the downpour steady, it keeps you at peace and before the soft cosmic rays of dawn reaches your windowsill on nights like these,you anticipate another storm.

When I was a kid happiness wasn't a decision, it wasn't something you learned from textbooks or teachers, it was a given. And it wasn't given to you by some magical means you just had it.  But as the years slip by, we find we too are slowly slipping, and more and more we have to try to reach for that something we were not given we simply got. And as our fingers brush bravely along the line between bliss and destruction, the definition of happiness is lost.  We read the news in reverse, so the man with the gun removes bullets from the chests of 20 children and their teachers. And the man returns home and becomes a boy in a time when mistakes were forgiven.  Because it seems as we get older the world gets crueler and if its unbearable now, how will ever survive? Because reading the news in reverse won't make those children alive, but perhaps if we open our eyes we will see.  We will see the reverberating effect of hate but don't let anyone tell you its too late for kindness.  The day Kyle decided the world wasn't ready, we finally were.  According to Newton's third law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, but  when his body made contact the ripples eventually stopped.  And I guess emotions can't be bound by laws because the ripples of pain in the hearts of people he touched never did.  Its been 57 days, 1 hour and 22 minutes but the seconds keep passing as if nothing ever happened but it did.  So smile like there's no tomorrow because time cannot be borrowed and you can't give it to someone who's gone so make it your own.   So rise and shine.  Make this world a better place, even though we are just particles floating in space, we’re gonna be here awhile.  Because maybe happiness is a decision, but I’ve chosen.