Someone asked me once why I had such good reflexes.
I said it was from experience.
From unwarranted fists.
From open-handed slaps.
From bites that drew blood.
From objects thrown to harm.
From getting kicked when I was down.
From trusting too much.
We all learn from experience.
You get kicked over and over and eventually,
you learn how to dodge.

The other day, as I was walking past my dad in the hall, he grabbed my paint-splattered arm and with a raised eyebrow asked, "What is this?"
"These", I said, "are my battle scars from when I went to war with my canvas , so that my ideas would unravel upon it as I need them to."
My canvas is a warzone, a mess with paint splatters and imperfect, unfinished ideas. You see, my hand and my head aren't exactly on speaking terms. There's a rather unfortunate love triangle going on. My head is trying to connect with my hand, but it refuses to listen. My hand only follows the beat of my heart even though my heart just really wants to be on speaking terms with my head again. What results is a bipolar mess.
3-D clashes with 2-D while bright battles the dark. Even though my canvas never comes out the way I want it to, it only comes out the way it was meant to be. It reflects a girl who tries too hard to be perfect. A girl who has lost some pieces and will never be able to find them. If not for human kindness, her cracks would be visible.
These colorful battle scars that splatter against the paleness of my arm show what I have endured, but like everything, they will wash off eventually.

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb—
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing—nothing at all.