Home is warm, not always feeling
That love known to so many
Children take for granted

A winter coat thick with it
A campfire burning bright with it
A known embrace held tight with it

The warmth known like birthday candles
Burning then extinguished suddenly
The eighteenth year, coldly, shown the door.

shapes of yr many most favorite possessions
people looming in the lintel browsing through the pockets
yr posthumous stare chisels down the bark

280 & Alpine
taking out the post
east alto, west alto
sandwiches and snickers bars

let there be pizza
where beds happily move
and there are no swing sets or cell phones
let there be pizza
eighteen year olds swinging from the rooftops to the pool

no music played to remember it by
yr handlers are too many now
lost in the green lasers and spotlights

there are only two hands to make this memory
the quiet dark does not take it, new mouths do not take it
old words tearing off the night

This age has been to me a fist in the abdomen.
Rough. But sweet, too.

18, and the first line of my journal emerges like a rebellious blush, longing and delinquent. It sits in its designated place with blue ink honesty that terrifies that breath out of me. I must keep writing. I must push away from my confession. I must ignore the panic rolling in my chest. Love, in this moment, nauseates me.

18, and I am running my thumb over a round scar on my left wrist with an emotion that is not quite sadness but perhaps disappointment, for not being brave enough, for not putting that blade away before it was too late, for letting myself down. I’m supposed to be a feminist. I’m supposed to A Strong Woman who is big enough to love herself at all times. But I slipped, I fell hard. I let myself visit a place I never should have, and here is the evidence. A little continent of puckered skin I stroke while apology quivers in my fingers.

18, and I’m in my bedroom by the window with the blinds raised so I can see all the stars. I’m soft and sad and laughing. I am thinking of a girl.

18, and everything aches under the weight of awful silence. I wonder what it’s like to be normal. One of those happy faces in the grocery store choosing between black and cannellini beans, ignorant of the sickly fog clinging to my being. I isolate myself from everyone, because who the hell would want to deal with the horrible mess of a creature that I am? I can’t even look in a mirror without wanting to gag. I am my own heaviest burden.

18, and there are no words for what I feel. The warm shock of electricity when my fingers find hers and curl around them is much like a hopeful satellite alighting on a foreign planet. Only this planet isn’t dust or crater or rounded emptiness. This planet is knuckle and pulse-point and heat. This planet is divinity, created from two-sided love so entwined it is one indivisible entity. I sit here in the dark, while a fullness of light breaks open in every part of me.

18, and all I am in a person repeatedly dragging herself to her feet.

18, and I will not let my body be the target of insecurity a moment longer. I look at myself with softness and this is when I see how my inadequacies are actually a language of fierce beauty, how my stretchmarks flow over my hips and thighs like the Nile, delta after brave, pale delta. I glow with gratitude for these marks, these signs of growth.

18, and I am resting on the root of a great tree beside the love of my life. There are daisies in her hair and I think, if vital organs could spurt wings, my heart would rise right out of my chest.

18, and graduation burns like a bittersweet beacon. I smile and hug people and say goodbye, but what I am really saying is, “Watch me.” What I am really saying is, “Someday I will be nothing more than a humble relic in your memory, but today I am now, and now, and now.”

18, and I want to hold onto everything. My flaking yellow nail polish, letters given to me to send me bravely on my way, the shaking of my heart as I square my shoulders and step from velvet darkness into light, the precise slant of the sun as it leaves us for another hemisphere, this chest-heaving mess of adrenaline and perspiration and ache, tears I won’t hold back, pansies blooming on my windowsill, the symphony of myself growing bright and loud and lovely enough to fill the walls of every place I set foot in, like ink dropped in a waiting water glass, endlessly expanding.

at eighteen
you walked away from
your house
and darling,
you were so brave.
you were always so brave.

i can imagine just how hard
it must have been for you
to walk away.
from your angry father
and your depressed mother.
you never wanted to leave her behind
but you needed to go.
you heard your own heart in your ears.
and your shaky legs,
you first needed to save yourself.

embrace yourself.
when he first touched your face
you thought you might explode
into small pieces of fireworks.
no one has ever made you feel
like he did
and right at that moment,
for the first time in your eighteen years,
you felt contented.

and when he walked you home
and pulled you into a tight hug,
you could hear your father's violence
from the back of your mind.

now, it is new years eve
and you are standing in the middle of the night beach,
your feet against the soft sand.
you hear the waves rushing back and forth,
trying to touch your toes,
and when they finally do,
you are pulled under.

you are thinking about him.
the boy who made you feel
like a firework.
the same boy who left
without a word.
it's been a long time since he's been on your mind.

and out of the blue
you remember that rainy day
when you closed the front door behind you
and walked towards the station
with the small suitcase tightly clutched in your hand

for a moment
you've have forgotten the brave girl
with eyes determined as a dark storm.

breathing in the smell of the sea,
you stare into a dark endless horizon.
you cannot see a thing.
it's a never ending abyss
and for a minute
you wonder if
you are still brave.

you are brave, my love.
you are brave.
you have always been so brave.

Youth's last breath is upon me,
And I can hear the bell toll;
I am alone in the house;
I stare blankly at the wall.
I have a whirlpool of thoughts
Which just will not leave me be.
I look around my bedroom;
Comics, posters, clothes, books. Me.
Eighteen years in the making,
A lifetime of memories,
Mistakes. The thought's quite humbling.
I have a box of old toys;
Guns, trucks, swords. All forgotten.
The days of childish games? Over.
Of repressed hopes, dreams? Begun.
I'll go to school tomorrow
And nothing will have changed.
But it will all be different.