I once knew a girl with a wide smile,
she had quite the interesting style.
She lived in the clouds,
and invited the crowds.
She swam with sharks,
and saw everything in colorful sparks.
When she was told to act her age,
she threw quite the rage.
Eventually life caught up to the girl,
and she never again stopped to twirl.

Bravery is not a trait to be learned,
but a decision that's yet to be made.
When standing against overwhelming odds
there's good reason to be afraid,

but despair does not ensure cowardice
and adversity does not equal defeat.
Every man still has a fighting chance
as long as his heart still beats.

Be always valiant and forever fearless
against what others may forewarn,
because the decisions made amidst catastrophe
are also when heroes are born.

I wanna be able to unleash you
dauntlessly.
Because I trust that you will return back home
to me.

Fear.
For so long, I let it sink its tainted fangs into my neck, drawing blood that dripped to my ankles like something that could make angels tremble in the heavens.
It listened to me speak. I could see the hunched curvature of its spine in every corner of my imagination, watched it swallow the colors of my soul like leftover soup.
Consuming.
It surrounded me, an anchor tethering my heels to hollow ground.


But then I discovered poetry. I discovered the syllabic freedom of bleeding love into the spines of empty journals. I found out that poetry existed in glistening foreheads and moments spent trying to catch my breath again, in split ends and blotted lipstick stains.
I discovered that airplanes do not plummet into the Atlantic Ocean as often as I thought. I discovered that I can ride them without becoming another muted headline, a tragic statistic blaring into the white noise of late night television.
I discovered that my voice had meaning, that it deserved the embrace of a microphone, an eager audience, to be shouted and sung like lyrics to a revolution I had always been taught to silence.
I discovered that proving people wrong is fun.
To the boy who told me at age 13 that I would grow up and become someone’s biggest disappointment, this one is for you. To the despair that kept me wide awake until mornings I wished would be my last, this one is for you. To the same girl who doubted that she would make it, that her brain would ever stop screaming the same addictive chemicals that questioned her very fragile existence, this one is for you.


I made it.
I dyed my hair bright red because I am a fire that refuses to die out, my heartbeats fanning the flames of a life I have yet to conquer. I sing in the shower, with my car windows rolled down at fifty miles per hour, in my sleep. I have tasted tenderness in the form of a heart that beats for mine.  I am loved, I am young, and I am burning fearlessness with every breath.