Read more.
Words are the map fragments of wisdom you need to navigate your way in a world constantly sending you searching for that which you don’t yet have a name.

Write more.
And don’t keep it to yourself.  Your voice deserves to be heard too so scream in cursive and whisper in all CAPS, bleed through paper and heal through the spines of notebooks
you’re spiraling onto something, breathe in commas and step over periods because you’re not over
you’re the most beautiful run-on sentence

paint more.
You’re an artist whose perspective warrants an audience,
so leave cerulean fingerprint traces in your titanium touches,
mix gesso with mars and be alizarin against charcoal

stand out. And stand up.

Find adventure in the every day.  Skydive through small talk, zip line through steps up stairs without an end,
life is the ellipses in silences your eyes seek to make stories,

explore.
This world. People. This city you’ve landed yourself and take calculated risks.

Tiptoe through moshpits and stomp through meadows.
Cartwheel into concrete conversations headfirst eyes wide open,

be vulnerable, to those who deserve to see the rawest parts of you.
And leave the ones who’d rather exploit them behind

leave others’ opinions behind.  Let them be the ones collecting dust.
You are stronger than you’ll ever know and ten-fold what they’d ever expect.

So let them guess.
Be the question mark in the corner they can’t place.

Your story is complicated.  But that makes you interesting.
What doesn’t challenge you doesn’t change you and you’ve been challenged each and every day

you get out of bed and speak when so easily you could’ve lost your voice the night you lost your body.
It took you some time and a few nameless faces to claim it again and you’re still working out what that means,
you’ve always had your own way
but all the ****** assault pamphlets name this normal.

[For once it’s a label you don’t detest.]

So this year be normal if you so choose, but also be weird.
Be loud, not small, be confident, and not sorry.
Take up space.
You deserve to.

You are Woman and you are Strong.

Push, but don’t ever shove.
Love unapologetically and fiercely.
But don’t force what a boy is not willing to give.

Find someone who will pay your heart the same attention he does your body.
Scratch that,
find yourself.

Read your body’s brail, your chapters of goosebumps, and play chess with checkers across your skin.
Unlearn and relearn and unlearn and learn to remember you are enough and it is your turn.

Look in the mirror and accept the pieces looking back are in progress.

Keep writing.

Watch the moon make way for the sun. Be brighter than both.
Let your irises draw constellations across galaxies unwritten.
Move so far forward, you stop having a reason to look back.

Forgive that which you cannot change.
You’ll make more mistakes, scrape more knees and trip on chainlink chokers, your jewelry limbs you haven’t yet untangled.
But forgive yourself.

Kiss the boy. Kiss the girl. Kiss no one.
Live in the present tense and with future declaratives.
Appreciate the thousands of little moments still looking to be made yours. Make them yours.

You are worth all the struggle.  Don’t forget.

Be kind but don’t rewind.  
Stay authentic even when you don’t make sense and your words aren’t oil enough to separate

paddle through the waves eyes closed if you have to,
the salt may burn your scars and you may lose your bearings, but keep going.
Maybe this is the year you’re going to learn to swim.

There's something about the first of January
That makes us all say
Here we go! A fresh start!
Time to make some big changes!
But I don't know
Why is that so?
When you find something good
Something motivational
No matter how small
Some way every day
You don't need excuses
To make a certain day count
Any more than all the others
And you realize
Every day
Every month
Every year
Has the potential to be
As important, beautiful, and meaningful
As you make it

I'm waiting for the sun to rise;
going to cut these worldly ties.
Remembering summer reveries,
The autumn chill, the falling leaves.

Look at how we both have grown;
change for all the time we've blown.
Remembering the winters snow,
the stars above, the ground below.

Lets atone for throwing stones;
we can mend the broken bones.
Remembering that spring revives;
brings new light to cloudy skies.

✨ it's time for renovation; it's time for us to make a change.

• friendships are work, honour the flowers that have decorated your path and don't be reclusive.
• however, being alone is simultaneously essential: carve out pockets of unabashed loneliness, yearning, and self-reflexive intimacy.
• write with less mythological standards. your favourite authors wrote drafts, pages and pages of nothing. no one emerges like a phoenix.
• persistence and self conviction are how revolutionary girls go public, spaces of uncertainty and lapses of effort are how revolutionary girls become real & effective. do both.
• use the good silver every day because every day is all there is.
• maintain your own standards of success and never trust rich people/the police/men in authority.
• do not imagine that revolutionary ideals make you above the hu$tle: money is ***** but imagining leftism will absolve you from labour is even dirtier.
• don't stay in your lane and play by the SJW's rules. it is better to actively engage in discourse and say the wrong thing than not say anything at all. the paranoid ego will destroy activism.
• live in the impure spaces, grip hold to contradiction, language is always performative and alienated, no one "means" what they "say".
• feel the fear and do it anyway; do it wrong; do it with rigor & recklessness.
• you will never be bored because you will always have books to read. • the past never leaves: there is no time in the unconscious: everything that has ever happened is always still happening, and so don't judge yourself for still being in pain about things that happened a long time ago: "a long time ago" doesn't really mean ****.
• never apologize for crying; never apologize for not wanting to have ***.
• remember girls own the impossible, the void, the image, and when this system falls apart, we rise. we rise anyway.

Do we, as a people, deserve to be critised?
Have we as a nation become so desensitised
to the plight of those among us who are marginalised?
Do we care nothing for the less well off, the disenfranchised?
Rents and cost of living as high as we have ever known,
numbers on the breadline and homeless have consistently grown,
so many suicides because people feel so desperate and alone,
how can we stand by and let this happen to so many of our own?
So many families torn apart and utterly devastated,
Far too many of our young people reluctantly emigrated,
People losing their homes, heartbroken and humiliated,
There is not much about this country now to be celebrated!

It’s true that during the recession most people lost a lot
But was it the booming economy that really started the rot?
Did we start judging each other by how much each had got?
Was compassion for our fellow man something we forgot?
Though going through hard times we still give much to charity
many services only possible because people work voluntarily
but the government rub their hands together with unashamed glee
Are they right to think our actions absolve them of all responsibility?
Though all of us are struggling, each with so much on our plate  
Should we not come together, do something before it is too late?
Surely the plight of these our people should prompt a national debate?
to ensure our government meets the needs of every last citizen of our state.
The frightening thing is, it could so easily be you or I
left unemployed or homeless, or barely scraping by
we cannot just dismiss it, the signs are all there
and if the present is anything to go by, will anybody care?

Reckoning gaze, learning ropes, knotty pine encasement, knowing what the box looks like from inside is preeminent inimitable. I was so certain last year would be it. Likely even, I thought the same the year before and years before that, all whilst whittling away, planks of this coffin, scratching to get out. Sealed in a fate, this vampiric rising, doomed to eternity of night crawling. Yet, by no means has glamour of Hollywood realm flickered any sheen, this direction. Not all vampires can afford tuxedos. Grosgrain lapels, and red satin lined capes do do wonders for former stars of silver screen, but this succubus prefers his naked lot. Apparently, malignant rogues who lie amongst worms don't always have the wardrobe to go with it. New Year's resolution: a tuxedo, perhaps some tails, and somewhere to wear them.