Your fragile fears are endearing
As they determine you are human.
Your shivering skin is in
Because it shows you are chilled to the bone.
Your voice’s timbre does not have a noise
For it is the sound of your subconscious.
Your hand’s shakes are their own brand
Of starlight, cells, and sweat.

Your glowing starlight
So softly illuminates
The space in my mind

I saw you at the first sight
more bright than starlight
my heart and mind are fight
are you a knight?
or a prince who riding a horse at that night
but it's a right

There’s a certain heaviness to it,
the inherent darkness in a silent room,
**** near oppressive,
dirtying,
almost as if it’s crawling into you,
isolating you.
Utterly alone.

Then you remember her,
half curled on your chest, cradled in the nook of your arm,
wrapped around you.
A thin smile,
just barely exposing her thin, top row of teeth.
A faint glimmer in the inky blackness around you,
starlight.

She looks up at you.
It’s an extreme cliché,
to call eyes a window to the soul,
but it’s fitting.
You look down at her and meet her eyes.
Seeing her,
that childlike joy, curiosity mixed with tempered wisdom beyond her years,
all coalescing into beautiful, amber eyes,
makes that darkness feel a bit less heavy.

You see the corner of her lip trapped between her teeth,
thinking on what to say.
You’re doing the same.
Whatever words are spoken next decide an uncertain future,
a tipping point.
“I think I’m falling for you.” You want to say,
but you stay silent,
you’re terrified.
“I’m sorry,” she says almost mournfully.

That darkness comes creeping back,
weighing on you,
on your heart,
and it breaks you.
You like to think she heard it,
that breaking of hearts,
that she understands.
But she still lays there,
enveloping you,
who are unfeeling and alone.

it's strange the rides your mind partakes in while it sits still in your head.
i am unmoving, staring at the endless rows of grey spotted ceiling tiles from a bed, while my mind cartwheels and bursts into flames, cosmic colour, ribbon dancing through its many seasons during my quiet sit down. it swims through galaxies with graceful strokes, leaping joyfully into nebulas and leaving behind a shimmering trail of sparks. it speaks in starlight and dances hand in hand with planets.
the peaceful space of the space in my mind
bursts to life.

The day I entered this world, my eyes lit up.
They were a shade of blue that you only see in baby dolls and colored contacts.
Like my birthstone, aquamarine flood my eyes and breathe life into the souls around me.
I was bright blue, like the pure water I was baptized in.
Blue like the baby blankets they give you at hospitals.
The blue that no one can argue with, because everyone thinks blue is beautiful.

One day, I morphed into yellow.
I was the dandelions I made into flower crowns
and the banana Laffy Taffy that always stuck to my pants.
I was yellow sundresses, bright sunlight, and a warm smile.
My hair was the color of a wheat field.
One of my first words was “lellow.”
Lellow like Big Bird and banana runts.
The idea of something so bright, something so happy, soothed my childish brain.

There was a time when I was green.
Like the green of St. Patrick’s day, which I never dressed up for.
I was always pinched.
Green like the baseball diamonds I spent hours on as I watched my brother.
I was the grass I laid in, the grass I played in.
I was the green of an aging plant.
You could see colors swirling in intricate patterns throughout my mind.
The green of maturity;
of gears turning in my head.

Green turned to purple when I was uprooted from my home.
Omaha to Lincoln hit me like a lack of oxygen and turned me purple.
Just like a body without air, my limbs turned dark.
I was purple, like every middle school girl’s favorite color.
The purple of painted fingernails thumbing through Victoria’s Secret magazines.
The purple of trying to fit in with new friends.
I was the purple of colliding galaxies.
My brain was confused. They were making me something new.
They put me in purple high heels and pushed me forward.
“Learn how to walk,” they said.
Everything was the artificial grape that still makes me cringe.
Sometimes, I taste the purple Koolaid on my stained lips.

I’m glad my soul is done being black.
Black like the empty demon eyes that stared at me.
Like the pen that cracked in half and watched its ink flow.
Black like Sharpie tattoos and chokers.
Black mascara tear stains that burned my skin.
I fell deep into the night and into the abyss.
It was so dark that no one saw me fall.
I was blind with only a hint of yellow starlight to guide me.
So I followed it out.
I tracked the starlight through the night.
It was never easy. Sometimes I fell down and was dragged backwards.
But I finally left black.
I’m not all the way back to yellow yet, but at least I’m not black.

Now, I am white.
I am all of my colors wrapped into one.
I am the good and the bad, the clean and the impure.
At first glance, I am a blank page.
I appear to be a paper with no scratches, no eraser lines, no marks of red pens or bright highlighters.

But I am grape Koolaid stains.
I am hands covered in smears of black ink that cover my mouth.
Sometimes, I still eat Laffy Taffy and lemon lollipops.
I climb up tall trees and bask in the glow of leaves in the sunlight to learn something new.
I stare at the blue sky to remember what it feels like to fly.
I am a rainbow, hidden behind an expanse of white.