Dear Seventeen-year-old Me,

I hate you.

No, no, I guess I don't hate you. But I sure do hate parts of you. I hate the part of you that didn't work for what you said you wanted. What the hell was that?

I apologize, Seventeen-year-old Me, because I know you will be disappointed in my use of the word hell, but "what the heck" just sounds like a joke to me now.

You worked a bit, I'll give you that, but when it came down to it, to the parts that mattered the most, you did next to nothing. You were holding your dreams in your hands and you sat back and watched as life took it away from you. You yelled and screamed and complained, but you didn't fight! You didn't even move!

So I say to you again, what the hell was that? And this time I do not apologize. Because now I don't have something to defend, 'cause you went and got a big head and lost it. So I will fight to gain back what you lost, and then I will fight even harder to keep it.

Because even though I loathe parts of you, you have taught me to fight for the things I want, the things I love, the things I dream about.

And for that I love you.
And for that I thank you.

See you sooner than you think,
-VT

There's a fine line between you and me.
Some days I tiptoe to the edge
And peek over to your side,
And wonder what it would be like to be
Looking at me
From your point of view.

I spend
Thirty percent of the time
Worrying about how silly I look,
Tiptoeing the edge,
Twenty-two percent talking and daydreaming about
What it would be like on the
Other side
With you,
And
Forty-three percent of the time
Convincing myself that
I don't give a crap how
Silly tiptoeing to the edge must look.

The last five percent
I spend thinking about how
The line
Is much thicker than
The dreamer in me
Would like to admit.

I need to write a poem.
But I can't think how to
Put in words
What I

Twenty
Four
Hours.

Over a year ago
My theatre teacher told me
And a group of my closest friends
To write down
Exactly what we would do if
We found out we only had
Twenty-four hours left
To live.

My original draft was very juvenile,
Full of dramatic kisses
And dying in my crush's arms.

It was beautiful
For a seventeen-year-old romantic.

I don't know if my teacher realized
That I would become slightly
Obsessed with
What I would do
If I had twenty-four hours to live.
But whether she realized or not,
Obsessed I became.

I wrote "24" or my hand each day
For weeks,
To remind me that I could be
Dead in twenty-four hours,
Or less.

I wrote at least fifty drafts
Of what I would do
If I found out at that moment
That I had twenty-four hours left.
I would write a new draft when I decided
That the previous draft was
Too out-dated.
I think the longest lasting draft
During my surge of
Twenty-four hour hypotheticals
Lasted one week.
One.

I was totally obsessed with daring greatly,
Doing the things I had longed to do
For weeks or months or years,
And suddenly I had the permission I needed
To do them:
Twenty-four hours to live.

My drafting came to an end when
My best friend
Handed me the best
Twenty-four hour outline
I had ever seen.

At the top read the disclosure:
And you get into heaven no matter what.

I couldn't surpass that list with any of my own ideas.
And my obsessment was already dimming.

A year and a half or more later,
I don't make drafts.
I'm not obsessed.
I'm not going to die.

But every once in a while
When I feel like I'm not living
Life
To it's fullest,
I write "24" on my hand for
A few days.
Just to remind myself,
That at any moment,
My twenty-four hours left to live
Could be up.

The caterpillar was raised by worms.
The worms loved the caterpillar,
But the worms didn't know much
About the caterpillar's nature.
They tried to understand,
And they tried to help as best they could,
But when the caterpillar got really hungry,
All they could understand was that
They had never been so hungry,
And they were happy,
And if the caterpillar wasn't careful,
He would become corpulent and fat.

So in their kind, ignorant, wormy way,
The wonderful worm family
Discouraged the caterpillar from eating too much,
And being too hungry.

The caterpillar was confused,
But he loved his worm family
So he tried his best to eat less and
Not get too hungry.

But the less the caterpillar ate,
The more hungry he got,
Until he was so starving,
He didn't even feel like himself.
He felt sad and sluggish and purposeless.

Then, in the middle of the night,
The caterpillar snuck up to he favourite leafy tree,
To just get a small midnight snack.
Before he knew it though, he had eaten
An entire branch of leaves.

And the caterpillar was still hungry.

He couldn't get enough.
He ate all through the night, and into the next day.
When his worm family awoke,
They saw the caterpillar up in the tree
Eating away.
They tried their best to get the caterpillar to stop,
But it was too late.

Soon with tears in their eyes,
The worms saw they're dear brother
Become sluggish and
Tired.
Until finally
The caterpillar wrapped himself up in a whitened
Casket, and hang motionless in a leafy
Grave.

The worm family mourned the loss of their beloved caterpillar brother,
And once again warned the other children about the dangers
Of being too hungry.

A few days later,
One of the wormy sisters went to visit her brother's grave.
But when she arrived she saw the most miraculous thing!
A butterfly was emerging from her brother's tomb.

The caterpillar-butterfly
Was not angry at the worms for trying to stop him from becoming a butterfly,
They didn't know he would be able to
Be a butterfly after all,
And they were just trying to keep the caterpillar from harm.

After the family had a beautiful reunion,
The butterfly flew away to somewhere
He could be hungry, and beautiful. And
Somewhere he could fly.

Anxiety.
Conserve.
Conservatory.
Shakespeare.
Man.
Monk.
****.
I ******.
I'm better.
Expulsion.
Breathe.
Friend.
Not friend.
Friend.
Best friend.
Awkward.
I still have that.
Dress.
Tights.
Queen.
Mill.
Birthday.
Song.
500.
Guitar.
Te­ars.
Nostalgia.
Nostalgic.
Dead.
You're dead.
You're dying.
I'm dying.
I'm dead.
I'm not dead.
24.
You're blonde.
I'm not blonde.
I'm old.
I'm still old.
I'm a child.
I'm going to cry.
Stop.
I don't cry.
No more crying.
I'm allowed to cry here.
That's why I cry here.
I'm allowed.
I can do what I want.
I know what I want.
I have no idea what I want.
But I think that's what I want.
I'm not doing what I want.
But this is enough.
It's not enough.
I'll make it enough.
Where am I?
24.
Twenty.
Four.

Stop thinking.

Fold me,
Pull me,
Twist me,
Crumple me,
Then tie me up.

Cover me in reds,
And purples and blues,

Then leave me alone.
For hours.
For days.

Let me sit
Alone,
Crumpled,
Twisted,
And detained
Soaking in
The red and blue and purple.
Discoloring.

You come back when you want to.
And I let you pick me up and
Untie me,
Try to clean me.

I think I'm free,
But
I'm purple,
Blue,
And red.

Tie dyed.