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.

Do you ever miss me
I wonder strung out on
whatever it is I've done;
Do you see me in crowds,
in the moshpits at shows
only for her to turn around
and let you down
just a little bit.

We know just how this song goes;
It's been playing on loop since 2008
But we're ******* sick to
our stomachs of singing along
We strive for insanity just to
forget the lyrics & get lost on the chords

We know just how this looks to them;
A bunch of ******* misfits
throwing punches in moshpits
But they don't see the salt
water we are drowning in when the shows over

Oh ****, here we are
smoking in your sunroom again
And if one of us hasn't started crying yet,
we'll say we're makin progress
Haaaaaa
we all look a little cleaner
after a couple handles of ***
You look flawless through
the smoke that's blowing over your face

When my head is spinning
& the walls are melting down all over you,
I can finally see that this is not
what we were made to be
But it's too late, we're too lost
And we know that we can't
find our place with liters
of liquor flooding through our veins
So we sit naked in circles and
talk about how comfortable
we all are together
But I know that none
of us feel safe in our skin
And I know we're all just dying
to shed this layer & see
what's beneath it
We're hoping to find a reason to scream
Because we're so **** willing to lose our voices
But we've just ran out of things to say

i’m sorry. i know i’m four days late but quit talking to me in that annoyed tone. hear me out, i got caught up with deadlines. i drove here as soon as i got them over with.

no just kidding, i can take your annoyance because i showed up late like always over your cold silence. perpetually cold. can’t  ghosts talk? or haven’t you at least learned how to drop objects, knock on walls or change the channels on tv? sometimes when the lights in the dorm’s foyer flicker i quickly think it’s your new way of saying “sup”. then i’d remember the building’s decades old. it could just be some unfixable maintenance problem or perhaps some other ghost.

i hate you for that. we used to talk about how we felt like never truly belonged in highschool. we promised to go to the same college and be dormmates and be there as we got used to our new lives. my roommate finally showed up a week ago, a month too late for freshmen week and all that orientation ****. she’s cool and plays bass in a band. i think you’d get along with her the way she’s a morning person and takes up archaeology like how you said you would.

i can no longer listen to movement’s daylily. paramore’s last hope. all time low’s therapy. pierce the veil’s hold on til may. because i just end up thinking of how i’d make you listen to them whenever you’d call because the urge was getting strong again.

all those times we talked about dying and death and planning our funerals. ****** we were so horridly morbid. i didn’t think you’d actually pull through with it-out of the two of us, you were the one wary of things unfound in your comfort zone and i was the one who took risks. but hell, now i admit my fears surrounded death or atleast intentional ones. i wish i didn’t doubt a single bit that you’d do it.

yours was almost perfect by the way. you wore that white lace dress from your favorite grandmother and the mortician gave you purple highlights. they didn’t put your playlist on because hell, no one could take the upbeatness of the guitar rifts and the drums but the five of us let it go on loop thrice after your burial, drinking on the hood of my car, toasting to our tears. the groupchat doesn’t get flooded with memes anymore. believe me, we tried so hard to have things not change because that’s what you would’ve wanted, for us to keep going even without you.
but **** that, it’s ******* to even pretend;
how do we get past this, past you?

you pierced a permanent gap in what the word platonic soulmate meant for me. i hate you. so, so much.
but i don’t. because ****, you’ve finally chosen yourself like how i always told you to after each breakup you went through with all those ****** guys but i didn’t mean it like that. i can only hope you’re happy in your heaven. we detested that but i would like to believe there’s an afterlife for you. that’s what you deserved all along. i hope it’s one with moshpits and parents who give you earnest attention and neverending halloween.

here. i brought you paper roses. i used blue vellum for this. mind to give me an a+ for effort?

i have to drive back, it’s getting dark. and yes i’ll drive safely and text you when i reach the dorm. i’ll have a spare key behind the picture frame, if you ever wanna drop by.