I’ll never again

waste my love on one who doesn’t want me.

I’ll shine my light

and if someone shines it back like a mirror

we’ll embrace in our shared spirit

and walk like lions to the beat of our hearts.

I’ll never again

look for love in dark alleys and basements,

settle for the ghosts I find

and stay stuck in prisons,

chained starving to walls

because I long for freedom,

open plains and expansive oceans,

the shining light of the sun’s rays

spreading the love that lives within us all.

If I ever wander into a dead end

I’ll never again spend too much time there.

I’ll turn and leave

towards the highway to the unknown future,

lined with evergreens,

mountains rising in the distance like mammoth shadows,

a whole world opening before my eyes

with the colors of the rainbow and flowers

and the pinks, yellows, and oranges of a distant sunset.

(Kinda chaotic rant. Mostly unedited. Read with caution.)

I realized adults didn't give a damn about childrens.

Okay hear me out first.

Adults set the rules, they set their pace, which were strictly followed, generations after generation. An obsession, that's what it is. To set everything in path, never get astray from what was given to you, to a youth within this destructive, chaotically world where adults tried keeping it intact (at least they tried).

We keep chasing like adults do.

Adults were always running ahead, running to where a path, tattered and common, which always leads to desolation.

I said hear me out!

Growing up, surrounded by tall adults which I always looked up with my neck aching, just to see their silhouette faces.

Their back faced against me,

walking,

jogging,

running ahead never stopping for a second to breathe.

And my puny little legs, keeping up, trying to run, trying to overtake, trying to surpass what was ahead.

And then I tripped.

More than my 18 years of running ahead, I tripped.

I damn tripped, scrapped my knee, my heart, my soul, my every being. The wounds started scrapping what was left to me, what was unwounded. The bleeding couldn't stop, and I was left hollow. (Please make this stop, make it stop)

I tripped and no one saw.

Cause no one gives a damn when your slow in life. When you couldn't keep up to what was everyone doing.

The suffocation, the eerie silence of scattered footsteps. I thought of thinking about getting up and start walking again but I didn't, I couldn't. Tell me, what was it that I had been trying to achieve?

What was worth it?

What was the worth of this neverending chase— of this neverending ending insanity?

Stop looking ahead. What have you all been chasing so hungrily, so obsessively for?

I just sat there, quietly watching ahead. Quietly looking at those blurry silhouettes scurrying, hurrying to where everyone else's at.

And I stopped. My time stopped, my path suddenly disappeared, it dissolved into dust, into nothingness, into a void swallowing everything else. I couldn't see what was ahead anymore. Nothing is worth the effort for.

Hear me out...

What was it?

Why did I thought about running like the adults?

I stopped. I damn stopped my track.

What do I do?

What do I have to do now?

I'm lost. I gave up. I didn't gave myself a chance. I didn't properly gave myself a damn chance. I couldn't see myself anymore.

Someone...

Anyone...

What to do... ?

What do I do?

Hey, hear me out!

Four months ago,

my spine shivered.

It was cold.

Barely 2.5cm of snow, but 47 degrees

on a "sunny" day.

I felt the cold,

when the sun was at its zenith.

Today it is warm.

Spf gleaming like sunrise.

Dripping sweat -

perspiring in my black t-shirt.

7:00pm felt like noon.

The ritual doesn't end.

The sun encompassing

every kid zooming

on electric bikes,

every couple

on a picnic,

every car booming

with rock music at a traffic stop

with their anticipation-

every tree, flower, sidewalk,

every destination.

The sun was everywhere

Mocking me.

Shining a light that never belonged to me.

Sucking all the joy out of me

like my sweaty black t- shirt.

I am dehydrated.

Long hours of heat

a summer solstice

suffocating me on my walk home.

Theres a shadow looming over me in the summer.

I only feel winter.

envious of the sun...

envious of a life that's not mine

of a love that's not mine.

He's there in my mind

Blinding me .

I dont feel happiness

or joy

or anticipation ...

I feel 80 degrees in June.

When it seems everyone wants something from me

like vultures picking the scraps off the corpse of a turtle,

I shrink back into my shell, my impenetrable armor,

and they kick and pick, kick and pick.

I rattle my guns a little; that usually scares them off,

but every once in a while there’s that persistent one,

that one who thinks whatever I have is just too good to leave alone for whatever reason,

so I explode out of my shell like a million pounds of dynamite,

tearing a hole through the side of a mountain,

guns blazing and muscles flashing with magmatic anger.

I hate myself for days after that;

I never like being reminded of the monster that lives within us all,

waiting to spring out, that last defense mechanism

when the shell and the armor just aren’t quite enough.

I was on the floor crying so hard my hands shook, curled inward trying to dig out the unexplainable pain coming from somewhere within.

This was a scene that happened much more often then, then it does now.

After the trauma and the rage/grief that occurred because of it, I was a woman on fire, but not set alight by anything good- this was a fire that would destroy me and the sad thing was, I wanted it to destroy me.

The kindest thing done for me was actually a succession of little acts of kindness during this 3 year period of me hell bent on destroying myself.

It was that they didn’t give up on me, even when I had given up on myself. That they still believed and loved me just because I was me.

And that was enough for them.

It was the greatest gift I was ever given and continue to receive to this day.

I’m writingthis with tears in my eyes. It’ll have been 4 years since my suicide attempt, it wasn’t easy afterward, after the trauma that is, but I can say quite truthfully that I’ve begun to not just survive, but thrive.

It happened because I had people believing in me until finally, one day, from what seemed like out of the blue, I began to belive in myself too.

What a gift.

What a beautiful life I can now appreciate and greet everyday, even when the skeletons in my closet rattle and wish to remind me of my failings. I hear them, I feel the sharp feelings but now… I release them and continue to live.

Dear God, I’m living.

I often wonder if you would recognize me now.

Behind my creased face and calloused heart,

would my name still rest on your tongue?

Your face has not changed.

Forever frozen in my mind, it concedes more each visit to your true nature.

Would you envelop me as my memories insist you did then,

a warm lull hung around my small shoulders?

Or would the truth if it bite through,

bones broken long ago sharp once again?

Screams and anger assuming their forgotten posts in my chest.

This vestigial love I keep for you occupies my still moments.

It breathes into me, invites me to reach back through time and be with you again.

And I do reach

I reach every time and still my affection goes unmatched.

It may be my love is misplaced.

But over that, it seems, I have no control.

shiplapped heart

trimmed in gold

painted red

to match the color

of doll lips

plugged and

prodded

attempted

restarted

loosely confined

to the hole

in my chest

paper mache heart

trimmed in gold

scraped and chipped

to match the color

of used china

play doh heart

trimmed in gold

polished in green

to match the color

of enchanted leaves

Through the upstairs window,

I see the fog spread out like poison,

the low light leaning on the grass and trees,

and the bamboo overtaking the neighbor’s yard;

I’ve been fighting mine for years,

but maybe they don’t know what to do.

I cry for help

but only the shadows come,

and I’m like a ghost wandering these halls in chains

in this crumbling house of death I can’t leave.

I reach out for other ghosts, other shadows,

and our arms just pass through one another.

So I stare out this rain-dripped window

trying to imagine what it might look like

when the sun finally peeks through the clouds.

At the end of the boardwalk I sit. A saline breeze stirs the drying leaves, whistling in Summer eaves. They kept her ashes. The water laps against the rotting wood, the same as every year. They took her and held her and now they keep her? She lies somewhere, ashen and light, finally away from them. This was her time, her final time to be reunited and then unfurled into an old world. I didn’t get to hug her, nor tell her that her truth was something worth leaving for. I didn’t get to tell her that I wanted her to stay. I’ve become a little girl again, selfish and tugging at soft maternal sleeves. From before, I remember some some song that said: “sadness is a long brown ribbon”. I know now, it is. It’s silken and smooth and I want to tie my throat with my mother’s brown ribbon. I want to gleam like saint in the new sun.