I’m afraid
that when it comes down to it,
you will hurt me.
And you will not care that you have.
Only that you walk away, intact

you are
something free,
a folded paper dove.

But your wings, they’re stained
with expectation.
Words not your own, written over you,
all up and down your feathers
where the wind should be.

They tell you what you are,
what you must remain.

How you are the same
as every bird
that has ever graced the sky,

and every drop of ink
is a lie

We can convince ourselves of
just about anything.
Assign purpose,
in a universe that otherwise offers none.

That’s a superpower in its own right,
isn’t it?

When you’re a kid, your fear of the monster under your bed isn’t about what the monster looks like, you’ve never seen it. It’s about what it could look like. What it feels like, breathing down the exposed skin of your neck in the night. If were you to peel back the sheets draped over that darkness to look it square in the face where it lives, you’d take away its power.

Your flaws, your secrets, your guilt. All those little bits of yourself that you keep locked up and hated inside you are a lot like that. The self destructiveness of our weaknesses lies in our inability to acknowledge and accept them. Get to know yourself. And the next time you’re laying in bed and sleep feels like such a distant thing, don’t be afraid to pull the sheets up from over your heart. Shine some light into the corners where your eyes don’t usually wander, and be forgiving of all you find there.

To me, the realization has always felt like being on an amazing roller coaster. You’re screaming with joy beside your friends on this brilliant ride, full and alive without a care in the world as you embrace this fantastic thing that’s happening.

And at some point, maybe there’s a sharp turn that jounces you harder than you expect, or a sudden dip that lands you hard in the seat, and it makes you look up. And in doing so you notice, maybe for the first time, that the track you’re on stops

Not an end to the ride where you get off, a real one. A broken kind of end that you don’t make it out of. Maybe you do a double take as your mind tries to make sense of what that means,

once, twice,
a third time

You stare at the twisted bit of track and the impossible void it empties into and no matter how many times you blink, it doesn’t disappear. And you’re soaring all the while on this ride that’s never braking and your thoughts are racing and your stomach is mixing because this isn’t a nightmare, it’s not a dream, you’re awake. You’re strapped into this car that you don’t even remember getting into and there’s no slowing it down. There is no getting off, you can’t

it only ends when you do.

Your gut tightens at this notion. A hard ball of a thing in the pit of you and a kind of cold leaks out of it in waves that lick over your skin. You turn to your friends next to you and point, frantic, at the ending bit of track. Don’t they see it too? They look over, their eyes small with sympathy. Everything is so loud but you manage to hear them say that you should still put your arms up. That it’s no reason not to enjoy the ride

There is not something inherently wrong with people. There is something inherently wrong with who people think they ought to be