I want to experience it with my own senses, my own

Readily astonished mind.

The ending of the Universes,

The beginning of them;

The creation of stars, the pull of Nothingness,

Resourceful civilizations, reckless wars.

To witness Life in a place so far from reach,

So differently entangled in the same laws of our Universe

That their appearance, their necessities,

Their breath, their brilliant thought, their environments

Are unlike any we picture from this sheltered, lonely world.

A true vision of Afterlife, Afterdeath, the Void;

The Creator, the Destroyer, or neither. Nothing.

The births of souls, of spirits, of Life,

And the mirror they look within

To See themselves.

Particles within particles

Within particles within particles.

Systems within systems,

Cycles, sciences.

What do we have wrong about our Existence?

What do we not know?

Everything, all at once, that ever has, is, and ever will

And Nothing, none at all, that ever hasn't, isn't, nor ever will.

It's actually hilarious

How often I end up here.

In this exact moment.

The moment when I realize

I'm the only one

The world doesn't spin for.

Where I look around

And see that I'm the only one

Who isn't moving.

Familiar figures,

Motion-blurred

Like long exposure photography

Dash past me with an impossible momentum,

Leaving a swift burst of wind that ruffles my hair

In their wake,

And all I can do is blink.

Once.

Just once.

I can only blink one singular time

Before they're miles away from me,

A small black dot in the distance,

With tiny shining white eyes

That do so much more than blink.

I don't want to just blink one singular time.

I want to sprint, as fast as I can,

Carrying my giant, hopeful white eyes with me,

And become a small black dot

Myself.

In this life,

I can forget.

I can hear the unfiltered, warm voices of humanity through the phone,

Feel the vibrations of their existence through my palm

And keep those voices next to me, late into the dark hours of the morning.

I can feel the heat of so many precious arms that wrap around me,

That gently carry me with them,

And I have no fear of being pulled from their grip and thrown into the cold.

I can taste the flavors I once ravenously hungered for,

And they linger on my tongue for so much longer now, giving me strength

Long past the next meal.

In this new world, I can be undone

In the way I intend.

Intentionally.

And yet now I sit here on the floor

Of that life

While I unpack my bags

After having been in the sky for two hours,

With enough clothes for a week

Strewn across the carpet

I once bled on.

And yes.

It feels like home.

But home is where I was undone

Over and over again,

Painfully, chaotically.

In other words,

Not intentionally.

And still I put myself

Back into the hands of these strangers

On holidays,

Undoing myself intentionally

But not in the way I intend,

Because I have nowhere to go

If I don't.

It’s hard for me to tell

What color the plants should be right now.

All the grass keeps dying and waking up again,

Like the predictably invincible characters

In an anime that should've ended

Three seasons earlier.

It’s March,

And the trees, eternally half-blooming

With tiny bright caterpillars of warm green,

Are still caught in the prolonged stranglehold

Of the mistletoe that thrives in cold winds

And frosted bark.

In my eyes, It’s almost as if

The parasitic chandeliers could be hesitant;

Lingering around, uncertain,

Loitering and pacing

With invisible little plant legs,

Tortured by the annoyingly realistic possibility

That there might be

Just one more cold morning,

Just enough time

To squeeze one more drop of life

From the thin fingertips of another

Before it wanders off again

In the heat of the evening.

There exists within them

A quiet understanding of my world.

They see the concepts

That words don't exist for;

The ones that structure my existence.

They knew from the beginning

That it would take them

A very long time

To learn me.

And yet they still sit here

Connecting me;

Patiently reforming my complexities,

Weaving synapses

Between the things I already know.

Knitting me without a pattern

Because they know I don't have one,

Nor do I have the desire to predict

How they will change me.

They are tethered to me

Not with conversations and interlacing fingers

But despite them,

And instead leaning upon

The intricate language

Of mutual sentience.

As my world burned, I sat down on a soft patch of grass amidst its chaos. The citric scent of my steeping Earl Grey pierced through pungent fumes of ashen smoke that clung to everything it touched. The two odors blended together, invading my senses with a turbulent redolence as I turned to the next page of the book that was resting on my lap.

Stop.

Look around.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Open your eyes.

No, actually open your eyes.

…Ah, but that’s where you’re mistaken.

What you’re seeing right now

Is the back of your eyelids.

The burning intensity,

Overwhelmingly painful darkness

And infinite nothingness

Of the back of your eyelids.

…Oh, really? Are you sure?

Because if your eyes were already open,

I would think that by now

You would’ve noticed

The soft clover underneath you

Splashed with violets;

The arm around your shoulder

Warming your shaking body as you cry.

You would have seen the sun

Rising through your window this morning

As you struggled to revive your tired mind,

And you’d have watched fiery light bounce off the sleek fur

Of your loyal fluff-armored protector guarding your pillow,

Ever-dozing, but always with one eye open.

You would have caught a glimpse

Of the prisms of color

That danced between the sparkling droplets

Last night when it rained.

You’d have been entranced

By the rippling reflections they left on the concrete

That mirrored the sky, swirling with the stars of van Gogh.

Open your eyes, little one.

Witness the beauty of the little moments

That dot every second of your existence.

So. Whenever you’re ready…

I am from (wands of unimaginable power) unsharpened pencils,

from Beanie Boos and Island of the Blue Dolphins.

I am from the broken alarm clock and beige walls cool to the touch

in a room that wasn’t mine,

doors that locked from the outside,

and a silence I filled with hour-long ballads about anything and everything.

I am from the trees I would lie under as after-school traffic died down,

letting the branches protect me as I grew familiar with love and fear

from my usual spot in their dancing shade, settled next to friends on the sidewalk.

I’m from “Band! Ten-hut!” group dismissals

and the exhausted, victorious atmosphere

after every run of the show at every marching contest.

From Tobias Soriano and Alexis Palacio.

I’m from the blunt, nerdy humor of Parker Boyd

and the hours of deep conversation and beautiful,

well-spoken honesty of Lauren Cram.

From “you can’t be trusted” and “you’re the most real person I’ve ever met.”

I’m from delivering Lemonades and finding a community;

from Panama City Beach, where God showed me

that there’s always enough hope to keep existing.

I’m from Level of Concern by twenty øne piløts,

expired Earl Grey,

leaning against trees whose roots grew over the empty sidewalk and writing a song about it.

From the rocky creek I jumped into with Parker,

where I simultaneously got my first kiss

and a cool scar on the bottom of my right foot.

The stickers on someone’s guitar whose sound I thrive on after school,

the voices and laughter of people I’ve just met but couldn’t bear to lose.

Scattered throughout my room, tucked away in desk drawers and on bookshelves,

are folded letters and useless objects

I somehow manage to keep finding places for.

I am from the pink scars and salty tears

of everything I have ever experienced,

unhindered and separate from the realm of blood and descent.

You ask how I plan to change the world.

I don't.

The world does not need

Any more changing.

Far from it.

Look at our surroundings.

Our trees filter sunlight

Through millions of green pages,

Like books that ache to tell a story

Through shadows dancing on the forest floor.

Our skies sigh softly

In cool billows of crisp wind,

Carrying dots of rain

To land on unsuspecting eyelashes,

Leaving morning dew

To be blinked away from wandering eyes.

Our artists beckon us with graphite lines

And textured mountains of color

And pages and pages of original combinations

Of ancient words and immortal sounds;

Redefining culture

By redefining the light spectrum and the world's acoustics,

Altering how our senses absorb the universe.

I am one of those artists.

I do not change the world;

I change our perception of it.

I am an artist;

But I am not your artist.

This is a planet;

But it is not our planet.

Earth is an artist alongside me.

She is a creator of new ideas,

A writer of songs,

A painter of landscapes,

An innovator of intelligence.

She has a portfolio of towering sculptures

And intricately carved woodwork,

And music that took eons to compose.

She is not ours.

No, I will not change the world,

For I am an artist.

I do not vandalize or take credit for

The work of other artists.

I will bring a shift

Into the minds of those who do.

(TW: Sensory overload, parental conflict)

I'm already shaking

At three in the afternoon.

The voices and lights

That fight for my attention

Are starting to get to me,

Because Concerta can only fend off

So much

Before the dam breaks

And it all comes rushing back

In mammoth waves,

The churning white froth

Of the rebound

Stampeding rapidly closer

As I attempt to brace myself

For the hit.

Getting talked at by a teacher

Or a friend

and then tossed around in the hallway,

And then remembering

That eventually

I'm going to have to go home

And get yelled at by a parent

Or two

And get tossed around at the dinner table,

All while trying to hold off a tsunami,

Is not as fun as it sounds.

I have so much shit to do,

I think to myself.

Please stop talking.

Please stop giving me

More to think about

Than I can handle.

Please give me silence,

And give me time,

Because silence and time

Are precious resources

That I never have enough of.

You are the only person

I don't have to speak to.

The only person

Who will just sit there

And play guitar

And be my anchor

Without even trying.

I don't know

If you know

That you're doing

Exactly what I need you to,

And I know

That you don't know

Anything about me

Except what I choose

To tell you.

So this is me telling you

Even though you'll never hear it.

And I'm going to keep it that way

Because I know you need

More silence and time

Than I do.