you know, I have to live this life. I have to live it. I have to. I have to live it so much and so intensely that it breaks my heart. I have this ache in my heart, and it sits there, every moment, getting deeper, bigger, darker. I need to live this life the way that my heartbeat feels in my chest, echoing into every hollow end of me. I want a story to tell, I want the wind to tell me 'you are alive' every time it kisses my face.

I am alive.

I am alive.

I am alive.

This moment to the next. I think, even if I hold my sadness in my eyes, and the knives in my chest, I also hold happiness in my soul and healing scars on my back. I am made up of losses, but I am also made up of victories. The scars on my skin and the hurt in my eyes are moments that prove that I am living. They are the stories I can not bear to write and the things I can not cry about. My live was meant to be lived, and that it is, unconditionally and unforgivingly. Here's to my mistakes, the moments of intense pain, where the world seems to rip open. Here's to my head, heavy in doubt but carrying the wonder in my eyes. Here's to the many lives I've lived, the way they flow in and out of each other, and with every breath, only to say, you are alive.

you know, I've played the graceful warrior,

time and time again.

only to be reduced to fallen ashes,

and the whispers of my pen.

but as the clock slowly ticks away,

and I feel it fast within my heart,

we're playing on the chessboard of life,

but I long to have a different part.

maybe this time, I'll get to be the one,

and things will finally work out.

I won't be fighting until my hands turn blue,

and my heart won't feel like a drought.

Today, I put my mask on, but tonight-

tonight, as the sun rapidly falls,

I'll watch as my eyes slip into longing,

listening to my heart's lonely calls.

I wonder how it must feel,

to be just the princess in the castle.

because even when I am her,

I can never leave behind the hassle.

can I find a piece of this complex world?

that'll fit into my painted curves.

to remind me that I belonged once before.

bleeding electricity into my nerves.

will I ever get the sand out of my lungs?

before the time runs out.

or should I break the glass, to feel the air,

is that what life is about?

I guess I don't want to have to break the glass,

I wish the sand wasn't there at all,

for the obstacles, they keep coming,

but I won't read the writing on the wall.

So I see my eyes, the way they painfully slip,

and I falter, dolefully, on my exhale.

Is it too much? I softly whisper,

To only myself: "I wish I had the fairytale”

the city, it sparkles from decadent dreams

built by the dreamers, tearing at the seams.

and if we’re all falling,

I missed it all, darling.

I had my eyes shut from the start.

sometimes i hear it calling,

the whispers, so enthralling.

it feels like I’ve been shot through the heart.

i suppose in some ways, we match,

my heart’s a concrete jungle too,

and when we step onto the sidewalk

the rain paints us both blue.

but the other day, from a massive crack

a white rose emerged,

waving in the wind, a quiet surrender,

like a yellow wood diverged.

my god, it came from a shadow, and it lit up like the sun.

Promising a warmer world, for the night was almost done.

So maybe thats how we heal,

chasing the pain until it feels real.

a harrowing feeling of being grown up.

trapped by the thoughts that I feel,

growing roses from the deal

of the very thorns that tore us up.

So how about we pretend we’re not so cold,

and widen the endless cracks?

so that someday, the roses may grow,

from the deepest scars in our backs.

and maybe then we won’t feel so empty,

or hollow in our most vivid dreams.

may the roses block the dizzying city lights

to show everything is not as it seems.

I wore your crown, didnt I?

the thorns embedded in my head.

and I smiled like a homecoming queen,

as my tears painted me red.

I became some fantasized dream,

of what it meant to be alive.

but the narrative written in ink,

it was all a treacherous lie.

heavy is the head,

that wears the crown.

yet worn are my shoulders,

from the fears that hold me down.

why didn’t you tell me?

that the world would cut me up.

before I sat in my satin dress

crying and torn by the world I made up.

What would happen, to my little world

if I traded my crown for a flower?

and I petaled the dress away,

upon the stroke of the midnight hour.

Maybe I’m not always golden,

or radiating light from within.

perhaps I’m a mirrorball,

reflecting the world as i spin.

for all my shades of red,

and my raging hues of blue,

the times I let my heart turn purple,

just to fit the colors of you.

i hope you see me in echos of rose,

and doused in pastel green.

and in my chocolate beaten eyes,

i hope you understand the world I’ve seen.

I was set upon your precipice,

always destined to fall,

maybe you never knew, but

I never wanted the crown at all.

so what happens if I take it off?

can I be a queen with out my crown?

I wonder, will I still be me

if I release it in the water and let it drown?

there have been guys before you,

who’ve danced sweelty in my head.

The ones who never understood me,

And never noticed how I bled.

I held the pieces of their hearts

yet they were never able to hold my soul.

and I fixed their open wounds

but they never made me whole.

you see, the guys before you,

I loved them, intensly, like a child.

and just like I did with you,

I fell in love with the way they smiled.

The thing is, I thought I loved them

as if I had never known love before.

but in hindsight, I wonder if i ever did.

or if they were just so easy to fall for.

With you, I suppose it feels so different.

as if loving you is like breathing.

If I never had faith in the universe before

then seeing you was like believing.

Yet once upon a time,

I was wrong about them too.

but I hope there will never come a time,

when I realize I didn’t love you.

take a breath. let it consume you -

as we fall beneath raging waters,

just let go. fight to keep feeling

against the ocean and it's slaughters.

let me paint you a different picture,

as you poetically, daringly float down,

open your eyes, colliding sea blues,

let's take a walk through an ocean town.

you said you'd follow me to the end,

to the great depths of fallen stars.

as they come crashing into the sea

and leaving marks of withering scars.

if I told you the breath of the sun,

will reach you wherever you go.

can you stop clutching at the waves,

and finally melt into the flow?

when you tirelessly become a part

of the very thing you fought against,

I'll guide you as you close your eyes

all you remember, is how the waves tensed.

fall for me and I will fall for you,

as the depth turns your skin green,

emeralds shining in dark blue waters

maybe somehow, we were washed clean.

I might never fully understand,

maybe we only speak in tongues

but when you're finally out of breathe,

I will give you my lungs.

People are not pretty,

They are frighteningly maddening.

They feel with the intensity of the sun.

Even at the surface,

Riddled with thin paper cuts-

That look shallow from afar,

But go deeper than you will ever imagine.

Hear them scream in the middle of the night

Silent but so loud in their pain.

The things we once romanticized,

those dark eyes and shy smiles

were once tortured cries on painful trials.

Can you see who they once were?

The parts of themselves they had to kill,

To allow the other parts to survive.

Go past the makeup, the shield,

the mask made from the blood we shed.

Go past it and you will see,

People are not pretty,

They are intensely real.

When I was 5, it was the glitter gel pens. When I was 10, it was the felt tip pens.

When I was 13, it was the scented pens. Now, it's a single, brand name, black pen. You see, that pen bleeds as I do. The ink flows with a frightening urgency, letting out the pressure, that built up from years of being unused. She's just as much of a chameleon as I am, with ink made of blood, tears, and the gilded strings of my imagination.

I drew a picture of my mom at work with that pen. It now hangs in her cubicle, as if it was an achievement itself. We signed the adoption papers of my dog with that pen, adding a soul to our family. I wrote a love letter with that pen, to the person I thought was my soulmate. And once, I broke down and wrote a goodbye letter to the world with that pen.

Then 4 years later, I committed to a university, signed my 2nd degree black belt certification, wrote a log of my first solo travel, became a 3x world champion, and graduated high school with 2 degrees, with that pen.

It wrote a few chapters of my life, a prelude for everything about to come. That pen lived and breathed as I did. And when it finally emptied, drained of the ink that ave it sustenance, I was faced with a difficult choice. I could lay it to rest, smiling at the irony that I couldn't write its elegy which is the very thing it was made to do: write. Or, I could refill it, I could give it a new life.

So tell me, what would you do? in the never ending battle of life, death and the urgency of self-expression, what would you do? Because the tears and ink dry, the blood and pigment fades, but our souls and imagination never do, they are always in need of a release. If the past is on one side and the future is on the other, what would you do?

tell me the stars chose me,

let me feel the touch of the universe in my soul.

The way it holds me gently,

roaring with it’s silence.

leaving me the deafing screams of dead stars,

a graveyard of dust and dreams.

I remember the light, crushing my throat,

creating holes in my flesh.

and I implode from within.

a black hole left from the ashes of the stars in my eyes.

I can be happy.

paper thin smiles and broken eyes

Showing you the world through the rips,

but you forget,

there is a masterpeice below.

come and watch the illusion,

the golden light that shines on me

rather than being in me.

The longer you see the light,

the darker the blue as you turn away.

And slowly the blood drips

from my cheeks, and

I turn as pale as paper,

Ripping from within.

only to turn blue again.

becoming everything I hid from being.

so can I be happy?

or will the faces finally show?

but how to be happy in unhappiness-

that seems to be the question