The hardest truth that I’ve ever had to accept is that I cannot be fixed, so I am broken. I do not feel broken, I can think and laugh and love like anyone else. I can try new things and be the better person. I do what I can to make everyone feel welcome and invited and even cared for, but there has not been a person I have met that can do the same for me.

How am I to be happy when I can fake a smile better than keep one? When can I feel the same joy that I give to others?

I’m broken and the feeling has never felt so unnerving.

When fun becomes a task, tasks become a routine, and that routine sucks the life out of you, you are broken. But there are varying degrees of being broken.

Some people you can tell are barely being held together by anything sustainable, those who constantly complain to a degree where their personality comes off as bitchy and unfriendly not because they are but because that’s all that they’ve become. Those people are broken, of course, on one of the deepest stages of the spectrum.

However, you can still function while being broken, because to be broken means that not all of your personality and abilities have to shut down but at least one does. One missing piece. To be broken is to be a puzzle so close to being completed with only one remaining piece that lingers out of sight. Some people are missing more of their pieces than others.

This concept can be hard to understand until lived through, but the pain that being broken inflicts is real and it is damaging. No matter how well off you are, it seems we are all looking for our last piece. We are all broken, some more lost than others. I am broken, yet my picture and my poise carry through a dashing array of joy.

I am not happy. Maybe none of us are truly happy and we as a people only get so close to what happiness really is.

To love, to hate, to enjoy and displease, to feel all those feelings about oneself; when the puzzle comes time to be completed, how many less pieces will there be this time?

i've always been able to feel every crack. every fracture in me has been all encompassing and at the forefront of my occupations. i couldn't see them. no one could see any proof that i had ever been shattered.

i made them visible. i drew the cracks on my body with blood. it numbed me and relieved me to know it was all real.

the cracks are still there though. they were permanent. i don't want them anymore. i don't want these reminders of how bad things can get. i'm sick of feeling like a vase waiting to topple.

but the lovely thing about breaking is that someone might scoop up the pieces. pick you up, bit by bit, and lay you down on a table. they'll start to glue parts together, figuring out the puzzle and understanding how this was first done. they'll hold you when they finish and admire how you can still hold flowers even when you had just been a pile of shards.

you'll learn to put yourself together. you'll always need help with a few pieces, but it gets easier. sometimes you can stop yourself falling. sometimes someone might catch you. it's okay to break.

i unclasped my head like a purse and tipped it out onto my lap. i sifted through all the dark things that i've grown weary of. i picked out the pretty, shiny things. i even found that after some rubbing, the dark rusty things could also be pretty and shiny.

i made a little pile next to me of the reasons that this year i'm excited for summer. i had to scrub quite hard at these ones, but when they sparkled, i was almost blinded.

i picked through all the films i'm going to be able to watch with my mum now that she's home.

i inspected stretching in the morning when i wake up and put it with the rest of my growing mountain.

i grabbed for two more and polished some rust off them.

i can walk around in the rain and i can scratch under my cat's chin.

it's easier to clean off the dirt and rust now. that's what i'm most grateful for.

cracked glass implodes/ shards

come undone to moon dust/ wings

cut, tempered against/ light

refracted, oh, to get tipsy/ drunk

on the full moon’s golden/ enamel

shed the density of glass pieces/ of

jars embedded in your seraph/ being,

the horizon undulating to the/ cadence

of your heartbeat, running parallel/ to

your body your wings your stardust/ flesh

all the while breathing for/ exoneration.

{{So, my brain preserved in a glass jar: /

I’m supposed to take it out/

& use it as the last shooting star/

I’m supposed to bake it in moon juice/

& inject the remnants of its magic/

in my palms, so you think that’s all/

my brain is good for.}}

I can loop etudes and crack an aria/

on the side of your head/

call it an egg, (yes I’m throwing it at you)/

I’m throwing it at you to sing to you/

that I’m not the only one going to hell.

Fires can burn the soles of my feet/

they’ve already hardened their fabric/

to withstand far worse:/

decayed school bathrooms preserved/

on my shoe, I don’t know why you still/

keep it there when it’s just about dead/

the wall paper crumbling, moaning of death/

there was another reason I threw at you a song:/

because you don’t have any music at all/

in the blood of your being.

the clock is ticking

and before i know it

i will have labeled this

another dream to forget, before i

know it i will have walked away

from my rainy mornings

and pressed the loose-leaf

paper into some random poetry book

to be lost forever in the

depths of my mind

to be lost forever in the abyss that is time.

(the abyss, the abyss, sucking my soul

into endless chasms, the soul i give in the hopes

that it’ll come back, transformed into something

better).

I.) stardust collects on the corner of my windowsills,

spelling bittersweet in the sunken patches on

my heart. it doesn’t seem all that

long ago when we hadn’t disintegrated our starry eyes

into something different. Don’t you think?

or have i made yet another mistake, a blank

chapter in my memory. Yes, i have. yes, darling, i have.

II.) years, and years, and years.

i think i should say “once upon a time”

but it never felt like a fairy tale. even now,

looking back,

i never felt like a Cinderella. i may have been a

Rapunzel, though: it’s been too long; i don’t remember.

back to the point: if i unfold the pockets in my heart

there are tender places i haven’t visited in a long time,

but darling, trust me, they exist. i tucked poloroids of us

in them, of our starry beings,

wild, untamed.

i reached into those folds on a rainy night,

to see what was left of us. my fingers came up to reveal mold

and blood.

III.) yes, darling, that’s the only thing left of us.

we are but decayed flowers taped to my door.

IV.) we decomposed ourselves, once, years ago, I

didn’t think we’d go back there yet again. but we were

born again, were we not?

We Will be Born Again.

We Will be.

(Drift-er // a person who is continually moving from place to place, without any fixed home.)

She's tired. Tired of being strong. Tired of faking a smile. Tired of being "okay." At the end of every day, she dreams of a new place, a new life, and unpredictably predictable takes off in search of it. Everyone knows her, yet no one knows her; it's what to expect when you have the highest following and all the money in the world. Everyone thinks it's her "next adventure," but in reality, she's just a drifter with no true home. In her mind, if you don't let yourself get too close to someone, it won't hurt as bad when they leave you.

Yes, she's a drifter, but it's only the moment she lies her head on her pillow where she feels the safest not to be okay. She cries until she feels no more. Staying up half the night, she thinks of the impossible and dreams of what could have been... what would never happen in her lonely life. She could paint with all the tears that had come out of each eye. Drop by drop, little by little; the tears keep coming. She tells herself, "Turn it off," turn off the emotions, the feeling, the pain... to only drift away.

She drifts away into a beautiful world; dream after dream plays in her head. That's where she loves to spend her time, in those dreams. It's where she escapes, where there seem to be no worries or problems or heartache. The dreams are almost tangible to her, like she's a part of them. Like she can reach out and feel... well, anything really. She feels the grass under her feet. She feels rain and the happiness of laughter from dancing in it. She feels her late father wrap his arms around her into a loving squeeze. She feels home.

Then a loud noise interrupts the dream. It's a dreadful sound that gently brings her back to the real world. It's morning. The sun is shining through her window. She can feel the warmth of the curtain-stained beam landing on her bare shoulder. She can hear the wind sway the trees as the fall season approaches. She rolls to her back and opens her eyes to see her white ceiling. She tells herself, "You're going to be okay. It'll be a good day."

I've been called vanilla, uninteresting, boring. But I have superpowers. These involve red wine, and texting late at night. I can see my demons in the dark. They say hello, promise to make tomorrow a better place, a gift I can't accept. I read a girl's profile once, she said, if you don't take care of your body, where will you live? I take another sip of wine, I've lost track of how many thousands have entered this body of mine.

There's a Wikipedia page, probably a joke, but isn't life. It has a layout like, "Birth" "Depression" "Disappointment" "Death". I think of myself in these terms. I read about Banksy, his propensity to be unique. Do I have these qualities? He doesn't even turn red under spell check. I think, if I made it big, I could have my name be real, like Microsoft puts chips in your vaccine and makes you a government clone.

Three things. The things that make me unique, different, an individual. One time at night I begged to be dead. I tried to name five things I wanted to live for, and named only three. Maybe these are the three things that make me unique. But they were all people. Do the constellations of personalities we surround ourselves with make our destiny? I lived, and I live for them. They are unique individuals. But do they make me, as a person, unique and interesting?

How many people have held the suicide hotline in their hands, on their nifty little iPhones, and cried because it costs too much money to go the ER? Does it take a hero or a villain to be that sick? Does it make me unique to have survived? Or am I one of thousands, millions, who have sat on the freeway and contemplated ending everything?

I think not. I think my personality is bland, white bread that has gone stale and no one cares enough to throw it away. Pity! That is my forte. There's one. I need two more.

The written word. I curse myself with my openness in my writing. It is too personal, too much. I bleed and I cut myself on the truth. But what is writing without bloodshed? I bleed. That is number two.

Number three is the combination of a white bread personality and blood. It is vanity. The assumption that once the perfect storm of written words hits, I am famous, someone's daily train of thought. I exist somewhere else. There is no such thing as white bread that bleeds. But I maintain my writing style, savvy only to those who need me.