He Was A Fire, And I Was Just A Silly Girl Who Learned To Love The Way He Burned.

he was a fire, and i was just a silly girl who learned to love the way he burned.

there's something so raw and beautiful about humanity in love. i am a mosaic of people who have been in love, and it ends with me. i have my mother's eyes, my father's need for spontaneity, my grandmother's patience, my aunt's love of space, etc. and mixed and molded together it created me.

one of humanity's biggest continual theme is the fear of being forgotten. hands chip away at marble to create statues that beg to not be forgotten. brushes held by people, every stroke a constant prayer to be remembered at all. we forget as time goes on and nobody wants to forget. nobody wants to be forgotten. we want the world to remain in vivid colors in memory, remember their touch, his eyes, her breathy whispers, his dimples. i want to be remembered. as a poet and artist, sure, but more for simply being human. there is no criteria a person should have to meet for being memorable. i remember everyone for as long as i can. my mother died in May, but i still remember her laugh. i have her laugh.

when are the dead really gone? of course, when their heart stops and they aren't breathing. but, under the hopeful assumption that we have souls or spirits, why then does their presence linger? my mother's soul is stained on my hands and hangs in my hair like the smoke from her cigarettes. my father's soul is nestled in the deepest crevice of my heart, hidden away in my primitive urge to forget him. i won't forget him.

i wouldn't be a good mother. i am from a family of bad parents and even worse kids. as a girl with a tendency to bite affectionately, it's a shame my teeth are coated in poison. i am a mother figure already, to my three younger siblings. they are scared of me. i have breakdowns if nothing works. i can't stand infants. i have, on multiple occasions, hit my youngest sister for not cooperating. i come from a family of control. really, all i want is tenderness and domesticness. but instead every aspect of my life is a fight for control. i want to live without fighting for it.

humanity in love is stupid. it's beautiful. we create poetry, songs, plays, novels, movies, musicals, art, etc. to show our devotion. i hope i never fall out of love. i hope i never lose my humanity.

❦ we were born to be free ❦

This is a post dedicated to the non-romantic urge to hear a friend laugh. The urgent need to make someone you love deeply, a loved one or child, break into a grin. The desperate want to see your friend smile and giggle when they feel down. The non-romantic love of someone else’s joy. The platonic, the familial, the love that is neither and both and in between.

i think i am an okay person. i know i can't be a good person, but i don't think that means i am a terrible person.

grief has rotted away like an apple core in my soul. but that rot is full of seeds, and those seeds are slowly digging their roots down to anchor me in reality. their harvest will be plentiful. i am glad i met who i am after she died.

but the strange thing about her death is that everyone is acting like i died too. we shared the same last name, same eyes, same laugh, same humor, yes. but i am not her. i lost two people that night; my mother, and the girl i was.

after that night, an anger began to boil over inside me. i was claws and teeth, i was knives and blades, i wanted to make people hurt. all that tender hurt was hidden under layers and layers of pressing rage. i did not truly want to hurt people. i just wanted them to hurt me back. it was only when i had bruises blooming like a morbid garden on my arms and legs and was tearing out thorns from my hands after a tumble down a ravine did i realize that. the boy who hurt me didn't get so much as a scratch. i ended up scarred.

i don't want to hurt people. but there is a violence under my skin, a venom in my mouth, that aches to be put away. just because i have said cruel words doesn't make me a cruel person. i did not mean them. they came from a place of ache. i wanted to be yelled at for doing wrong, because without her, who would yell at me anymore? when you are not fed love on silver spoons, you learn to lick it off of knives. and when that love is coated in poison? you find a nostalgic comfort in the pain.

all this to say i don't think im a bad person. i think i am an average person who has been through bad things. i think i am an average person who has done some bad things out of a place of hurt. but i am certainly not a good person.

i have a habit of living in fear of what the dead will think of my life.