These Are My Words.

Who are you?
         
             Because I don't know who you are, all that I know is who I am. And even so I'm still learning about that too. Because I don't know what three words best describe me (all I know is that "happy", "artistic" and "outgoing" are far too superficial to be me). Skin deep I am a girl with too many stitches to count and scars to match, a boney mass of tibias and femurs and clavicles, ribs that are always a bit too visible for my own good, all held together by a glue of tissues mixed with lilacs and trillium blooms. A lace of green-blue veins hides among my organs and flesh, delicately supplying life with its cherry dyed ink. I have these tangles of nerves that always react in the wrong way no matter what I tell them (even my cells are stubborn, I just know it). And maybe I've lost myself in the process of getting older.
         
         Because I've always known what I wanted to become (my answer now is the same as it ever was when I was three), and yet I am still clueless as to who I am right now in this very moment. So tell me every truth you know, because I need to know something other than the fairytales we were always told to believe in when we were so so so naive. And I feel like my lungs will never be large enough for my words. Because I'm the girl who is dented and scratched and breathless. I am the girl who never stops running from the ugly restless things that lurk just below the surface.

I'm the girl who stands outside in the rain, just to make sure its real. I want to know if the sky's tears are more than just H2O and gravity. I want to know if they are shed for a reason other than to supply the greedy creatures of the earth with something vital. I want to feel something beautiful, to trace beauty's edges with my fingertips (I hope that beauty does more good than harm, but I just don't know anymore). I want to wish with more than just birthday candles and stars, because in reality stars are just gaseous fireballs and birthday candles are just wax and string.

And I'm scared because I'm losing faith in forevers, and growing out of snow day miracles. I just might be too stubborn, too vain and, far too proud to be simple. Yet far too small to be this complicated.
And I have a sneaking suspicion that I might never change. Because I was the girl who practiced being pretty in the mirror, and never will again. And I'm telling myself not to believe in fairytales-that happily ever after will never happen.

And I wish I could say that I am tragically beautiful, that I have lovely hands and my eyes are some shockingly bright color- that I am stunning. But I'm not, I won't lie to you. I won't fool myself. I know that I won't stand out in a crowd. My brown hair and olive skin will fade into the mass of dominant alleles that make up my traits. My eyes became plain, and blank, as I lost myself while moving through the paces of living this life.

         And I'm trying to become something, someone to be proud of, while by myself I try to stitch wounds caused by words back together again and again and again. While all I can do is remember what my mother would tell me when I was too small to see over countertops, and too young to know right from wrong, she would say that; 'If you don't have any scars, you haven't truly lived, that scars show where we've been, and who we are.' her voice was soft as she spoke, almost as if the truth her words held would dissolve, even shatter if spoken too loudly. And underneath the underneath I could see the fractures hidden in her smiles, the hurt life had burned into bones of twisted silver. And I know my scars like I know the asphyxiated rhythm of my own breathing. But no matter what I do, I can't keep them from showing (no matter how much I may long for them to stay far, far, far away from me).  They expose me until I am left being forced to face who I am. They are my battle wounds, every single one. I can feel every imperfection on my skin (and it feels like my body is trying to reject my very own bones). Raised and smooth they broadcast my story, invisible wires arching from the small pockmarks on my knees, across my knuckles circle-scars, tracing burns, and finally falling to a rest on my forever scars-the scars that hurt, the permanent reminders of the morphine that left me dazed and delusional and still hurting days later, while they said that I was healing.

           But it wasn't until now that I realized what they made me, they did not turn me into a fighter (I did that on my own), they did not render me fragile, and no, they did not make me lovely. They made me human. They keep me human.

            And right now, I'm telling you who I am. These are my words, my thoughts, my emotions, my glue these things are fused to my cartilage and it holds me together better than anything else ever has. I am being held together by these consonants, and vowels, and commas and I don't remember a time when I wasn't.

              You see, this is my now. And someday I just might wish on something other than stars and birthday candles. Because I want to see more than this. And maybe someday I'll discover something beautiful in the truth.

So, tell me, who are you?