tastless secrets

every morning she wakes up, shakes her head around, hoping that her thoughts are like dice, and she'll get a new roll everyday. she licks her lips, she sits up and hits her head, she smiles at herself. she laughs at the things that are hers, her things. her family, her wordless secrets, her happiness, her sadness, she owns these things and she doesn't let anyone else touch them. it's a troublesome thing, a lonely thing, to be so selfish one might suppose, but it is just as sad to share. she swallows her pills, she pushes away her confusion, she reads, she walks, she tries to pretend she doesn't feel the things that are always there. when she was little everyone always asked her not to grow up, joking about finding a doctor that could keep her little forever. they didn't know that this would make her so sad later. no one loves you when you're grown up.

she cringes at the sound of the ties breaking, the ties with the people that loved her when she was three. she cries as she feels the ties tugging at her skin, little pricks all over, because everyone is far, far away, and they say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but she was already too fond to begin with. she's on a hunt for new people to add pricks and pins to her skin, and someday everyone will pull so hard that she will break into a million tiny pieces and she will be able to be a million different things and she will be happy.

does everyone change as much as i do? she asks herself each day, because she music is the only tie to her feelings, it reminds her how she felt, and where, and when. there is never a why. why is the worst sort of a question. she is happy when she realizes that she still has a regular, overwhelmed with life sort of sadness in her. not everything is lost.

what if sadness is her happiness? what troubled life, what a paradigm.

you can not ask everyone to love you. you can not ask everyone to love you as much as you love them. you can not ask your mother to hold you when you are sad, and to sing you lullabies every night before you go to sleep. you can not ask your friends to love you forever. you can not ask your friends to love you the most. because we all have different priorities. and it's not a conscious thing, it is a heart thing, and our hearts are the freest thing that we have. you can not ask your cousins to love you the most, because you get older, and you get less cute, and you get less relatable and you don't change enough, but you change too much. you can not ask strangers to love you the most of all the passers by.

you should not ask it of them. you should not be disappointed. you should not ask for so much. you should be humble. you should be happy. you should be quiet. you should keep yourself in line. you should make an effort. you should not want your mother when you are 18 years old. you should not expect things to be easy. you should not hope that people will understand you. you should not lie. you should not be sad, when there are so many happy things.

yesterday, i tasted all the things i ever wished i was. i am none of those, she counted on her fingers. i am not kind. i do not have the perfect warm smile. i can not sing like an angel. i can not make music. i can not create the pictures. i am not self assured. i am not a free spirit. i am not, ever, the things that everyone wants me to be. i am not the things i want me to be. i am not clay. i am not perfect for everyone, at all times.

she ran out of fingers.

she ran out of toes.

she ran out of time.


(in need of some editing)