They tell you to write what you know.
But what if what you know keeps changing?
What if some days you wake up wanting to live,
Because your favorite people still need you as a placeholder for their favorite people?
And other days you question the point because we’re all going to die anyway,
But I have an exam tonight.

So I open the cabinet,
Gently lift my genius, my only glass trophy, and dust it off,
Coaxing it back into the light,
Pointedly ignoring the cracked Kindle blinking forlornly in the darkness, begging to be shown,
Begging to be loved by someone,
Anyone.

And still, I write.
And still, I breathe.
And still, I prepare
For a poetry competition.

I know love,
Not the kind that fits in movies,
But the kind that looks in the mirror and tries to love what stares back.
Because no one, and I mean no one,
Loves another soul quite like I love mine.
Violently, unevenly, reluctantly.

Though they say self love is healing,
Mine feels more like surgery without anesthesia.
Mine feels like forcing myself to admit that my feelings matter too,
Except I can never talk myself into listening to me.

So some nights, I talk to sunset.
She’s the only one patient enough to listen.
I tell her about you,
Whoever you are, wherever you are,
The one I haven’t met yet but already miss.
She paints herself orange and pink like she’s blushing,
Like she knows your name and won’t tell me.
And I think maybe you’re looking at her too.
Maybe that’s my first conversation with you.
You, hope dressed up as a person.

Hope for who, I wonder?
Hope for me?
For the people I care about?
Maybe it’s hope for my family.

See, my family has a habit of letting brilliance go to waste.
We inherit genius like old furniture,
Too heavy to throw away, too broken to use.
This habit has burrowed deep into my DNA,
Emerging as an avalanche of words,
Tumbling from my mouth while carefully skirting the fragile bow tenuously tied around them.

And still, I write.
And still, I breathe.
And still, I prepare
For a poetry competition.
Because if the world won’t listen when I cry,
Maybe it’ll listen when I rhyme.

And on those nights,
When my thoughts come spilling out to rhyme on paper that I don’t have,
To people who are miles away,
To avoid drowning their creator,
The darkness doesn’t win,
It just hums quietly in the corner, waiting for its turn again.

Then there are days when my thoughts sound like sermons,
When they sound like screams,
When I’m convinced I’m the common denominator
In every broken friendship,
Every failed love,
Every silence that hangs too long.

And yet,
There’s beauty there in the absurdity,
Of the fact that I’m still laughing.
See, I joke about things I shouldn’t,
How my mother’s love comes in packets of antacid,
How kindness sometimes feels like nails on skin.
The kind of humor that hides a scar underneath the punchline.

I laugh.
I always laugh.
Humor keeps the ghosts polite.

But even in that laugh, I find something,
Not joy exactly, but a reminder that I can still feel.
Because the moment I stop laughing, things become too real.

Is it concerning that I’m “like this”?
I feel your thoughts intensely as you try to decipher,
What is “this”?

“This” being that I don’t like the thoughts that cross my mind sometimes,
Thoughts like
“What if the only thing tying me to life
Is knowing that to surrender would be too simple,
And fearing that no one would even notice?”

And yet I stand here,
Exhausted by not having the peculiar bravery required
To be an absolute nobody.

I’ve always wanted more than what was given,
My eyes once wide with curiosity and innocence,
Observing my mother as she poured love into everyone but herself,
A slow, quiet sacrifice,
The kind that empties a person gently until what remains
Is everything she saved for me.

But the quantity of love given isn’t always the quantity of love recognized.
I didn’t feel the magnitude of her love until she left me an antacid.
And somehow, that was enough.
Love doesn’t always nourish.
Sometimes it just neutralizes the burn.
And still, I write.
And still, I breathe.
And still, I prepare
For a poetry competition.

I think of funerals too,
Of crying for someone else because crying for myself is too dangerous,
Because then I might have to admit I buried my backbone,
The one I removed so I could fit into spaces never meant for me.

And yet, here I am, still standing,
Surviving despite what was buried.
I am shaking, though laughing,
And still writing,
Consistently showing up.

Because hope is a habit now,
A quiet, reluctant ritual,
The kind of seance that keeps me grounded in the eye of my own storm,
The kind that settles into the hush after thunder,
That trembling moment when you cannot tell
If the world is ending or beginning.

And maybe that’s what this poem is.
Not an ending.
Not a beginning.
Just the middle
Of me learning to love my own noise.

A girl with too many words and not enough time,
Whose love is both wound and weapon,
Who talks to sunsets, bruises easily,
And writes poems like survival spells.

So whether I crawl, stumble, or strut onto this stage,
When I say my first line,
Know this is me,
Weaving rhythm and rhyme,
Hoping my spell is strong enough to keep me grounded.

But really,
This is me,
Not stopping at merely surviving,
But stepping into my blossoming,
Flourishing as the best version of me,
Whoever that may be.

So I will continue to write, keep breathing,
Always preparing
For the next poetry competition.