I wanted to be soft but I’m not. 

Instead, I’m everything 

blanketed in the feeling of nothing 

So full I might burst with a longing that has been growing in my chest since childhood 

Fluttering butterflies I’d tried to smash with stones that refused to die-

Until I realized they were there for a reason and now would be leaving this town with broken wings

I’d smiled and thought, well that makes two of us. 

I used to be soft but I’m not. 

I got tossed to the waves of the place I hate and taught myself to swim instead of drown 

I wrecked my own ships and burned down my own harbors that year 

I was soft in the beginning but I’m 

An intricate catastrophe you might kill yourself trying to understand. 

I try to be soft but I’m not.

My feelings are landslide-heavy from learning to shed a tormented youth 

so I can teach you a thing or two,

Though they all come with warnings 

I can’t tell you the stars don’t burn when you trip over them 

or that you won’t orbit around the wrong people for years before finding the trajectory that makes you want to wake up 

that putting yourself back together is easier than falling apart

or that nostalgia won’t drench the past in gold and longing for faux, imagined happiness you think you’ve left behind will not stain your fingertips like pomegranates every time you fall asleep to gentle hums or hear laughter under cloudless sunsets.

But I can teach you how to turn sawdust of the past into stardust of the present.

I can pretend to be soft but I’m not. 

My finest demonstration of anything will be how to grit your teeth 

and spit the blood 

and wear scars like jewelry because you’re proud  of where they got you

and how to sew the cuts after bleeding for everyone else until you’re dizzy with regret but something lethal inside you is screaming

 that your shaking hands and swollen breaths don’t compare 

to the tragedy challenging you to repair something a million times bigger than yourself. 

I try to be gentle but I’m not. 

I’m trembling from the core; there’s an Earthquake in my bones 

There’s a disaster brewing in every unformulated thought, an 

It always starts with an indigo ink blotch from wrapping myself in smeared words that eventually form a home. 

I can’t pretend to be soft when 

I’m the glass shards under the torn boots of my town 

with damaged lungs from the permanent fire season 

But, if you stay, 

if you’re okay with the calluses.

and the rose-colored scars,

I have a few stories to tell.