To the Dreamers
I’ve read my fair share of poetry.
I’ve watched with idealism in my eyes
as you scribble on napkins in coffee shops;
turning tear stained cheeks into dew-kissed flower petals,
cigarette smoke into clouds,
broken hearts into mosaics.
You are the people with stars for eyes,
galaxies for minds,
and phoenix hearts;
you have learned how to take the ashes and
rekindle them again.
You are the sculptors,
the only artist who can take something lifeless and teach it how to breathe.
I am not one of these people.
In fact, sometimes, I forget that I am even a person at all.
I am a girl with star stickers on her eyes,
dreamless in her insomnia,
a collection of misfit broken bones that
uses napkins to dry tears, that
has eyes clouded with cigarette smoke, that
would take a mosaic heart over this missing heart, that
twists and
bends and
stretches spare change into dollars, that
watches
as dreamers shred their dollars into pennies.
Do you know what that’s like?
Do you know what it’s like
to have an earthquake for a heart,
a tornado for a mind,
and hurricanes for hands, because
everything I touch seems to drown.
Do you know what it’s like to have water for blood?
To have the ever-moving rivers coursing through your veins,
flooding over into you lungs,
do you know what it’s like to be in this limbo of
constantly drowning and constantly floating? Do you know that I am tired of swimming in my own body?
Do you know what it’s like to want to sit in a blizzard? To want the star stickers to freeze off,
to want to feel frostbite kiss your neck because
most days, it’s hard to feel anything at all?
Do you know what it’s like to want the water in your veins turn to
ice so it will finally
stop
moving
and so you can finally
stop
drowning
in your own body,
do you know?
Do you know what that’s like?
I have an earthquake for a heart;
It trembles and cracks the soul that sits beneath it.
I have a tornado for a mind;
Sometimes it whirls around too fast for me and I get dizzy.
I have hurricanes for hands;
Everything I touch seems to drown, and
I want to sit in a blizzard, because
it’s the only disaster that I am not.