It's a wild life

I don't really have triggers. It's been one hell of a year and after this, I usually feel like I can handle anything that comes my way, with the help of a very big God.

But the word "needy." You took it too far.

"Needy" takes me back three years' time, to being seventeen and crying my eyes out every night, wondering about my self-worth because the one I trusted turned around and told me that I was too emotional, too needy, too clingy, that I acted irrationally, that I asked too much, that I was too much.

"Needy" takes me back to the very first time that I was broken. When you're seventeen and feeling everything for the first time, everything is magnified—the highs, the lows; the feeling of being on top of the world, spinning around in the kind of wonder only first times bring—felt as deeply as the hurt when he turns around and tells me that he never loved me—in fact, that he hates me. It's a cliché, but when you're seventeen and fearless, you believe you're in love, even though seventeen-year-olds (and twenty-year-olds) don't know anything about love at all.

"Needy" takes me back to 4 AM conversations with heavy hearts and a lot of missed phone calls; to fights that started at midnight and lasted until we could no longer stay up and we were so exhausted and broken and frustrated with each other that there was nothing left to say. And I would see him the day after those fights, and he couldn't even look me in the eye. And seventeen-year-old me believed that it was because I asked too much.

"Needy" takes me back to a toxic friendship that I thought I wanted in my life, except I had no idea who I was actually dealing with, and the supposed friendship was what I now recognize to be emotional abuse. Friends don't tell each other that they're worthless; that they're dragging each other down; acting like an idiot, useless, not worth talking to, not worth respecting—and now I can't believe that I ever believed any word of it. But seventeen-year-old me didn't know better.

"Needy" takes me back to my biggest mistake; to the first time that I was vulnerable and honest and open-hearted, and how it burned me and twisted my views on relationships for the next two years; how I went on to spend a year and a half in a relationship where I was forever afraid of feeling too much because I was so terrified of being the girl with too many emotions; too many problems and way too many feelings.

You asked why To Write Love on Her Arms matters to me. It matters to me because I know that my story is not unique, and that my pain is echoed by girls all around the world who have been hurt; who have been told that their emotions are too much; that their existence is too much; that they should shut up and stop feeling so much, or else they will never be loved.

But now I know that there's a God who created us for better things, and that we're all here because people need other people.

You could have never known. And you'll probably never read this, but on the crazy chance that you do, you need to know that your words matter, because your words hurt.

we never go out of style

i want to spend the coldest night 

dancing to the sound of deafening heartbeats

amongst glittery lights + strangers' laughter

with the most wonderfully reckless people 

and the most perfectly flawed boy

i could see us doing that again 

in this lifetime

oh, valentine

the witching hour

sitting by myself, downtown tonight
in a coffee shop of studious strangers
listening to songs for lovers, dancing
in my head, with no one on my mind but

you, taking in the darkest shade of night
and all its infinite possibilities
and me, wondering about the time and space
between you and i, and whether

it could be epsilon-small tonight
i will not be the one to say yes so easily as
this winter night magic is catching up to us
but i will not run too quickly from it

instead, maybe i will run
just quickly enough to rival the starlight
just quickly enough for you to give chase

This Is Not a Love Poem

i am in love with people and places
in love with the thinkers, the creators, the wanderers
in love with big dreams, cautionary tales and storytellers

in love with the world around me and its curiosity
in love with every sunrise, falling sky and a million mysteries
in wondrous, captivating, all-encompassing love with a God
so big i can't fathom the story (and a love even bigger)

in love with oceans and the way they give and take away
in love with sharp boundaries and the fences we break
in love with living, and its infinitesimal nature; moth to flame

in love with the unflinching strength of the human heart
in love with raw emotion and difficult conversations, and
in love with the most elusive thing—chaotic inspiration

in love with statistical improbabilities
in love with maybes, what-ifs and possibilities
in love with Taylor Swift day-dreaming, wish-upon-a-star hoping

in love with a broken, beautiful generation of hearts
in love with the invitation to believe in better days
in love with the people i am lucky enough to meet—always

in love with the mathematicians of the ages, on black-and-white thrones
in love with the open-hearted stranger looking for answers
in so much love with the incredible great unknown

in love with everyday kings and queens
in love with an unbreakable, intimate, earth-span community
in love with a royal court that was only ever built for loving

i am in love with people and their stories
i am in love with people
i am in love
i am

tonight, 
as i struggle to remember 
that i am defined by a Love so great,

my prayer is just this—
let not the things of this world ever sway me.

a pointwise stroll (amongst the stars)

tonight, i walk to the edge and dare to look not down, but up
and i find that i have come further than i could fathom
so tonight i find myself contemplating the world in polar time
hanging on a horizon lit by the measure of a parameter
just beyond the reach of our comprehension—
comprehension in all of its finite, curious glory.

and as iron sharpens iron, so we will too
as we tumble through this rabbit hole of wonder
vast enough to hold the universe in its pocket
(and then some, because who measures the infinite?)
a universe so big i could never pinpoint the north star—
the one guiding all of our (extra)ordinary hearts.

chemical imbalance, in (way, way over) my head
sparking obvious midnight chances set against a backdrop
of telescoping ideas in n-dimensional space
space that could not be contained by the greatest atlas
space containing the lion-shaped constellations of our souls
and the thunderous hummingbird-song of our heartbeats.

Café Latte Musings

"A flamingo coffee with two sugar, one milk,"

The barista smiles brightly at me, the perfect start to a morning

complete with summer sunshine and blackened white zebra toast

The long-necked giraffes chatter, preparing for another day's work

It's a jungle out there in the great wide world

The toucans are curiously cute (but only from a distance),

their rainbow beaks hiding stashes of treasures (cinnamon biscotti)

teasing me with their streams of poetry and harmonies,

As they whisper too softly, planning oh-so-carefully,

getting ready to spend the day singing and fooling the elephants

Much unalike to the constant flutter of the wings of the hummingbirds

"She’s back in town, she's changed so much, have you heard?"

Gossiping on scintillating headlines, making waves with only wings

And filling the air with a million heartbeats, so fleeting you could never catch

a single word without a little help from a long-eared feline friend

I stare through one-way mirrors, observing the gazelles

Devising, searching, strategizing to stay on top for just one more day

After all, tomorrow is as tomorrow comes—right now, we play!

Stay oblivious to the next storm around the corner

as the espresso maker breaks, shattering glass onto the foxes' nest

The parrots gather together near the cappuccino pond

A rainbow clique of beauty and equally disorganized minds

Pecking at the chocolate trifles, always asking questions on repeat

Curiouser and curiouser, rolling loaded dice in this crazy life

Never finding the answers that they want in this earthly cacophony

The elephant sits alone with his Earl Grey tea, sipping from a ceramic mug

filled with the wisdom of the ages (and maybe a little bit of Irish cream),

supposedly reading from a tome of poetry, but really watching the monkeys

before they are quickly trotted back behind steel-trap bars

(The zookeepers are afraid that they will scratch, you know)

The well-dressed fox sends his dark roast back in a huff

and the tigress of a waitress proceeds to pounce (he'll be sorry)

as the buffalos stomp out, pretending they are of high society 

their steps echoing, yet quickly lost in the caffeinated madness—

Oh, just another morning in the jungle of humanity