Phone screen went black, broken. I don’t know how.
My arms curl around a tall boy with ink splattered across his body.
He said Nana was watching over me and is proud of me but I hope she couldn’t see the cigarette stuck lit between my fake acrylic fingernails.
Sometimes, I think I’m immune to the worlds horrors.
I mean, she called me an angel, so I must have lived through the hard s*** already.
The tall tattooed boy sleeps, probably laying in piles of puke. He probably does not care.
His tee shirt is stained with my tears and fake eyelash glue, my arms tattooed around his stomach.
I apologized that night, for many things, to friends who are always willing to grip the steering wheel for another friend or rub her back when she admits she used to hurt herself, even though we already have a hard enough time taking care of ourselves.
She lets me cry on her shoulder in the bathroom.
She does not think I’m a “w***e” and all of my friends tell me they don’t care that I spend more time behind a pen and a mic than a bottle of Jager because they love me.
On prom night, my phone screen went black, broken. I don’t know how.
Friends passed out askew as I take a bubble bath wishing I could talk to my mother and wrap my arms around her like an anxious 5 year old.
I wonder if the boys are really talking about me when they say my mom is hot, and just don’t want to admit it.
I hope my Nana saw the part of my night where my hair pinned against my neck, fake eyelashes glued across my lid, where I looked like I won an Oscar.
I hope she smiled at me and told me not to talk to any of the boys as she shook her butt in the air and proceeded to dance with me.
I hope she knows that I think about her a lot more than I think about hotel parties and boys with tattoo’s and that the mark she left on my heart will last longer than anything ink and a needle could ever create.
I would much rather spend one more day in her messy kitchen than in a hotel surrounded by teen angst and body odor,
We can’t all have what we want.
But I have friends who wrap their arms around me as I cry for hours, allowing me to admit things I can’t even say to licensed professionals.
You can’t get friends like mine using Alexian Brother services with a 10 dollar co-pay.
Sometimes, writing a poem isn’t enough.
Sometimes you need the calm breath of a friend against your neck, their beating heart tapping your ears which whispers, you’re alive too.
Family has nothing to do with a family tree.
We don’t share DNA, but you have planted seeds in my heart that contain roots much stronger.
Dug deeper than anybody has before, turned me inside out, saw parts of me that I used to hide even from myself.
Thank you for teaching me that the stars align to form my name, the Earth rotates so that I can move on, and the race doesn’t end until I cross the finish line.
Thank you for making me believe it.
You are the gravity that keeps me from floating away in this screwed up world, and I know you have insecurities too, I can only hope you are no longer scared to show them.
On prom night, my phone screen went black, broken.
I don't know how.
I guess like me, it was very fragile.
I think that I am made of glass, filled with water.
Please don't drop me.