I am a seventeen year old girl who is as happy as can be, yet so lost and sprinting back down the well worn mountain path.

I am only 5'4", but being built like a short story is a lesson in finding other ways to be the tallest tale in the room.

I am a poem. Not the kind that people relate to and love; the kind that no one understands and gives up on.

I am tattered novels, handwritten letters, I am old photographs.

I am the memory you chose to forget.

I am a body of splintered bones.

I am a hummingbird, but when I say hummingbird, I mean that sometimes my hands forget how to hold; become two teacups in an earthquake.

I am unguarded sunshine.

I am an unsettling rain.

I am the flower that grew from the concrete.

I am the tree that fell in the forest when nobody else was listening and dared to make a sound.

I am not religious. My faith in God died when my father did, but a few years ago I watched the sun rise on the beach and now I can't help but think that heaven is not a place we have to die to get to.

I am the daughter of a troubled man.

I am the daughter of a woman who told me I am the rainbow after the storm.

I am the sister of a boy who is still afraid of the monsters under his bed.

I am the cousin of a soldier who is sacrificing the first nine months of his daughters life to fight for your freedom.

I am prepared for the worst case scenario because the best case scenario scares me.

I am a paradox.

I am a contradicition.

I am a masterpiece.