She is

in her little red car and it is

Friday night, so she is

laughing and the music is

loud.

Next Friday night

she is crying and

she doesn't know exactly why

because she drank too much of her mom's wine

and her dad's favorite sweatshirt doesn't even smell like him anymore. 

She is on a beach

and it is April and cloudy and 50 degrees but she goes swimming in her underwear

because the winter was too long and she misses the ocean

and this is what it means to be young

so she is laughing.

Her first kiss was with another girl

when their breath tasted of coconut vodka

and it is such a funny story to tell because

obviously they are straight but

sometimes she wonders.  

She drives and drives

in her little red car with

the sunroof open along with

all the windows

because the highway is her freedom

and the wind is her drug.

Her nightmares

feature no monsters but

the manicured gardens of a hospice

and morphine sunken eyes of a corpse called Dad

are just as scary.

Instances that make up a full

person, the good and the bad and

the unfiltered

are not what the world wants to see because

we like people who laugh

not cry.