Paint me to resemble your wildest dream

and erase the pencil lines that were once me.

Take this ghost and

give it a vessel in which it can flourish and

adjust the way the rays of the sun hit your eyes and

make them gleam.

Like the moonlight on the lake that I once drowned in,

drowned in the feverishness of summer

and three pairs of tan legs on deck chairs that seemed like immortality to us.

Make me remember

the late nights

holding bowls full of laughter

and shoveling bites into our mouths with

oversized spoons

sitting on wooden swings in a tiny park in the core of

our own field of rocks, dirt, and grass compressed by the footsteps of content souls.

And remind me

of the time we laid on the wooden park bench

your face inches from mine,

braving the vast universe above us

like the Earth was our car and we were driving through the galaxy of milky roads and

groggy mornings when all I could

think about is you

and what you said to me the night before.

How you kissed my face and said my skin felt like satin

and that you would wear me like a name brand shirt and I took that as a compliment as I blushed to my feet.

But this is not art.

This is reality and we are all just winging it and it is rough

and it is raw

and it is ruthless.

But then, isn’t that art?

Truth.

Isn’t it poetic

that there are people out there

who carve smiles into their face from the blade of a pencil sharpener that keeps the tip of the #2 pencil clean enough to

scratch

their legacy into paper since nobody has the time to

stop and listen.

That there are people out there who are

fucking petrified to break

the charade they maintain to

charm others

that they perish

as a wax model they constructed with their

fear and tears and endless years of crafting what everyone else expected them to be.

So you see there is no rule book to this game of life,

no instruction.

We write as we go and nothing is ever set in stone.

We are all authors of our own story.

So take advantage of the power you have.

Wear your favorite shirt, the one your best friend said went out of style three years ago and rock it.

Wear the lipstick that makes you feel beautiful and laugh when your sister says it makes you look like a clown.

Keep your integrity and never let anyone pull you into the rut of

work, sleep, repeat.

Time is the only thing that can truly define us,

and time is not definite.

The only time we can measure

for sure

is the time we have already spent.

And we only have years to spend.