This- Samantha Szyszka

I'm not a pearl or a rock that skids the water just right. I am not a fresh bloomed flower or a 6 am. I am a 3 am. I am silence and the moon hidden in the shadows of the clouds, here the only things left are the stars that keep your secrets safe.

Id watch the stars every night and I thought the world was made of black and white, with lines to color outside of with my crayons. I thought if I kept stealing my dad’s ladder that maybe I could touch the moon. Each year my head got closer to the stars and the tips of my hair closer to the weeds. I learned what it was like to touch someone else's skin and want to take my tears and trace every single inch of that beauty.

I wanted to feel this. To feel what it was like to be wrapped in some sort of special, some sort of perfect. I didn't know what it was but I could finally walk in a straight line and I knew where to find myself, when I lost myself, and I fought for all selfs, when everyone should have been looking out for themselves.

I also learned what it was like to break my lungs and feel the moons light come pouring out of them. I felt the daze as I would roll out of bed and fall through the floor. I couldn’t walk down the stairs, I couldn't make it to the car. Because I felt it all, as I lost it all, after I gave it all, and I can never take that back. It tasted like warmth but all I could taste then was blood in my teeth and I couldn’t spit it out because I didn't know how.

There was a hole in my ribs and you could shove all the lace and left over change that you wanted to in there but it would melt. You could take your laughter and shove it down my throat but I would throw up black because I am not an unfinished painting or a used gadget, You cannot fix me. I am not a pearl, I'm a fire and I am strong.

The world is a crowded place and people talk so loud you can’t even hear the voices in your head. It’s hard to walk in a straight line and people forget to close their eyes. It’s a messy place but people can fall just right.

I've learned that it is okay to fall, it is okay to wake up and not know where you are going. You’ll make it somewhere and life will take you along for the ride. Just like a pebble at the bottom of a river, you will move, you will feel like you are slipping, and sometimes you will lose control. Sometimes things get blurry and it feels like you're walking through a crowded room where no one can see you. Sometimes you can’t breathe in that room. You panic because you don’t think you can get up. And sometimes you can’t.

But sometimes life is beautiful.

Sometimes the sun sets and rises and the sky seems to have answers, sometimes the rain pretends to wash away your doubts, sometimes you wake up and the flowers have grown into your window, almost as if to let you know you're always beautiful, sometimes you stop and realize you’re where you need to be. Things are never perfect but happiness lies inside places all broken up, waiting to be found.

I can’t tell you the answers. I don’t think anyone truly knows where those are hidden. But I can tell you that every single moment leads you to another moment. And I can tell you that every breath leads to another breath and I can tell you that every smile, every kiss, every sneeze, every tear, every scream, every touch, every wrong turn, every step, it all means something, and that something is so important.