Bricks

Do you ever miss yourself?
The person you were before the puncture.
When it dawned on you.
The realization that life is going to, at times, beckon you with smooth hands and deliver a bucket of dirt.

Dark brown and full of worms.
There's that saying, "they tried to bury us, but they didn't know we were seeds." A picture painted of wild, blooming beings.
A lovely sentiment, but the earth is heavy. Crushing, at times.

Do you remember that feeling of the first?
The euphoria.
And now they ask me "who do you love?"
I pause.
The ability to differentiate my intuition guiding me and my past trauma misleading me is one I haven't yet mastered.

But I'm not here to prove myself to anyone.
Where I will say all the things that tickle your ears
And do what's pleasing in your eyes
As much as I desire to make all those I touch in my life happy, I find it's easier to carve a sculpture out of onyx.
It takes less effort to blow up a car tire with my breath.

The measurement of happiness is a spectrum too obtuse and disillusioned to make sense in reality.
It ebbs and flows from one person to the next, guided by a compass that's been crushed by the feet of those who cared too little to notice the damage in their wake.
That pill is still stuck in my throat.

On the other side of that, I'm learning not everyone has the best intentions for me.
Some call loneliness, love.
I exist to fill the gaps for them.
My softness molded into their needs.
My skin, a warm place to sleep
My hair, a bed of live tendrils to awaken their senses

But it only burns when sunblock isn't applied
No barrier between you and the intensity

It only wrecks you when you take off your protective gear.
The collision catapults you to the asphalt, scraping your softness

It only breaks the bone when you leap from that height.

So why do it?

You might call me jaded, but I call me a healthy skeptic.
I only have so many layers of skin
And so many bones in my body
They heal, but there's a scar.
shiny and textured.

And when the time and place and person is right, I'd like to present myself as a human, with some unflawed parts left.
Places where no whips have stung
And no burns have scalded.
Where they're not simply water falling through my broken fingers.

And so with every scale that falls from my eyes, a brick goes up.
Not in anger. 
In acceptance.

A small smile on my lips as I construct my beautiful brick wall.
The mortar a dense mixture of lessons and resignation.

I plant lilies at the base.

And when you catch yourself smiling at a memory you've yet to make-
Then there's still hope.
Honor the space between "no more" and "not yet"
Remind yourself of the time it was easy to breathe.

You were the bearer of heartbreak
But look at what I've built because of you.