No one warns you about sleepless nights, about unproductivity and the mundane, no one tells you growing up that one day you’ll find yourself bleeding your wounds out on the bedroom floor, or how bathrooms are sanctuaries; no one tells you about the fatal attraction towards the unhealthy that you adopt time and time again; no one warns you about the real dangers of the world- loneliness and pain, and all the ways you deal with them. They tell you not to smoke or drink or have sex, but they forget to teach you kindness to yourself, they forget to teach you self-love; they forget to teach you how to cope with rejection and pain, they tell you to forgive but never teach you how, they tell you to love but never the consequences of failed loves, they warn you about heartbreaks from lovers but never those from family and friends, they tell you to dream but kill it before you can climb its ladder, they read you fairy tales but lack imagination, they tell you life is hard, that the world is ugly, but you never see them making it less of all that, then you grow up not knowing what to believe or who to be, with your heart still young but wounded, and your spirit yearning but reluctant. You have a body with too many marks, eyes with too many scars, you carry hope like a sacred flower- all its petals fall each time the world disappoints you, and instead of abandoning it, you go tape it back together; and here you are, all patched up- old cotton cloth and rusty car parts; you’re barely alive, and in love with the idea of what life could live up to be, and though it never does, you never give up, and I would say that’s what makes you strong, that that’s what makes you beautiful, but all it makes you, is a dreamer. People never teach us these things growing up because they too carry flowers of their own, and they don’t want you to grow up without hope, because if you knew all this when you were too young, then you would not make it this far, and it would be a shame, because there is so much more to life than all this, and the only way to have it all, is to carry the flower of hope in your heart.