writer who dares to hope

𝖱𝖠𝖵𝖤𝖭 - 𝖼𝗁𝗋𝗈𝗇𝗂𝖼𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗒 𝗇𝗂𝗇𝖾𝗍𝖾𝖾𝗇, 𝗌𝗁𝖾/𝗁𝖾𝗋, 𝗅𝗈𝗏𝖾𝗋 𝗈𝖿 𝖺𝗅𝗅 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗀𝗌 𝗐𝖾𝗂𝗋𝖽

♱ 𝗍𝗋𝖺𝗀𝗂𝖼 𝗍𝖾𝖾𝗇, 𝗉𝗈𝖾𝗍, 𝗐𝗋𝗂𝗍𝖾𝗋, 𝗅𝗈𝗏𝖾𝗋

I have only known one sun.

Its warmth, its brightness,

The withering of my petals, the cyclical darkness,

all masked under the normalcy of familiarity.

Never dreaming of another sun,

one that wouldn't set on me,

or burn too hot,

because the one I know keeps me alive,

breathing at least.

Never enough to be free,

but never too little to desire freedom.

I accept it because I need it,

so I accept that it can't give me all I need,

Pick, Pick, Pick

Crimson crusts under my polished paw,

revealing my trauma,

sick, weeping, and raw.

When exposed to the wind, this hurt grows a shield.

No bandage, no gauze,

Nothing mere intention can yield.

A scab,

A trauma response,

Biological, natural, drab.

To keep wounds safe from infection,

And out of your judgmental sight.

But at night, alone,

They feel foreign, not right.

These scabs are a lie,

An illusion of heal.

But like all deceit,

With time, they grow real.

Wounds though, are honest,

They serve as life’s proof.

Bloody, raw and ugly,

they are mine.

They are truth.

So I pick the scabs off,

Bloody and just,

I wallow in my suffering,

To survive,

That feeling when you're driving,

and realize you're already home?

That's it.

That's childhood.

It isn't the years you spent growing up,

no.

Those are only a breathe,

released in an instant and lost forever.

Choose to believe that childhood is more than that.

It's the false memory,

the guilt of letting it all slip away,

the residue of salt on your toes when you leave the beach,

the part of your past where even heartbreaks are romanticized.

It hurts until it doesn't,

and that's it.

I used to believe in God,

enough to get on my knees each night and pray.

I'd ask for forgiveness, for happiness, for health.

Then, I'd wake up the next day happy, healthy, and apparently forgiven, thanking God for answering my prayers.

I'd turn on the TV to see people all over the world being massacred, women, unable to show their faces in public, and countries, now existing as a bloody stain on a map.

Those nights, my prayers would be different.

I'd pray for those whose suffering I've seen, only through a TV screen,

asking for their forgiveness, their happiness, and their health.

When I woke up, everything would be the same.

I'm not a good person.

At least, I'm no better than those kids who are dying.

I've sinned. I'm sinning right now.

I ask God,

"Why are my prayers only answered when I ask about my happiness, while they are left bleeding, and alone?"

"How do you decide who gets to be born into my shoes, and who is born into a life time of fear?"

He never answers,

so I wear a cross around my neck anyways, just in case.

In case he is reading this.

In case he is real.

So that he knows I didn't revoke my prayers.

They are still out there,

wherever he is,

waiting to be answered.

I may go to Hell for it,

but those people on the TV are already there,

alive and real.

Maybe, when I die, Hell will just be my round of suffering,

while the people on the TV look down at me from Heaven,