Nightingale

fifty-four

I can write for hours upon hours about all the things that I wish I could be, but the truth of the matter is simple, people are not poetry. I wish I wasn't codependent, I wish I could just be alone. I wish my brain wasn't my worst enemy, leaving me scared to be alone. I wish I wasn't an addict, using substances to feel everything and nothing all at the same time. I wish I didn't have trauma, events permanently tainting my view on life. I wish I knew all the right things to say, that sweet words could roll off my tongue, but my time here is too short to just worry.

How each single sentence is strung, it's okay to be rough 'round the edges, to be bruised up and broken and scarred but, it's not okay to let people tell me that it's a reason to change who I am. My life doesn't have to sit neatly, the way a poem sits so neatly in lines. Sometimes I might feel like a word that nobody has defined. I might not be a star that lights darkness, or a bird that can soar above the clouds, but it's okay because I'm far more complex than that to be crammed into a single metaphor.

It's okay that I don't know what I'm doing, since my feelings don't have to rhyme with each other. Though my grandmother once said, "a poem, once complete, is eternal." I have the freedom to change things about me over time. I'm so much more than can ever be written.

I used to be a wallflower, then one day something happened. I dropped what I had once held dear but my soul became so much lighter instead of filled with fear. It taught my heart that some things are not meant to last long, nothing is truly made to last forever. They arrive to teach you lessons and then you continue on with your story. I don't have to cling to people who no longer make me smile or do something I've come to hate if it isn't worth my while. Sometimes the things you are fighting for are not worth the cost.

I've lost myself countless times and I will continue to lose who I am as I grow older but not everything I ever lose is bound to be a loss. There is no title to say, "This Is Me" and I cannot be trapped in the line of a notebook, because people are not poetry.

"Whatcha doing?" Gemma's voice echoes through the room. I am startled by her voice and quickly throw Parker's journal down onto her nightstand.

"Christ Gemma! Don't sneak up on me like that! Have you ever heard of knocking?" I shout at her while rubbing my hands down my face to try and calm myself down.

"Yeah I have, you used to practically break my door down every morning." She laughs out, coming into my bedroom and plopping down on the freshly made bed, now I'll have to remake it so it looks nice for Parker when she gets home.

"I had a good reason for that. What do you want?"

"I just want to hang out with my little brother. I don't get to see you anymore. Is it odd that I sometimes miss you banging my door down at 4 in the morning?"

I sit down next to her, resting my hands in my lap and focusing on twisting one of my rings, "it's a little odd, yeah. I don't miss it."

Doing that every day for 11 years of your life is draining. Every day for 11 years, worrying if this time is going to be the time where she doesn't answer the door, the time where she went too far and ended up dead. I don't miss it one bit and I wish I never had to do it in the first place. I know I didn't have to, it's not like anyone was forcing me but I couldn't just do nothing. I couldn't just let the only family I have left end up like the rest of them, dead.

"You don't miss seeing me every day? That kinda hurts." She jokes, shoving my shoulder a bit.

"It wasn't you Gemma. The person I was seeing every day wasn't my sister and the reason I was seeing that person every day was to make sure that person didn't kill my sister. So no I don't miss it, not one bit and I don't think you should miss it either." I say with all seriousness. "I think it's selfish of you to miss it."