There’s a persistent itch
stitched to the edge of my skin.
They say it’s a symptom
of being several summers too small
and living too close to my skull, 
tucked in, 
no care for the outside.
But I wonder how far the cycle spins.

Because that girl, eighteen,
-tucked into hoodie, not skull, but you can’t see the difference-
didn’t ask for the thread weaving
up, down, up, down,
disrespectful, careless, self absorbed,
artistic vital monitor through her veins.
Ignore the pain of the marks it makes,
dress up anxiety as teenage mood swings,
because someday she’ll be thirty five and married,
and that’s when her real life begins.

Young boy, just started high school,
new backpack and shoes.
You know he has nothing to say before he walks in the room,
because there’s this little word called hormones, and it lets you disregard him.
Condemn apathy and rebellion in the same breath
while turning down the volume and teaching him toxicity 
instead of life skills.
Ignore that he has more civility 
than the men on the TV who debate the waves he will drown under,
because fourteen is too young for pressed suits,
and it suits you somehow.

But young hearts feel,
and when young hearts break,
the fractures are just as real as the old ones,
and when they hope,
and when the mascara runs and the doors slam,
and when the eyes shine and the mouths say
‘yes, no, I love you, we need to change,’
and tell you,
‘I want, I want, I want -’
don’t say phase, laugh, disregard, claim monopoly on human experience.
Don’t say wait until tomorrow.

We are not mid preparation,
mid prequel, mid prologue.

I don’t want to be trapped in my head.

And yet-
now that I’m here,
sitting on my feet,
I might as well paint pictures on the inside of my skeleton,
next to the graffiti that I found on the whitewashed walls,
silvery spray paint, garish greens.
Some seeped in, slowly,
but this part here, I might have scrawled in my sleep,
when I, a dreamer, claimed those words as my own.

Wait to understand, wait to feel, wait to love, wait to speak, wait to be.

Paint under my fingernails, and I call it artistic.
My hands stained with the words I reject. 
I can read them, written in my own apathetic, rebellious ink.

Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.

But I will paint over the words.
Close eyes, block out the colors, listen.

Because my heart is beating now.