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A vehicle of travel that’s exhaust

Is exhausting to clean up.

To scrub from my floors,

My hills,

My caves.

It is a challenge no one has attempted

I listen to each word of my country,

Each act that fights to get rid of everyone I care for.

Each word that our government cleverly boasts

About how they belong to us.

How can I love

Those who creep through the dark

With their cloak of painful truths?

Their intentions were not love,

And only skitter away

So we can shoot

But we can’t harm

While all they do is shoot us down?

With their shackles,

Their laws,

Their money

For the first twelve years of my life,
There was no direct purpose in existing.
But then—
on the night of my thirteenth,
butterfly wings sprouted
from my back.

I got my own garden to tend.

We tried and though we could have done more,

We did enough to be us and create the good--and the flaws-- in those who still walk forward.