What We Give (Who We Are)

to tell a story 

                    is to give life — 

to tell a story is to reward the legacy of all those who are precedents, 

the tales as old as time that have been lived and passed down for millennia. 

some of heroes, great and greater 

                            some of villains, tragedies, some of neither, truth, 

keeping alive the perspective and memory of the ones who were forgotten, pushed aside, erased or told they were evil; 

the abused, the hurt, the broken, and the abuser —

the oppressed, the judged, the ones who hid, 

the ones we recognize ourselves in, 

the lovers who hide their passion and die a tragedy in war for a country that does not love them, too great for their legacy;

the woman who is cursed in her own temple for love that is forced on her, never to look at another again;

the god who is chained for gifting incredible things to a dying race;

the girl whose naivety is used as a helpless weapon to bring the cruelest curse and the greatest gift to a whole people, from nothing but her own innocent, inevitable curiosity; 

a goddess of wild things that gives girls power away from hands and mouths and eyes that search and prisons too young that will contain them in stone hallways for the rest of their life;

the boy whose youth makes him fly too high, overestimating his gift and falling to the crashing waves below;

many, many others; 

each is history

each is humanity

each is our legacy to the world, to the universe

each is inevitable

each is broken and filled with something greater than ever could be;

we are giants, great and horrible, and as ancestors and prosperity, 

we write and find and rewrite these tales, and so to find that

to tell a story

                    is to give love.