Wrote and published this a long time ago.
I always wondered what happens whenever we fade away, Do we really become an angel with wings, Or are these wings just something written next to our name, I was 4 years old when I first asked myself this, I’d listen to the tick-tock of that bloody clock, My eyes would dance left and right and my heart would race, And I’d let the fear of something that I couldn’t change echo through my veins, I was 4 years old when I began to fear my own grave. I didn’t want to be taken away, My bones laying in a forever home, They way they’d rot made me feel so alone, And so I’d sleep with my stuffed animal and with my left eye open, And I made sure that I prayed so I could cross that golden gate, When my time was over. And I’ve always been deaths best friend and it’s worst enemy, It tried to take me twice before I reached year one, The grim reaper probably hates the fact that it didn’t get the chance to snatch me, The first, when I entered this planet earth, 1 pound and almost 4 months early, It could’ve been his chance, but somehow I made it out alive, 88 days of hell, and on some day in September of 2009, My heart stopped, and on the second chance, he could’ve took me easily, But when they tapped my spine, His ax disappeared and died. So, even at the age of four, I understood that I was lucky, Lucky because my heart still beats, Lucky because my weightless body isn’t lying in a grave, Lucky because I’m here and the babies that lay beside me aren’t, So I’d cry for their lives and wish that I was them and that they were me, What makes me lucky, if I felt so much guilt at that young age, That I’d lay at night, watching skeletons dance on my window, Counting the ages that I hope that I will pass, Worrying that the grim reaper will succeed and that my body someday break, And not in the way a bone does, But in a way a porcelain vase collapses, With such a small touch. I’m about to turn 16, And I ask myself all the time why and how I’m still alive, What makes me worth more than the body next to mine, Because such a small souls life isn’t any less than what I am now, My scars bear the guilt and shame and I guess this is what it means to survive, I’m here not because I’m lucky, But because the world picks and chooses whose life is on the line. I don’t know what’s going to happen in these next few years that the reaper watches and times, He could’ve caught me the third time at age ten, When I gave in, When I wished to silence the breaths that I took, “What makes me deserving of these eyes?”, “ What makes people think that I’m enough to be alive?” And so I imagined myself by a castle next to that golden gate, And cursed at the God and the universe himself, Wishing I never had this face, Wishing that I never felt this kind of ache, And then everything I felt blurred, And I was left with a pain that doesn’t sting, But seeps into your voice when you try to speak. I’m still afraid of my story and what will become of me when I reach that age, I’m still afraid of the bullet that I dodged and the reaper that watches me as I sleep, I’m still afraid of the wrinkles that will rest on my skin and the grey hairs that will fade, I’m afraid of concrete that will be written with my name, And roses that will wither away, I hope that this all means something when I’m no longer speaking, I hope that my words will be worth more than what’s written on my grave, And that the ax of the reaper will feel like a warm hug, Instead of the slaughter of my soul, That echoes whenever I try to breathe, I hope that if I see something, it’s peaceful and painless, And that I won’t have to suffer in flames, Who knows if I’ll even reach that golden gate, If I don’t know how to fly? Because I never needed to be afraid of my own corpse at such a young age, I never needed to feel like a burden for just being ten years old, I never deserved those restless nights of worry and shame, She was such an angel, Her eyes carried rivers that grew trees of wonder and words, Her heart shattered yet still stood, And her soul, Her aching soul, Will reach the end with broken wings.
