Half English / Half Cynicism

Ashes || Poem #2

We all wanted to be accepted. 

We wanted to be young and perfect in what people considered "acceptable", 

so "acceptable" we lose our sense of liveliness that we look like shells of people. 

Not people. 

We wanted to be happy and alive, and meet a girl that was happy and alive

and walk with her to seem normal and we wanted to be accepted.

But that never was. 

We once went to bed like between the bed sheets was a valley with answers to our questions 

and how we capture these answers and questions 

and get them together into one space to make relation to one another, 

but even they were answerless. 

These answers answering nothing, 

these questions questioning the validity of the question itself: 

Can beauty come out of ashes? 

The questions of acceptance fueling the fires in your soul 

the windows left open where we once glued our eyes and our hearts 

hoping for answers. 

Before the outside world fired itself up and we forgot what we wanted, 

and as we dreamed to rise ourselves up from the flames

but instead got buried somewhere under the ashes. 

I know I wanted to be accepted.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." 

Words breathe life, 

words hurt, 

and words kill. 

Get it through your heads. 

Because we all wanted the school assemblies talking about racism and homophobia to be true

and we believed it once. 

All you had to do was ignore it

better yet,

don't do it at all, 

don't be different, be accepted. 

So let your smile twist, 

because I know you want to be accepted. 

I was there. 

I was there when you were with that girl 

young and alive, 

and I was there as you stared out the window praying for hope and hoping for change,

and no one can tell you that you're not accepted

because if ninety nine percent of this earth doesn't accept you, 

then that leaves at least seventy-five thousand people who do.

Because every word you carry is another stone set to build the foundation of  this building you're building 

building for change.

Because the days cannot erase what all of us wanted and none of us got, 

what we all have and what we forgot: 

That we all wanted to be something so we all became something. 

And we might not be the something we thought we would be when we were with that girl

young and alive,

but something is still something. 

Something is better than nothing. 

And those questions we repressed are the only answers we need to know that we are alive 

asking

"What made the beauty of the moon?"

"The beauty of the sea?"

"Will that make me something?"

"Will I be something?" 

"Am I something?"

I will be. 

I already am.