Tag: becoming an individual

my biggest fear growing up was that i would become like you. there were always so many unanswered questions haunting your eyes. there was always something fragile– even when you yelled– the cracks in your voice made you seem so breakable.

like a flattened beer can on the street, life has run you over so many times that the solid roads in your eyes are turning to mud. you’ve been here before and you know there is only one way it can end. you’ve already lived this life once over and you know how you die. you’re too damn tired to prevent yourself from doing it again.

i’d only ever seen life as an assembly line of inheritance, where every daughter becomes the mother she said she’d never be. now i’ve looked myself in the eye and seen only green: only life, only potential for growth.

i am not made of the same eroding roads as you. i am green grass grown in dark fertile soils. i am soft earth, permeable earth, the earth that recycles itself. i dig my roots deep in the soil, and nothing can uproot me. i shout the depths of my heart into the stars at night and my meditations hum in the rise of the sun.

i find my strength in the soil.
i discover my voice within the wind.
my passion burns with fire. i gain
perspective from monstrous oceans.
i was born from the womb of this planet.

i could not be you, even if i tried.