Author: Molly Brubaker

Something’s not right with the world.

There is this dying in my soul, this cry that says something is wrong.

Is it the lack of empathy or the presence of apathy?

The death of chivalry or the living of greed?

I guess we’ll never know.

But that piece will be missing

In my waiting soul,

Waiting until everyone realizes that they’ve been living the wrong goals.

They say I shouldn’t romanticize.

“There’s nothing to see,” they scold. “Don’t pretend things are more special than they are.”

What if I make them special?

What if I want to smile when I see

My brothers building forts together in the basement?

My mom and dad having everyday conversations over fast food?

Three discussions at once as we overanalyze our latest favorite TV show?

Because really, people can act as if those rainbow moments don’t exist,

But they’re the ones who don’t see the colors.

I watch all these dreams in my head.

These brilliant feelings that pump oxygen into my imagination blood.

But it seems as if I can’t write or draw or sing or dance so where do I put it all?

I suppose I’ll settle for breathing my fantasies between sleep and wake,

That fleeting portal that lasts for a few eternity moments,

Where I can accompany from the passenger’s seat instead of peering in through the window.

You say I am venomous,

But I laugh, because you don’t even know what the word means.

Venomous means I bite you and you suffer.

I am poison, fire in your veins, throat closed off because you thought I would sit and let you attack me.

Poisonous means you bite me and you suffer.

Do not condemn the poison for your own decision to drink it.

And oh, that thing, that monstrous thing called feeling?

It gives me life and steals it.

It fills up my lungs and pours out my mouth in flowers and poison, daisies and hemlock.

I wonder if anyone has tasted anything quite like this before.

No, that can’t be true, because if they had—

I must be able to see the wakes of their ship souls from here!

But no… that’s not true, either.

The sun and moon meet every so often,

And the universe watches in ferocious enthrallment.

Tell me, friends on the horizon, ships ferrying dusk and dawn bright eyes:

How many worlds will we ruin and raise with our floral venom thoughts?

I did it anyway.

Isn’t that the most tragic sentence of all?

He said I needed to stop. That if I kept going, I’d implode into fragments of wasted past and abandoned future.

He was right.

I did it anyway.

But oh, that other, glorious outcome.

They said I’d never be able to make it, that if I kept dreaming, kept loving, kept giving, I’d run out of pieces of myself to give eventually.

I did it anyway.

But I never did run out.

Hey, wanna hear something hilarious?

Sometimes I think maybe I am meant to go through life seeing beyond it.

My dreams fuel me, breathe into my butterfly wings.

They urge me to me sing and dance around with only me and my self-confidence in an elegant twirl around my ballroom bedroom.

Wait, you don’t think that’s funny?

You think that’s beautiful?

Hm.

Most people laugh when I say that.

I found myself but I lost you

And really, truly,

I hope someday you find you too.

Maybe then you’ll see me the way I do.