All Along

As we grow older, our bedroom walls seem smaller,

our boundaries tighten, and our options become scarcer.

With every missed opportunity and every failure within our minds,

our responsibility seems to be the one thing that wants to grow with us.

But what if we don’t want to grow, what if we don't want to be "perfect" or be “different…”

We live in a world that defines a house by its door and people by what they're willing to spill—

what gossip, what talent, whatever else they can offer,

but you are more than what you give away.

Your future contains more radiance than the infinite stars in the sky.

No one knows what to expect of this life; no one cares as long as we overcome it with a smile.

But what do we do when our words are burning the tips of our tongue like fire from every condescending lecture we've ever received…

We're told to stop living inside our heads, the one place our dreams will never be unplugged.

We are creations shaped by a loving potter— each painted with vibrant pigments, molded with new techniques, made for beauty, not precision.

We are people who should learn to care not for perfection but for solidarity.

To the world, we are flawed; to the potter, we are living, breathing art.

Art that is scared, art that is afraid of cracking because

how could anyone ever love us when we're broken?

How could anyone ever love us when we're "failing…”

Well, watch us live for every moment we have felt defeated that we have crushed between our blistered palms and bruised wrists.

Watch us release every tear of joy from our flooding eyes that we never allowed to flow from the wounds this world has caused.

Watch us having lived every second of our lives thinking we don't have enough until now—

now that we know we hold the stars in our eyes and the future in our palms.

Because we know we contain a million smiles within our thirty-seven-point-two trillion cells,

every muscle inside of us should swell with strength.

We are given more weight to bear on our shoulders, but we do it with joy and ease that we have the confidence to lift it.

Our failures are the foundation of our resilience. Our mistakes are the backbone to our futures.

The biggest mistake we could possibly make is to believe that we must fit to a mold that wasn't made from the same clay that forms us.

Is to believe that we are a disappointment.

We will always be the people we see in the mirror: the grades, the status, the shape.

That shape has touched the hearts of those who needed it most.

That shape will stop cutting itself away and learn to embrace its flaws because they are the sole things that can make one ounce of difference without saying a word.

We are not just an "us," and you are not an "I"— you are so much more than that.

You are the collection of your memories, joys, sufferings, and triumphs wrapped in a single package that shows every scar and wears it proudly.

So now, the faith that has always lived within ourselves will join us as we search for

—not where we blend in— rather, where we have been too afraid to go all along.

 

This poem is about: 
Me
My family
My community
Our world

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