God if I, given fifty-two dollars to spend and the promise of a future,

God if I, given everything and yet nothing,

God if I, if I had walked across the border of blood and into nothing—

Filters besides, rose-tinted futures turned bruise purple yellow,

God if I had been someone else—

Begin fifteen, and terminally exhausted, being fifteen,
and the perchance of forever and your skin like ice in the bathroom
(the color red calling to you in all the wrong ways)

Ask yourself this: Who am I when the lights are turned off?

When at sunset the fae do dance in your eyes (fake, you worry), who am I?

Still, worry at the query; worry at this: who am I when walking down the street 9 til Midnight, and your hand sweaty in my hand and we were never told how to behave when we were with each other only not to speak in our native tongue, hands flapping and smiles gaping and with all of the wrong jokes, we were

always told just to be like the others and god it’s hard to know your own identity when everyone is trying to tell you it doesn’t exist.

Who am I with all my clothes off and the forever, always cherished lightly, and then heavily, thrown through the window shatter pop crash into the snow?

Who am I in this moment, and not in the next? In the slip-slide ice and in the sun and the moment before the storm? (you were always falling on your knees in the ice, you know) And uncertainty pinging at your windowpane do you know myself in the way I know in the way nobody knows in the way you yourself only know?

When, fifteen and terminally ill, but only in the wrong ways and never in the appropriate, mandatory body aching held tired ways, but those too, but never for the right reasons, it wasn’t ever because you played sports or anything, you swear to god you were born with this,

do sing that they shall hear that you are not afraid.

Do not be afraid to quote Shakespeare for you own uses.

Instead, embrace, like the snowman in your yard you tried to build when you were twelve and it had barely snowed, instead embrace til it falls apart your own shivering, shaky identity; don’t be afraid to screw it and hold on tight for this bumpy ride to the middle of nowhere and the future thrown out the window and your own body held tight and the new future forming in your hands like a heart like an ice cube like warm hot chocolate and the new forever sweet until daybreak and ever on and on and on identity screwed and unscrewed and future recreated again and again and again and again and