This Is How

These are your hands and

This is how you tell the world you’re not all bad

These are your wrists, those are your scars,

This is your story

This is how you dodge the shattered glass around your feet

Left there by your heart

This is how you whisper to mountains and know

The peaks will still hear your

This is how you show the voices in your head

How to shake hands without starting a war

This is how you tell depression to lighten up and

This is how you grab anxiety by the shoulders

And breathe lullabies into its lungs

This is how you cope

This is how you reach Heaven without dying

And how you know Hell without traveling through it

This is how you stop holding hands

The way you hold a knife and instead hold hands

The way a six year old cups her hands around a firefly for the first time

This is how you unclench your fists

And learn forgiveness, of yourself and of others

This is how you place the person you want to be

Into a fortune cookie and learn patience

This is how you tell people you’re nothing like your mother

This is how you say you have your eyes, not hers

This is how you lose yourself,

Although you never wanted to be alone

This is how you worry

This is how you let the doctor teach you how to let go

This is how you let the nurse take your shaking hands

This is how you accept the medicine

And be okay with letting others help

This is how you balance your pain with love

This is how you taste the ocean

Without pouring salt into your wounds

This is how you unearth yourself

This is how you reach the end of the world

And leap instead of disappearing

This is how you let go

This is how you stop focusing on living and breathe for yourself

This is how you stop thinking and feel

These are your wrists, those are you scars,

This is your story

These are your hands and

This is how you tell the world

You’re not all bad