ode to the raindrops among wildfires

February 12, 2018

This is for every girl who grows up thinking they’re destined for greatness

and then they start not to be.

For all the girls who thought they were gasoline

the clicks of their high heels scraping the sidewalks like matchsticks

The girls who think their trail is blazed by forest fires they’ve started

with their own breath.

When you look behind you,

you see dirt smacked on the ground

footprints left scattered by a frenzy of fumbling feet

and not the burning embers you were promised.

Your lips are cracked and peeling

and not outlined with a perfect trail of serpent’s blood.

You taste no iron in your mouth.

You were supposed to be a leader of the revolution

but you are filled with more fractures than the broken stones below you

And you wonder if all those years you thought you were building yourself up for eruption

you became a dormant stack of ashes instead.

And you will stand there, stagnant,

until you realize that not every storm is the same.

You see,

All the electricity you felt inside you was not the spark you were looking for

but rather the pulsing wave that raises up a tsunami

When you exhaled, it was not smoke from a dragon’s lungs

but the flapping of a butterfly’s wings

that starts a hurricane across the world.

Don’t think of these words as just a way to romanticize yourself

as a perfect instrument of destruction,

But know that you have the power to do all this

and so much greater.

You can build cities out of the broken stones beneath you

You can climb mountains out of the valleys you’ve fallen into

You can even bring light back into the empty night sky

once you realize you’ve been holding all the constellations in the palm of your hand.

----- sincerely,

i was you

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