(no subject)
I don't even know how I managed to do this today, but I DID IT.
Overemotional
When I was sixteen, I promised
never to feel so much again,
I promised never to depend
on someone else for happiness,
and I rewrote that promise as
a warning: run from everyone
who makes you laugh. I promised
to fly below the sun, never to melt -
as sixteen-sugar children often do -
to keep my hands unburnt
and never play with danger.
I swore I wouldn’t be sixteen
in anything but name, in other words,
the kind of promise that snaps
in its construction, that melts
with the heat to weld it. I swore
to a girl who wouldn’t last much longer,
mirror-girl with steely fingers
fisted around promises and anger,
and she learned that rigid steel is brittle,
that it snaps - easy, sharp, fast.
And what melts metal back together?
Fire. So I carried pieces towards the sun
and as it burnt me whole, discovered laughter.
Overemotional
When I was sixteen, I promised
never to feel so much again,
I promised never to depend
on someone else for happiness,
and I rewrote that promise as
a warning: run from everyone
who makes you laugh. I promised
to fly below the sun, never to melt -
as sixteen-sugar children often do -
to keep my hands unburnt
and never play with danger.
I swore I wouldn’t be sixteen
in anything but name, in other words,
the kind of promise that snaps
in its construction, that melts
with the heat to weld it. I swore
to a girl who wouldn’t last much longer,
mirror-girl with steely fingers
fisted around promises and anger,
and she learned that rigid steel is brittle,
that it snaps - easy, sharp, fast.
And what melts metal back together?
Fire. So I carried pieces towards the sun
and as it burnt me whole, discovered laughter.