by Ella L., 16
when i was younger,
i was obsessed with the ocean
the never-ending magic of the unknown
you remember those days
spent in the backyard castle
or balancing on battered couch cushions
to avoid the living room lava
until one day you decided it was just your carpet
and the castle had the same siding as your dad’s shed
and you moved on.
now most people concern themselves with
“teenage things”
and you see,
I always wanted to be that girl
to be the one who felt what everyone around her was feeling
to let all of the hormones rush in as the boy with the brown hair swung me around
and we entered our own magical castle built by only our passing breaths
and heartbeats that refused to stop climbing
i waited for that day
but it never came
instead
i wanted to stay in the ocean
and the magic castle
and keep on balancing above the pit of lava
i didn’t want to lay in the sun,
waiting for it to scorch off each layer of my skin one-by-one
digging my fingers into the sand
until they came up suffocated
i was choking on the very air everyone else
seemed to breathe
and i couldn’t understand why
i couldn’t understand why parties
seemed to leave me with a weight in my stomach
whether or not i decided to go
as if the feeling of being there was always too much
and i wasn’t enough
and staying home was
too little
too boring
too lonely
it was always
i should be going
i should be feeling
i shouldn’t be—
still dreaming of fairytale endings that don’t exist
i should
i shouldn’t
not what i want
and i never understood that either.
that block against the will of my own heart
i thought maybe it was something everyone had
that i wasn’t the only one fighting a side of myself
trial
without triumph
a never-ending battle waged over a war
never to be won
i thought—
maybe something’s wrong with me
maybe the reason i can’t seem to balance
on the same ground everyone else stands on
maybe why i have to grasp the handle of my life
while everyone else can just let go
is because i took the wrong road
i’m trying to stand on the wrong ground
i’m not ready to drive that car
i could see so clearly
how the glass inside of me
was shattered on the floor
after too many years of being stomped on
and cast into the shadows
i think i tried so hard to fit into the
same stereotype everyone else around me had
that i never took a step back to realize
how beautiful it was that i couldn’t
that the number of times i smacked the ground
and felt the stretch of my face in ways
that never resembled my heart
were not showing me how i was
broken
instead they taught me
that sometimes
the best thing to do with shattered glass is pick up the pieces
and appreciate the way the light makes them glitter
and sometimes
it is better
to be battered
and it is beautiful
to glitter
when everyone else
is just the same reflection
Wall, New Jersey
Bridge Ink 