When I sweat my scars until they run off my chest like a landslide,
paint them on a canvas in galaxy colors,
they look an awful lot like magic.

That is, until I can’t paint them anymore
because they’re sewed like boulders to my flesh
and I can’t loosen the fist clenched around everyone and everything I’ve ever left behind.

How I walk is how you watch me,
the words I speak are unapologetic,
I’m not trying to hold on by the curve of my standout speech,
I’m just a lantern at the edge of the sky.

What I mean is maybe loneliness is exactly what makes me dance in a crowd on a blazing summer night,
even when my heart is freezing from the inside out
and my hands are burning up with everyone they haven’t held.

I believe promises are together
and together is alone
and alone is drowning in a flood of your own unreached finish lines.

But I love my scars,
scratched like sandpaper,
throbbing to the rhythm of love lose lost,
falling to the ground in a dust storm only I can see.

There’s a certain beauty to be found in bruises, but only if you’re looking from the right angle, with the perfect amount of darkness in your vision.

My scars look a lot like learning when you hold them up to the light.