Fight or Flight

When I look at the sky
I hear the stories my grandmother told,
about how she spent her days wishing she were somewhere else.
because her ceiling fan never spun fast enough to help her fly,
and when the nights are too hot and the days are too cold
it’s hard not to suffocate.
and when she moved in with the boy two towns over,
she finally felt like she could breathe.

My mother told me that growing up
beauty was hard to capture,
because she was taught that she couldn’t find it in a mirror.
so she found it in my father’s smile,
and in the winter he kept her warm
because he ignited a fire she didn’t know she had.

My parents taught me about perception.
but you can only search for so long,
before you begin to feel lost too.
so I tied myself together with ribbons
stitched a dream on each shoulder,
and found a new place to call my home.