Break every shame clogged mirror before you begin
(that way you have already begun).
Turn left at the stoplight across from the small brick elementary school that proved to be reprieve from the kitchen table.
Make a fire of the things you used to believe of yourself.
300 ft from where you ate pistachio ice cream sundaes with at least four toppings and not enough friends, turn right not left.
Leave the seeds of self-harm unwatered
avoid being the teenager
who wrings their forearms
until they’re stop signs
stifling sobs
in their bedroom again.
Run miles in the direction of tenderness
you don’t yet think
you deserve.
you’ll know you’ve gone too far if you never lived the decades that suffocated your own voice.
You’ll know you have arrived
when you start to see yourself
when you hear your name
and it sounds like
all the flowers you’ve been giving everyone else.
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