When I was a kid,

I used to look at the world with glazed eyes.

This round, green, rotating sphere.

Its luscious green grass,

The wavering clouds.

It was paradise.

It was death.

 

I had no thought.

No mind.

Nowhere to share my view of the world.

Nowhere to fall or stand.

Nowhere,

Nowhere to be me.

 

Then you fell from the clouds,

Like the rain that falls when the sun can no longer look at the horrors of the world.

You came,

The clouds cleared.

And I was free.

 

Being this new luminous being,

In a town so small,

I couldn't help but feel condensed, pushed into a dark corner.

Where no one could see me but the shadows that have long been plastered there.

No one could see past the fake smile,

No one could break the glass that all so long ago developed the ability to deflect the bullets.

To deflect the words.

The enveloping pains of death,

The hate,

Clawing at every loose string until nothing but the darkness was left.

 

I put myself back together,

Stitched that shadow to my skin.

Breathed the air that was desperate to choke the life out of me.

 

But your arrival showed the goodness of this rotting pile of dirt.

You didn't look at me like a piece of meat ready to throw to the wolves.

You didn't shake your head or tell me I was wrong.

That I was stupid,

Or that I was too timid.

 

School had been a nightmare,

I dreaded the pounding of my feet on the tile,

The battle cries that shook the doors off their hinges.

My head down low as I hurried to the next class hoping that the gun wasn't pointed at me.

That the shooter wasn't going to push me to my knees.

 

Words, the words you've said.

The way you taught me how to see the world.

How to escape to another universe through a portal.

A portal that blasted from pages and pages of different texts.

 

School was no longer lurid

Kids no longer long, slim beasts.

I grew out of the ground.

A sprout, to a tree.

Words couldn't press the thanks that I've so long wanted to express.

I moved, once more.

But I wasn't trapped, I wasn't afraid to talk.

I grew other problems, but I wasn't dying.

I wasn't drowning in the tears that have desperately wanted to escape.

 

You no longer guide me,

But your words are the ghosts that watch over my shoulder.

Haunting my every move,

Haunting the halls of the school.

I am free because of you.

My wings no longer clipped,

The wind no longer vanquished.

 

Thank you.

Thank you for the inspiration.

For not destroying what had been left of me.

I am a new person, because of you.

Rising from the dust like a Pheonix reborn in its ashes. 

I, who once was labeled stupid,

Became my own kind of smart.