1. When you feel like you want to cut, take a marker, pen, or sharpies and draw a butterfly on your arm or hand.
2. Name the butterfly after a loved one, or someone that really wants you to get better.
3. You must let the butterfly fade naturally. NO scrubbing it off.
4. If you cut before…
So here we are, keeping the lights on and looking with drunken eyes on
blank white walls and peeling wallpaper, broken bottles and
yesterdays that ended too soon.
The little drummer boy is beating himself silly against the walls of our forsaken hearts and, try as we might,
the beating never stops.
But we still reach for each other in dark stairwells and cars parked in deserted lots,
Raise our eyes to the heavens and look straight through the Milky Way,
The shooting stars falling on us like the specks of dust gathering on our skin.
We find things to be more simple, more black and white,
Like the old photographs buried beneath the weight of all that happened after,
More concrete like the walls we so often wish would consume us.
We find that we are always second-guessing, but never confessing that we want
things to be different,
That things should be different because we are too young and the pain is too great.
And so we are left here, gathering up the falling stars and trying to stay afloat, each moment bringing us closer to the middle of the ocean,
The moment when we discover if the five-year-old swimming lessons
Ever did any good.
