Audacity

My elementary school was a box full of broken crayons. You know, the kind that no one likes to use because they fit inside your hands like a hug that lasts three seconds too long. Me and my classmates wore hand-me-down smiles. They were too big for our faces. We figured that eventually we would somehow grow into the sound of our own laughter, put on our happiness like gloves and wear our skin as if our bodies were made by Louie Vuitton, just hoping to be more than tattered pages ripped from the torso of coloring books. More than the aftermath of two runaway trains headed to the same direction. Our parents drove their affection without insurance, and we are just head on collisions with no coverage. We got shattered windshields for eyes, and tongues made out of safely glass held together by super glue. It’s no wonder we spoke broken English. With an entire orchestra drowning inside our throats, veins like guitar strings, our voices cracked like the self esteem of single mothers who carried us in their wombs like Molotov cocktails, and prayed that we would somehow find a way to mature into land mines exploding underneath the feet that have trampled them for too long. These women, they dream in a language only fully understood by the tiles of an abortion clinic on a busy afternoon. They raised us on top of broken promises made by men with grape jelly in their spines who were too busy jamming to their own two-cent mix tape that they chose over their priceless women. We didn’t come with a screwdriver. There is no picture on our box to show you what we should look like when this all is over. We were just put into this world with a note that read “Some assembly required.” We were built inside of a neighborhood that looked as though it was slowly loosing a fist fight to cancer and kemotherapy claimed all of it’s dreams. You see at a young age I was told that no matter how much furniture you move with a Honda Civic, it’ll never be a pick up truck but have you ever wanted to be more than what you were made for? Was there ever moment in your life when all you wanted was to be more than the wounded options that circumstance has nailed to your shoulders? People question why we even have the audacity to breathe. That’s why when we walk it looks as though we are apologizing for our lungs. But we ate not sorry for living this loudly. It’s the only way we know how.