Hands Held Breaths,

Growing Up

You are three asking your mother when will you be four / You are four and full of life and cartwheels / You are five and love everything other than the unbearably flashy rhinestone dress / You are six and scrawny which also translates to being an easy target to bullies / You are six and you befriend the guy who locked you in the playground because he wanted to see a little girl cry but instead, you climbed over a wall three times higher than you / You laughed in his face as his friends ran away, scared of a little girl kicking their asses / Why am I always small? Why do I always have to be strong? / You are seven and great at skating / You are seven and you used the word upside-down when reading Tom Sawyer and you are so proud of yourself for knowing it / You are eight and love life / You are eight and you love life / You are eight and love life / You are eight and you love books and travel and that one time you walked out of the train station when dawn was just breaking / You saw the prettiest sky of your life; a sky so blue and so dark and so light that it stole the drowsiness right from your eyes / I know you still wake up early in hopes that the sky will one day walk down the memory lane with you / You are nine and you swear the house is so big you will get lost here / You imagine playing hide and seek for hours on end here; swear that you almost forgot where the rooms go / You are ten and the house is not so big anymore / It is full of life and things / You are always somewhere / There is a summer there I spent visiting the hospital / I don’t quite remember now / Hospitals sometimes start to feel like home now / Eleven is a happy blur: I love everyone and everyone loves me / Eleven is happiness: I knew everyone and everyone admired me / Twelve is blue and black; there were moments I lived through that I never knew I would miss / Thirteen is a lot of carrying friendships I don’t like / Fourteen is a lot of sighs of relief; of friendships left behind and the year of growing before everything goes to shit / Fifteen is a lot of fun and not remembering things that hurt us; things that haunt us / Fifteen is fun and shenanigans with newfound friends you like enough / Sixteen is hard work / Sixteen is a lot of fighting and sometimes fun / Sixteen is for the bitch face and cuts / Sixteen is a lot of wondering what you’ve become / Sixteen is fake friends and smiles which will ruin you / Sixteen is the year of silly crushes on boys who think the world revolves around them / Sixteen is a lot of “I am almost an adult” / Sixteen is for parties and the time your life was as perfect as those IT kids in the movies / Sixteen is a lot of cold air on your face and feeling this city become home / Seventeen is for survival / Seventeen is for keeping your head down / Seventeen is for breakdowns / Seventeen is the time you snap and take a stand / Seventeen is having your own back / Seventeen is very alone but that’s okay / Seventeen is a lot of cussing and spiraling / Seventeen is for the nightmares / Seventeen is for closures / Seventeen is survival / Seventeen is for the big fuck you which is never said / Seventeen is for winning / Seventeen is for winning / Seventeen is so many goddamn wins / Seventeen is a big fuck you that escapes as a smile / Eighteen is relief / Eighteen is the growing up that sneaks up on you / Eighteen is acceptance / Eighteen is so much happiness / Eighteen is how everything is okay and everything is home / Eighteen is the year of being childish and loving it / Eighteen is a lot of love and happiness / Eighteen is a goddamn dream / Eighteen is doing everything you love and telling it to its face / Eighteen is dreams come true / Eighteen is growing up and growing up and being okay with it / Eighteen leaves with patience / Eighteen is a lot of learning to stay / Eighteen is fading yet forever / I am always going to be eighteen in some parts /

The first memory I have of this town

Is of wanting to leave-

To stand in a place and know you do not belong;

Scratch that.

I remember rain like I remember birth.

I remember puddle jumping in pristine clothes and

Trying to remember things I have long forgotten.

I forgot the light, I forgot existence.

But this? This I remember.

I remember the streets I walked all the way back home, aching;

I remember the loss of that day;

I remember feeling unbridled joy

Of the very next at the glorious win.

I remember screaming songs LOUD

With my best friend on our way to school,

Our own voices echoing in our heads

Like we were masters of a world

That did not exist just yet.

I remember the sneaking out of practice

To meet someone I hadn't seen in months;

I remember not being able to

Lift myself up from the bed

With a body so intact you'd think

I hadn't ever lived through a day.

I remember running miles

On a broken foot,

I remember swimming through all of this dread on broken toes.

I remember punching holes in walls and staring back at hands that were still hands.

Not god, not the powdered dust of my bones yet;

I remember broken knuckles but an intact heart.

I remember thinking I will never be able to get out

And I remember not wanting to leave.

I remember the solace in coming back,

Coming back after days, weeks or months.

I remember coming back.

I remember grocery store chains

And drunken new years';

I remember being 16 and staying up all night

To watch the sun rise; it rained that day.

I remember walking out of the train station,

Rubbing the drowsiness out of my eyes at age 6

And seeing the most gorgeous sky

Like it was yesterday.

I still wake up in hopes of a morning the sky looked that gorgeous.

No. I think I forgot.

I see the city change herself and she has parts I do not recognise sometimes.

I remember coming back to her like I remember birth. Not so much as a definite event

But as something that happened.

She will be here,

Smiling.

A.G.

I was not the broken thing anymore.

I cried and fought and fell

And scratched and clawed

My way back from hell.

I made an armour out of this body,

Grew my heart into a soldier,

Marched to once friendly lines

To cut off all ties

And fought you off

With all my might.

You weren't here anymore

And I grew myself a garden,

Planted my heart in its bosom;

Took the armour out to let it rust,

Felt the sunlight burn my thick skin,

And I almost could feel the years turn,

And could almost feel myself turn to dust.

Hi are you from india sorry if its weird asking out of nowhere

Nope it's completely fine! Yep I am from India. Brown and Proud haha :)

They are having a tickle war like they always do; his small body curled into itself, trying to tuck it within its own bounds, to not have to bear this joyful torture.

They are not people anymore, they are two shrieks of laughter. They are an odd sight to look at: a tall girl, almost a woman, and a toddler of six; an unlikely friendship that looks bizarre but radiates so much joy you cannot help but feel warm.

The girl turns into things she isn't; just for this boy, she turns into a sunny disposition, a pleasant version of herself and she has the gentlest voice. She has hands that do not hurt, she has eyes that smile and she is bubbles of laughter come to life.

The boy comes back year after year to meet his sister; they aren't really siblings, they are distant cousins but there is a lot of love here. And where there is so much love, you feel obliged to put a label. So they were brother and sister, and the oddest duo of the lot. As the years pass by, she sees her brother transform into things she resents; no longer a sweet child, he throws tantrums and uses his hands and fists like the men do. But he isn't a man yet, he is just a little boy.

He is nine and he already thinks it is okay to do things you do not like others doing; he thinks that it is okay to destroy what isn't yours because you could not have it or to scream and cry until you hand him what he asked for. These are trivial things, he is just a child after all.

She walks in on the boy destroying something that isn't his and he throws things at her, makes her mad. He takes pleasure in irritating her; she can tell; he takes her things and claims them as his and she lets him. She feels something come over her; makes her way towards him and traps him in her hold. She tickles his neck and she scratches him.

The boy is screaming and crying and she is devastated. She sees herself transform into things she thought she would never become. She sees an image of her lineage in her. Is this what we inherit?

Suddenly, she is small again. She is not herself, she is the little boy. She is nine, she is seven, she is five years old. She knows she is small so she bites the hands of those who reach out because her fists are still a little girl's fist, even though the size of the fight in her is quite big.

She doesn't recognize herself anymore.

Is this what we inherit?

No.

It runs in the family but this is where it stops.

Bless the hands that fed us, and may there be scars on those who harmed us. May we never become the things that hurt us.

She is twenty-five years old now. And there is an odd friendship in her life that no one understands, but there is a lot of love there. There is a little brother waiting for her.

Boo.

To acknowledge the Monster is to say

It is here,

That it has been here all along;

It is to stand in the dark with a terrible thing

Hoping it does not devour you.

To be hopeful is to be terrified

Of anything otherwise;

It is to hold on

To withering threads of optimism

As the likelihood of the unfavourable

Gets the guillotine ready for your head.

To scream Monster is to say

Here stands a terrible thing

That scares me;

You cannot simply

Take the elephant out of the room

And throw it under the bus,

You know?

To be scared is to admit

You have something to be scared of

And something to be scared for.

To draw a monster and ask yourself

What makes one,

Is to ask yourself what you consider

Dreadful enough to be called inhuman.

To tell stories of your childhood

Is to say it is long gone;

It is to acknowledge

Childhood pushed you off the cliff

And ran away.

It is to say you have been

Free falling ever since,

Trying to grasp at things

That do not stay.

To have an inheritance

Is to say that

Everyone in the family is dead.

To scream Monster

Is to stand in the dark beside it

And say you know terrible well enough

To know what a Monster is.

To say you are here

Is to realize there was a time

When you were not,

That there will once again

Be a time

When you won't be here;

It is to say you don't know

What time is anymore.

To be alive

Is to be terrified

(All the time)

And hopeful,

Even if the guillotine

Is getting ready

For your very execution;

It is to turn the lights off

And sleep in the room

With the Monster

And pray like hell

It does not kill you.

- A.G.

It hurt so bad and I did not want to feel all of this pain and dread anymore.

Bless the hands that fed us, and may there be scars on those who harmed us. May we never become the things that hurt us. -Anika