these are dangerous thoughts

only to be entertained

in the shadow of 3am

or the fog of a few too many drinks

or perhaps even when trapped

within the labyrinth of your arms

with your breath on my neck

and my heart beating the words

for all to hear

I might love you

and nothing could ever be

quite so pleasantly terrifying

as those words beginning to have meaning

before this it was just four letters one syllable

as tall as an oak as wide as the sky

but feasible

and you were just a boy

with angel hair and technicolor eyes

and I was just a girl

with a Rudolph nose and virgin thighs

and now I'm churning

with doubt and suspicion

of something fearful and found

the sort of thing people write poems about

there are words

buried beneath layers of concrete tucked between my ribs in the place you used to be

words I cannot even begin to speak

their pronunciations long forgotten

words that could translate the Braille of my

scars into poetry

words that would make tragedy a beautiful thing

these are the words I used to sing

but they're lost now

to the streams of sorrow that erupted at the realization that beauty doesn't transform pain it simply masks it

and I was sick of being a masterpiece of sorrow

I'm still so goddamn sick of being put on display

as the one who made it

cause I sure as hell haven't arrived safely and my flight was shit but thank you for asking

so polite

so careful

as if I'd shatter I'm already coated in cracks but one tap might send me from unique to catastrophe

and you might have to recognize that some never leave rock bottom

I live here

and throwing down a stone like "it gets better" never helped me climb I'm being buried by your confidence and boys who think love means leaving when things get messy and girls who say I'm a shitty friend anyways cause every time I open my mouth the only thing that comes spilling out is silence because I've burned the pages of words that used to explain my decay

not that you'd want to read them

I was never any good at this

here's the thing:

we were always only ever half of an entity

and your arms never truly held me

more position than action

like holding hands with unlaced fingers

like kisses when your lips don't linger

the truth is we never were ever quite what we thought

and you were only ever just caught

I want strong words

to paint beautiful pictures

of the explosion of emotions.

I want strong words

to hit people hard and raw

shove their face in my truth.

but why should they be faced

with my own truth, based on

my own experiences?

I've never noticed this

and I wonder if there is

an objective truth

a stand alone truth

that nobody is ever able to see

because we are all biased

all of our lenses are distorted

who knows if we are affected

by the alignment of celestial

bodies. Who knows if being born

A Virgo makes me detail

oriented. When is coincidence

part of the truth, and when

is truth just part of your beliefs?

On the quantum level, particles act differently when observed and when not observed. It is believed the observed differences is due to what the observer believes is going to happen influencing the behavior of the particle. These experiments show how we subconsciously control our environment.

When an event occurs that we do not understand we try to explain it within the realm of our understanding. An example would be the spread of illness. Prior to the knowledge of bacteria it was believed that illness was caused by an angry God for your sins or because you were cursed by someone wicked. We now know this isn't the reason but at the time it made perfect sense to those claiming this was the case.

Therefore, I believe it is us who search for reasons to what happens in our lives. In an attempt to make sense of things we do not understand, bring closure, find peace, and nurture hope for the future. There is something reassuring in the thought of karma - someone bad getting what they deserve, eventually. Just as there is something comforting in finding a reason that something bad happened to someone who is a good person.

Finding the reasons that something has happened gives the illusion that it happened for a reason.

Do whatever you want!

Seriously! We love to see things that go against the norm. Go crazy! Write the same word 500 times or write one word and nothing more. Plus, comment and like lots of things! The more you get involved the more people will get involved with you! I adore the people here, they're incredibly supportive and sweet and kind. There's absolutely nothing to be afraid of here. Welcome to Prose! Keep writing!

Whether parents want to acknowledge it or not, the world has started teaching their children about sex long before that first sex ed assembly or the dreaded birds and bees discussion. The issue is that little boys and little girls are getting two completely different sides of the coin and this miscommunication can lead to a lot of issues with intimacy and relationships later in life. Most sexual conversations between children and adults focus mainly upon the mechanics and biology of the act. While it is fantastic to know what a fallopian tube is and to understand why our bodies go rogue on us once a month and turn our lady parts into a literal horror show, this and other parts of our internal anatomy will not be big players in our sexual coming of age. I don't know about anyone else, but my uterus did not cross my mind once in my first sexual experience. It didn't cross my mind much after it either, until there was a person growing in there. In fact the internal workings of our productive system is not even remotely sexy or relevant until we plan to start reproducing, the key word being plan which I feel is an entirely different conversation.

There is another part to the conversation that is simply not happening as frequently and I feel that it is a major cause for the discrepancies in the sexual experiences of men and women. It is the why question. There are three reasons people have intercourse; reproduction, love, and pleasure. Reproduction is the reason most birds and bees convos focus on, and depending on whether you are male or female your peers and environment will focus on one other reason. I'm sure you can guess which reason gets overlooked when it comes to young women. While young men are thumbing through the pages of contraband pornography and learning how to effectively conceal the not so occassional traitorous stiffy, young ladies are being spoon fed the promise of everlasting love by way of magic fairy dust, candlelight and Dirty Dancing. Adolescent girls much unlike adolescent boys, rarely even have arousal explained to them. Instead, women are taught to wait for that just right moment, with that just right man, who has that just right feeling for her. In an effort to keep us disease free and our wombs empty, our environment attempts to turn us into Goldilocks. It's all very nice in a storybook but unfortunately real life can rarely accommodate this mentality.

Essentially from the gate women are taught to view sex as an emotional act while men are taught to view it as a physical one. I feel that the effect this infallibly unrealistic expectation has on women as they mature can be emotionally damaging for numerous reasons. While I fully acknowledge the emotional connection that can be found in intimate relationships, I don't believe this kind of emotional maturity is likely in adolescence when most initial sexual interactions occur. We are expecting grown up emotional intelligence in adolescent relationships. It is a set up for failure and I feel that it can also impede a woman's ability to have a healthy sex life as an adult.

Sex is not a dirty word, it is a fact of life. We should empower young girls to understand and embrace their sexuality instead of turning sex into a biology lesson or a John Hughes movie. In any case the truth remains, as parents we decide who our children's teachers are and if it isn't us it will be someone else.