The rain gurgles as the drops chase each other through my gutters. That and the thunder are the only decipherable noises over the sound of my fingers typing away at my lavender-colored keyboard—the same keyboard that I have used to write more poems than I will ever publish.

Yet, in my future, I foresee having to publish the deepest parts of my adolescence in order to profit off of my teenage years. I will tear myself apart over and over again and will use my pen to relieve the pain from having to keep my words selling and impacting. 

I’ll sell my anxiety-soaked nights in book form to kids who feel the same way. 

My worn down “E” key will get plenty more use as I chip away at my problems with the same intensity that I punch letters onto the page. I continue to stain the white canvas with organic shapes in order to tell a story—my story, to be exact. 

And my heart and my head will collide in passion as they fight and feud over how much of myself to expose to a world that can be cruel, a world that could tear me apart even more. 

The Earth will rip me apart like the papercuts that scar my fingers from impatient page-turning in a story that wasn’t done being written yet. 

I will pick up the pieces of the seemingly unsalvagable wreck of myself just in time for me to write a sequel—a sequel that will not make me nearly as much money for I’ll have run out of metaphors for my pain. 

There will eventually come a time where I’ll have exhausted writing about all the clutter that lines my bookshelf, and there will be no more flowers for me to project both my pain and healing onto. 

And all the empty journals in my closet that sit empty and unused will be filled with words of my choosing. I bought the journals based on the cute cover art and the fact that I enjoy spiral-bound notebooks more than I’ll ever enjoy the composition notebooks I had to purchase for school; hopefully, I’ll keep them because I adore the words I’ve filled them with.

I’ve always written about my emotions as they’re in the forefront of my mind; the words string themselves together as my emotions evolve. And while words have always had the power to set me free, I also feel tied and connected to the ones that I choose to use—words are both an escape from reality and a binder to my past. 

My words are as much a part of me as my blondish-brown hair and my blue eyes that match my father’s; the emotions I weave into stories are the threads that make up my soul. 

I want to make a name for myself and publish the parts of my adolescence that I’m ready to share, but I’m not willing to sell my soul to do that. The words that I will use to tell my story are chosen meticulously, I will double-check verbs and switch out adjectives to convey my emotions and the correct meaning. 

And I wish that I could report that the rain outside is the only thing on my mind, but I seem to be zeroed in on the future of my words and the gravity they will come to have.