I am a crumbling dam, holding back a flood of words that are yearning to be released. Paradise lies beyond my insufficient borders, but these words—my hostages—can only escape through small cracks in my facade. I don’t mean to hold them captive, but to set them free would be to break, and I am terrified to break. 

I am a broken harp. You can play my strings, but the melody that floats from them will be splintered and empty. I cannot please the ear when my mind is a catastrophic battlefield of unrefined thoughts. My music is all I have, and it is irrevocably broken. 

I am a wilting flower, fighting to keep myself upright. I turn my face towards the sun, but my stem breaks from the pressure. I rest my petals against my floral companions, but my vanquished soul is too heavy for them to bear. I twist, and I turn, and I pray to find a place where I can be enough, but no matter what I do, I fall again. 

I am a flickering lightbulb. You can flip my switch, and for a moment, I will illuminate your path. But inevitably I will go dark once again. I light up a solitary room with my lackluster glow, and soon, I am blinking in and out again, like a strobe light, but with far less enthralling energy. You tap my glass, and I flicker back into commission. You and I both hope this time it will be for real—we know it isn’t really. 

I am lonely bumblebee, zipping around to flowers who have already seen a visitor, flowers who don’t need me. I think I am making an impact, but my services are far from needed. I envy beauty and the ability to create it, but I ruin everything I touch. When I collapse into the hive, exhausted, I have truly accomplished nothing at all. 

I am an infinitely cocooned butterfly. Inside my unadorned shell are shimmering wings ready to soar, but I will never escape from this prison. I am wriggling and squirming, trying to escape this trap, knowing there is no hope for me. The potential I bear will never be known because I can’t so much as escape the cell I created for myself—the horrors of my doing. 

I am a drooping leaf in a gentle breeze, unable to lift off the ground. I watch the leaves around me pirouette like ballerinas across the baby blue sky, while I merely flit and scuff my way over the muddy ground. I try to push myself upward, to be like everyone else, but the strength it takes to raise an inch above the pavement is enough to send me spiraling downward again. No matter how hard I try, I cannot get up.

I am a tired writer who sat down to write an ode to being sixteen and couldn’t get a single word out. I tried, and I tried, and I tried again before I turned back to what I know so well—pain, and sadness, and brokenness. Every time I think I have it down, something falls into disarray again. I am constantly trying to mend the shattered pieces and make myself finally whole. I don’t know why it never feels like enough.

Can’t it just be enough?