"I’ve been on rooftops exactly twice in my entire life.At five foot two, I am not one for high..."

“I’ve been on rooftops exactly twice in my entire life.

At five foot two, I am not one for high places.

But I have so much space inside my rib cage,

I could fill up monasteries with the things I don’t yet know

and the things I want to.

There is an obelisk inside me, searching and hungry,

and the only thing it has ever known

Is how to climb higher.

On the bad days—

the ones where I take the ax to its foundations—

I can never quite find the tipping point to bring her down.

I’ve got hands that always seemed too small for all this knowing,

and holding on is hard with a fist no bigger than your heart.

I am sick of writing about love but

sometimes I keep writing about things I haven’t even felt yet

like the words might be able to open doors

that I’ve been keeping shut

for fear of letting the rain in.

All I know is that the person I’m writing about

is alive somewhere—

with a heart as tall as stars we don’t have names for yet.

So this is me:

spray painting every stop sign between here and Rochester,

drawing you pictures of what my ribs look like

when my lungs feel like they don’t fit.

I have never been one for high places

but I am standing on rooftops in New York City,

handing out fliers where I finger-painted my name:

every one of them saying

find me,

find me,

find me.”

- High Places, by Ashe Vernon