These Are the Words: Fearless verse to find your voice

by Nikita Gill

Everything is on fire, but everyone I love is doing beautiful things and trying to make life worth living, and I know I don’t have to believe in everything, but I believe in that.

May you find someone who makes you a poet. May you find someone who shows you love doesn’t have to hurt when it can heal.

The universe already thinks of you as a star. It knows that you are already its wildest dream come true. Just like this. Just as you are.

A WORD OF CAUTION Nothing lasts forever. It’s not that love wasn’t enough. Love was enough and then it ends – it has always been fruit. Fruit is a perishable, seasonal thing. Meant to flourish in the spring and summer, it is either devoured, Or left to rot.

The movies will tell you that you come out only once, but ask any queer elder and we’ll tell you you come out your whole life. Some will be marred with spite, but so many will be celebrated with light.

If no one else sees you as sacred, that’s when you build a temple out of yourself, your own hopes. Become your own God if that’s what it takes to follow your dreams.

The day I decided I would be my own father, that I don’t have to go looking for hope in anyone else’s arms, if I know exactly how to grow it myself.

ON BEING THE OLDER SISTER The most common dream anyone ever has is the one where they’re falling. The terror in their eyes that there is nothing to break their fall, and somewhere in your life you learned that it is your job to break everyone’s fall, to protect them from even themselves. You learn micro expressions as a child to be able to determine if your parents are happy or sad and if they’re sad how to fix it. This isn’t just pressure; this is the way of life you were taught, to give and give until there is nothing left any more. You’ve been fixing things for everyone for so long, you don’t even notice the damage to yourself any more. Maybe it’s time to stop carrying the whole world on your shoulders. Maybe this is time you set it down.

The way you know your bones are dipped in courage is when you stand up to those you love the moment they do something you morally disagree with.

You are not too young to have morals and principles that are different from older members of your family. When they say you are ‘too young to understand’ it is a way for them to escape accountability.

WHEN YOU NEED BOUNDARIES There is a storeroom inside our hearts and it is where we keep all our guilt / the guilt of knowing that even though we love our parents / we are happier when we are not in their company / A friend once told me that growing up meant that your parents go from being gods to human / that losing faith in them is a rite of passage / Once we were young enough to believe / they were both gods / that magic was real / before ‘because I said so’ stopped being good enough / and instead became the storm before the hurricane starts / before resentment tinged the edges of every conversation / before we knew not to question God / when once upon a time we believed in everything we were told / Now we grow older / build our own gods / and ask for respect in a way our parents aren’t used to.

FOR DAYS OF BREAKING When you were a child, someone you trusted taught you that breaking was a synonym for weakness. And because you were young enough to believe in everything you believed them. You believed that tragedies needed to be locked away inside your spirit. And that’s what happened, didn’t it? You learned how to build galaxies where your sadnesses became stars that glittered inside you, where wounds made up whole constellations. You quickly hid them where no one could see. No one told you that wounds fester. That which you leave unspoken only serves as a cage for your golden voice. If there was a way to unlearn suffering, then it is this, the fine art of breaking. So let your tears fall free, allow yourself the waves of sadness that you have been keeping at bay for so long. It is not weakness. If you need evidence, just look at the night sky and know that all across the vast universe nebulae are constantly breaking to come back stronger as stars that did not exist before.

FOR THE DAYS YOU FEEL UNHEARD In a world designed in such a way that the loudest voice in the room is treated as the most valuable I hope you remember the quiet of the trees. How they stand there, tall and listening, home to everything that sings and grows, a beacon of loss in winter and lush hope in the summer. When the wind blows through them, they serenade us with this gentle folk song, their most ancient secret: You do not have to be loud to be heard. You do not have to be loud to be brave. You do not have to be loud to be beautiful. Nothing is expected of you, other than growing in the most sacred of ways.

FOR WHEN YOU ARE TIRED OF BEING CALLED STRONG After it happens, your friends will call you strong. And strangers may call you strong. Everyone who hears will use words like that, ‘strong’, ‘strength’, ‘resilient’, ‘brave’, and you will tire of them. You will want to peel off your skin and discard it, ask someone to trade bodies with you so you can remember what it feels like to be normal instead of this hero everyone is determined to make of the worst thing that has ever happened to you. It’s hard to explain how your body feels like a broken bowl that everyone keeps fixing with glue and then turning away the side that shows the damage, looking at the pretty side admiringly and saying, ‘Look, it’s as good as new.’ But it doesn’t work like that. Trauma knows where you live. It knocks on your door when you least expect it, finds you at a friend’s birthday or wedding, in the bathroom when you are getting ready, in the arms of a lover in the middle of a movie. To the people who are living with the aftermath, know that it is okay not to be strong for anyone. That you are still a survivor, when your body’s wracked with sobs, Hiding under your blanket, wishing you could disappear. That doesn’t make you small.

WHEN THEY SAY YOU SHOULDN’ T TALK ABOUT IT Remember that the only bridges not worth burning are the bridges you feel safe enough to cross because the people on the other side have seen you after the wildfire, after the ashes of who you were, watching the embers of who you are becoming, and continue to love you through it all.

WHEN YOU HATE YOURSELF FOR REVISITING OLD WOUNDS You revisit old wounds for the same reason birds will come back to the places their nests have been destroyed. The mind walks into the same room because it wants to know how to fix those floorboards, paint the walls, turn this into a more habitable place if it tries something different from the last time. This is survival. This is learning how to live through pain once the skeletons have decided to walk out of the closet and refuse to go back in again. Call it the worst story you have ever owned, a car crash within your bones that you cannot stop staring at. But the only way to understand pain is to look at it and feel it without turning away. There is no shame in this. Eventually, it can scab over and heal.

You are angry and anxious because you never agreed to live in a burning home while the people who should care pretend the fire doesn’t exist. Distress is a valid emotional response to injustice.

SHOUT-OUT To lady sharks that eat their mates if their mates pester them a little too much. To female Komodo dragons who are capable of virgin births. To grandmother elephants and orcas, the old battleaxes who always lead the herd. To male seahorses who carry the eggs to term and give birth to them. To lionesses for always being the ones who bring home the bacon – without exception – all while nurturing the young of other lionesses too. To the queen bee that keeps every hive alive and to every female bee that does all the work to generate honey. To all the girls who have woken up thinking their lives are over because they have been taught to give and give and give until nothing is left of them. To all the girls who have broken the expectations, the norms, what was expected of them. To all the girls who have dreams of being somebody, we won’t let those dreams go to waste. To all the girls who came before us, we will evolve and revolt and make this world a better place.

AN ODE TO BODY HAIR My body, then young and gentle, knew it is fertile ground for forests. Forests of dark hair grow to protect me, and still I am told to get rid of this canopy. That I am not beautiful unless smooth. At school I am made fun of for my moustache, and so I learn the first test of womanhood, the cutting down of these trees as sacrifice to a goddess invented by the patriarchy. She with her smooth skin and long hair, perfect features and hourglass body, curves in all the right places, the woman they demand me to be. No. I will no longer bleach and wax and laser my body to fit into their moulds, I am not going to hollow myself out for the uses of someone else. This body is a gift to reside in, every feature an idea from your soul, because that’s what it found beautiful. I will build my own goddess, one that looks like me, limbs of forest hair and eyes full of stories.

Other people’s ideas of beauty do not have to be wounds you hold inside your heart.

In heaven there is forgiveness for every lie you told yourself to keep surviving.

The stars do not apologize to the universe when they are writhing and dying out slowly. And you are not obligated to forgive anyone but yourself.

I cannot stress this enough: you live for yourself first. He is a secondary character in the story of your life. Do not allow him to turn you into a secondary character in your own book.

Treat the loneliness like it is a prophecy. Allow the hunger to come. Then nourish your body with everything you have been denying yourself.

Remember that the ashes make your bones fertile for what you want to grow.

You’ll see her talking to a new girl with the joy she once only had for you and your bones will ache. We are creatures desperate for closure. But no amount of asking or begging makes her tell you what you did wrong.

You realize there is no cure to grief but love. So you put away your friendship. You learn to love it in crystallized moments. Once upon a time, you remember, someone loved me so much we did everything together. And then you learn how to grieve for someone who is still alive somewhere across the world and wish them well.