Maybe my heart was meant to be a pitcher. The kind you can fill up to the brim, and always ready to pour.

Once upon a time, I protected my heart.

Because I thought it could run out of love juices, and become an old discarded container.

What use is a pitcher, without any liquid to pour?

Maybe I did run out of juice.

Maybe I got scared, and thought I would be abandoned. All alone, face planted in a puddle of embarrassment and shame.

Will you still love me, even when…(fill in the blank)?

I built walls of sarcasm and “I don’t give two f*cks” around a highly sensitive organ, that requires oxygen to survive.

I closed the valve of intimacy, pretending I don’t care.Rolling my eyes with, “Duh, I don’t need you.”

My super hero cape, muffled the tender rhythm of my heartbeat, so no one could ever hear or hurt me.

Sentimental gestures made me shift uncomfortably with, “I may throw up in my mouth,” vulnerability.

Instead, I shot energetic “ice swords,” at anyone who dare get close without warrant.

It’s pretty scary for someone to hold the hand of, “I wish a mother f*cker would,”

because maybe, they really think she would.

And so I slid my straight razor, back into my black boot of conquest, but what did I really win?

A life free from pain is no life at all, because it is not real.

A Velveteen rabbit may become hairless overtime, with eyes that pop out, but will never forget the sweet memories of a little boy’s adoration.

Real, is characterized by risks we take to wiggle back into our own comfortable skin of belonging.

Even if it’s aging, soft, hairless, wrinkled, and unsure.

The fight for ourselves is the Title Fight.

However many championship rounds it takes to beat us back into believing we are enough.

We will get bloody, bruised and scarred,

Our self worth, knocked out by shiny mechanical toys, parading across social media feeds.

Perfect pictures, on walls with “do not touch me” signs.

But Pinocchio has a choice to stop playing the part of the puppet,

Remembering the freedom of real boy and girl childhood dreams.

There is life waiting to ooze out of the cracks of our robotic existence.

We were not made to hang on walls.

We were not born to look pretty and admired from afar.

We were made to be felt, seen, touched, known, tasted and loved.

Both feet fully planted in the glorious mud of our own messy existence, full of ups and downs twists and turns.

We were meant to belly laugh until we snort, with snot coming out of our noses.

We were made to love so fiercely, our hearts break open.

Then after long nights of weeping, we take the remaining tissue, and wipe our asses, because we always get back up.

With a wink and winning sense of humor.

Our feelings may be hurt for a day or two, but we only know one direction.

To rise.

What if walls were not borders, but just fun obstacles to climb?

What if we welcomed hurricane winds of change, with all our sh*t, strewn on the surface of our own lawn?

So what?

We clean up the poopy mess, throwing garbage away, because we know less is more.

Then we twirl madly, like lotus flowers amidst a dirty pond, because we are no longer weighed down by our own bullshit.

We may stand cold, wet and tattered in the pouring rain, but the difference is, we know how to dance in storms.

Life is too goddamn short to armor our bombshell spirits anymore.

Let’s wear passion on thousand sleeves.

Unafraid to burn through human skin, igniting outdated fairytales of “this is how it should be.”

May we all laugh naked, in the ashes of who we thought we “needed to be,” and rewrite our own stories, with war painted cheeks of revolutionary magic.