Your mind is a garden, your thoughts are the seeds.

You can grow flowers, or you can grow weeds.

The animals will prance and skip

Among the beliefs of your day

While mosquitoes nip

At your sweet skin like prey

Surroundings will flourish

As long as you nourish

Feeding positive thoughts

That create your plot

So be mindful each day

Of what your loved ones say

To yield the most fruit

As an ab...

I stared at myself in the mirror. “I broke my rules for you!” I shouted, expecting an answer in return. “What have I done?” I questioned.

Two months prior I had started the school year in my classroom for the 10th year. Teaching 7th grade was not for the weak, and I convinced myself all summer I was going to leave. I scoured the internet for job postings, shifting my eyes across the page. _No, no...

Dancing in the grass

we skipped.

Our blue balloons

bouncing along in hand

against the clear blue sky.

Cries of despair

as it slipped.

String sliding

through the small fingers.

I held on tighter.

My mother’s eyes dart

Imploring me

To end the ear-splitting,

Obnoxious outburst.

I began to say goodbye

as I dragged my feet dreadfully

towards the piercing cry

to hand over my prized possession.

Sel...

They say red is the color of fire

But blue burns through,

Scorching

Consuming everything in its path.

It lights me

Crawling

Up my esophagus

Pouring out

Eating me alive.

How can the same flame

sitting tucked in the oven

feed my kids warm cooked meals,

heat my home

destroy it seconds later?

How foolish I was

To turn my back

Unaware would be I silenced....

That Saturday I had gotten a phone call from my friend Brianna asking me if I wanted to come over. I had just finished practice and needed to shower, but decided to ask my mom if she could bring me after.

“Sure, I just have to drop your brother off first,” she confirmed.

But then, while showering, I got another call. This time it was from Hayley. I reached around the curtain to answer.

“Want to go...

When I was little, I used to lay outside and reach my hands up to the sky above, convinced I could touch the great moving clouds if I just extended my arms a little further and float away with them.

“Mary, hurry up!” My ma called back to me from inside the house.

I stood up, still looking at the clouds above wondering where they were traveling to and wanting desperately to join.

“Dinner is almo...

Growing up with two emotionally immature parents in a codependent marriage made me wonder what adult life had in store for me. Did everyone have relationships that centered around overeating and smoking cigarettes after a fight? Was it normal to shout while also walking out of the room?

For years I had watched them both blame one another for their own problems and slap an easy fix on them wheneve...

_Ugh it’s here, _I thought as they walked through the door. I had gone through this once before with my last humans. Spent months being called a good boy and watching a bump grow, only to be left at home with no warning. That’s how I knew what the warning signs were this time around.

I’m still fairly young myself, and my previous owners couldn’t take care of me anymore once _theirs_ came. That’s ...

The mask is slipping

Catch it before it falls

Revealing your true self

The one who doesn’t belong

What if they knew?

The dark room you sat in

The nights you wished

Prayed

To be someone else

What if they knew?

The racing questions

How can you walk among people

Who have so much more value

Than you ever did

What if they knew?

That even now, years later

You’re rethinking your whole identity

The sy...