On life

The waters of my life, look like the scales of a fish

with the light shining in little crescent moons,

a quilted pattern of glittering threads, like stars emerging

the way they do, when you take the time to truly watch them,

to truly know them.

I am not ashamed of any of my life, not at all.

None of it.

It is the truth, it is my truth,

it is exquisitely intricate

weaved like white cotton, crosshatched thread upon thread

it is as simple as a drawing,

of a friendly face, drawn in minutes

by a child, scrawled with a blue crayon

on paper beige and soft

I did my best with what I knew,

when I learnt more, I learnt how little I knew.

I paused, I blinked slowly, then I did better

Have you noticed, sometimes beautiful and sad are breathed in together,

Hope and loss too, a perpetual inhale and exhale.

I have learnt

I can only love unequivocally

Like a blade embedded in my chest with a name engraved on the handle.

I risk endless bleeding

I have learnt

I can only laugh in the way that rises like a sob,

I can only smile if it reaches my eyes

To live like this, with the tears of sheer wonder in my eyes,

is enough.

Thanks, I think...

I read over my 14 year olds English Journal entry she had left on the printer. She had vaguely mentioned writing about me in her Ethics Journal, but had not shown me the end result.

Rikal -

age 14

English

6/7/11

Ethics journal entry #3

Dear Journal, My mom has influenced me in many ways. She has taught me to be tolerant of everyone, as she herself is lesbian, and I love her. She is the coolest mother ever.

She has taught me that a person's behavior and demeanor is very important, which includes how they conduct and present themselves. You shy away from someone who doesn't pick up on social cues and is obnoxious, or if they have an offending smell most of the time, showing they have no care for themselves.

My mother has taught me that money can't buy everything, especially love. She has taught me to have high standards and to focus on my school work. I learned to not follow the crowd or give in to peer pressure, and to proudly state my views.

She greatly encourages reading, especially from an early age, she taught my sister and I to read herself before we learned at school. We have hundreds of books as proof, so much so that we have three large bookshelves with double rows of books, from amazing authors such as Tamora Pierce and Diane Wynne Jones.

We also all love art, which runs in the family, being present in my mother, sister, myself, and my younger brother is showing promise.

I have been taught that life can be hard, and how terrible drugs are as my mother is always willing to tell me the problems with them, and has shown me pictures on the internet of what Meth does to people. Anything that affects the human body, such as diseases and disorders interests me.

Most of all, I have been taught that a mother is something extremely precious and should appreciated greatly.