While my friends, all beautiful with diamond promises on their left hands, live out overflowing love and
beginnings, I’m here in this empty, secret, overgrowth garden that is the middle of me. Hope waits at the
gates as I swing myself over and over the green pond at the center and rub fallen pink rose petals against
my too still chest like it’s some ceremonial thing. The claps and whoops of joy are thunderous beyond the
stone walls of me, so I crank up the string instrumentals and ask the plants if they’ll sing louder to drown
them out.

I close my eyes;
I close my eyes;
I close my eyes
And lay back.

I close my eyes and lay back and stare straight into the face of the sky and clench grass in my fists and
will the tears away and plug my ears because one day the doors will be blown wide open; one day I’ll be
able to step out into the sun.

I close my eyes and lay back because one day.