the mural

You have 24 hours to cry over a broken heart 

and 8 comments that are allowed to toy with your spirit before the past becomes the past 

and the mountains start calling again.

For you freshly broken,

you have 30 minutes to complete your breakups with tender eyes and

you have 60 questions that need answering before the 24 hours is up.

Good luck on the test.

And if the heartbreak stains the furniture,

and your bedroom smells like unanswered questions 

and if his soiled misunderstandings are plaguing the walls he defaced,

if you are still staring at that wall with the hate of your spirit on your collar,

maybe you better start cleaning.

Rub new paint on the previous.

Choose a nice color to clean his mess,

because sometimes that mess is just an accident that you never understood.

If you are still bitter at the boy who found a new playlist,

change the song.

If you aren't content with the mural he drew,

draw a new one.

You may look and look and look in that mirror

but the clothes on your body won't change until you step away and reassemble them.

Little girls, stop crying about old toys.

You're a slave to the adventures you keep missing out on.

And you're blaming your victims for making you victims.

Who said love notes were only love notes if they were bound on college-ruled paper?

Take the card stock in every color.

Embrace the marker thickness and the moleskin page

and take note of all the different types of ink.

Don't be the girl who has a void in desperate need of being filled.

Be the other half of the heartbreak, the girl who grew an extra piece 

and that piece broke off.

She's still full and she's still her,

even if the pain of the wound is still wining and dining her sensitive edges.

Be the girl who is too full 

to be emptied by his callouses.

Be the girl who broke a piece of herself 

but vowed to grow a new one.

He is more a victim than she ever was but you wouldn't believe me,

because some people won't wipe the blood from their cuts

so they still see a mess 

even after it's been healed.

Face your twin heartbreaks in a mirror and remember

 nobody's guilty but you.

Nobody's guilty but you and all the adventures you forgot to go on.

Take a step.

Breathe a little harder.

Remember that I love you and want your eyes to stay the same.

Now go.