What You Like

I like the way the rain sounds as it trickles down my window on sleepy mornings, how the beats sound like marching soldiers walking into battle with every tap on the glass reminiscent of the footsteps of fallen heroes. I like Central Park in the summer, the snapping turtles in the pond remind me you can be in a shell but still be part of something bigger than you. I like that no one really understands me. I like how the vines on the 18th avenue train station in Brooklyn make me feel at home because I’ve always felt in a past life I lived in a rainforest. I like how you can see the Statue of Liberty and all of New York on the bridge before the Barclays Center stop on the N train, my favorite part is how on the right day the light will reflect off the water and it looks like ultraviolet rays are dancing in front of you. I like that I’m too smart to be lied to. I like the way my ex will always blink two times before he lies to me. I don’t like how we ended. I like how pretty my mothers smile used to be before she met a woman named Bulimia who rotted her teeth, soul, and body from the inside out. I like keeping things quiet with the tv and music turned down because loud noises make me nervous like 10,000 other things. Sometimes I like being overly sweet to strangers like Rupi’s “ Milk and Honey” but not so much to myself which is how I ended up in a mental hospital with scarlet stained wrists and battles in my head. I like how my parents met in rehab but never really got it together. I like how that last sentence was sarcastic just like the rest of me. I like how I’m perfectly perfect the way I am but it took a lot of imperfect situations to make me realize it. I like long hugs and warm embraces from people I feel safe with but sometimes my abandonment issues don’t let me feel safe with anyone. I like how that’s somewhat of a paradox in itself and it just goes to show how life works. I like those types of people who talk to me about ghost stories, witchcraft, and aliens because I never really cared for living in a present day reality. I like how when I was younger I used to chase the sun around in my backyard thinking it was following me but I grew up to learn the only star that follows you is the person you decide to make of yourself. I like how one’s state of mind makes up the thin line between chaos and happiness, so to all of the people that ever made me feel inferior to myself you were just the punctuation at the end of a sentence as I started over and over and over again; Like, “ I like I like I like “ I like to feel safe all the time because nobody understands the nights I cried myself to sleep in heartbreak turning my body over for desensitized souls who could not see greatness in me. I have fought wars inside of myself I have been shipwrecked and lonely, I have played x marks the spot with steel knives on my skin leaving me with permanent time capsules of pain embedded into my body. You don’t understand until you are 6 feet deep drowning in your own thoughts telling yourself there are so many people who fell in love with your words and not your story so when they opened the book they didn’t know which chapter to start from. You don’t understand what pain is until you are objectified by the one person you want to love you. Pain is giving your all into a broken person and not understanding why you keep coming up empty handed. There are people in this world selfish enough to taste you but at the first sign of trouble their tongues will turn sour, they will abandon you in cowardice like a Neo-Judas, taking everything you’ve given them in vain, leaving you strapped to an anchor in the middle of the ocean with nothing but salt in your mouth and a hole in your heart, and these are going to be the times you need to take a look at the world and remember what you like.