i want to understand what it means to be alive.

the wind whips my hair and my head is full of the universe and i think if i breathe too hard i will destroy the world with the supernova in my lungs. the woods are creak creak creaking; sobs for the mangled trees slumping like wounded children and their cracking bones, old age and they wave back and forth and back

some people are born dead. there's a hollowness in their throats and their eyes and their souls – but do they have souls at all? no. just ghosts and whispers, cigarette smoke in the clouds. dead people exist but they never live.

i want to live. i want to be able to feel everything down to my fingertips and hear birdsong in my bones, harmony with the world. because the world is beautiful, color and swirling water and clouds that just look like clouds; and people are beautiful, sometimes, raw and whole and smiles that reach to their too-full eyes.

i want words to fly off the pages, turn into birds, soar above the sky higher than i could ever be. i want to see them fall to my hand, clutch them in my fist. open it again and see only promises.

i've realized that being alive is only a jumble.

i can't make it make sense.