Forget the Fall

It's easy to lose yourself when you're falling in love with someone else. Who wants to show the less attractive aspects of themselves Every smile brightened me, every frown somehow tucked away a part of me, until certain shards could no longer be found. What is a sky with a few less stars Relatively unchanged, yet different, still. But what of a sky without the moon I could not be sure if the missing shards were insignificant or the brightest parts of me. And so, when the intensity of love faded into something more routine, I started to examine what had become of me. Slowly I dug out those shards, stars in my night sky. With or without love, on either side of Cupid's telescope, I am beautiful. This is the mostly free-verse poetry collection of a southern teenage lesbian learning what it takes to find yourself in a world telling you to be something else.