I bet I can scream louder than you

For the nights when the voices come instead of sleep,
For the nights when your walls turn to rivers,

Remember one thing: you're bigger than they are.

They're there and they're loud, and they're screaming but they're not big. They just sound big because it's so empty in

here.

They are echoes. They
are not you. You are not the demons and you don't belong to them, no, they

they belong to you

You are not how you feel at three am, in fact you are not your feelings. Your feelings are just the side effects of having a hurricane sitting above your shoulders. You feel their fingernails as they pass but that doesn't make you the marks it makes you

real.

You're alive at three am and you're feeling this.

there's two of you in this duel and only one can win before the sun comes up and shows you that the ghosts are gone for now.

You know they hide during the day because they're cowards, right? When the sun shows its face and shows you yours in that broken mirror, they flee from the eye contact because they can't handle all that supernova inside there.

You.

The demons are afraid of you. the ghosts are hiding in the closet because they're scared of you not because you're scared of them. You don't know they're on a leash and the end of that leash is in your hand but

they know.

yank it. Tie it. Don't let them tie you up at the wrists. don't let them run free in a place that doesn't belong to them, it's not a playground it's a

battlefield.

an executioner's block on which their blood will be shed because they don't own the burning bush behind your forehead, you do. Tell them to take off their shoes it's

sacred ground. In there.

you're not three am. you're just passing through. I'm just passing through. The place where our eyes burn and our chest hollows out and fills with all the things we never said, could have said, the things we never should have said, things we did, things we wish we had an eraser for, the dark places,

we don't live there

we're just passing through ok? Don't give out your name or your number, don't settle in because you're not staying here. You're going to breathe in and breathe out in that sacred skin and you're going to keep walking in the direction of the dawn. And you're going to remember that the sun is coming up to illuminate the shapes that make up your face and remind you that you are outer space wrapped up in flesh like a Christmas present. You are an IED. You are ripping apart at the seams with a world we don't know about,

a place only you can take us. show us.

You're bigger than them.

They can only hurt you if you tell them where the knives are. You don't belong to them. They're the invaders.  The debris in the hurricane is not the hurricane, it's just something it picked up from somewhere else.

you are not what happens in your hurricane at three am and you are not alone in that place however much you might feel like you are. we are there together and we are bigger than they are.

lOVE

kATE