Pretty That's what I am, I guess. I mean, people have been telling me that's what I am since I was two. Maybe younger. Pretty as a picture. (Who wants to be a cliché?) Pretty as an angel. (Can you see them?) Pretty as a butterfly. (But isn't that really just a glam bug?) Cliché, invisible, or insectlike, I grew up knowing I was pretty and believing everything good about me had to do with how I looked. The mirror was my best friend. Until it started telling me I wasn't really pretty enough.

In my limited realm of experience, beginnings led to endings.

Your hurt swallows ine, like space swallows time, and the two intertwine. We tangle together.

Am I more afraid Of taking a chance and learning I'm somebody I don't know, or of risking new territory, only to find I'm the same old me? There is comfort in the tried and true. Breaking ground might uncover a sinkhole, one impossible to climb out of. And setting sail in uncharted waters might mean capsizing into a sea monster's jaws. Easier to turn my back on these things than to try tjem and fail. And yet, a whisper insists I need to know if they are or aren't integral to me. Status quo is a swamp. And stagnation is slow death.

I fell for a boy from the wrong side of the tracks.

He has built a pedestal for her so tall that she is afraid to be lifted atop it, because to fall would mean certain death. But oh, she would rise far, far beyond fear and be held by arms so strong, and love so pure, that falling would not be an option.

Coyotes hunt in packs, and so do assholes.