Once again, this marking period my class was assigned four creative journals. The following is one of my favorites that I’ve written. 

Short Haircuts (False) 
            Even when the happiness gets it's hooks in me like anchors, I have a hard time finding it. Even when the memories of you gut me like a fishhook, I have a hard time letting them go. They occur to me like time and all of the things that I’d forgotten that I’d loved before. They orbit like satellites in my head when I’m trying to sleep, and then I can’t sleep. Maybe I just don’t want to, I don’t want to let go of this.
            The last time that I was happy I was singing to you on the bus. I remember because I had my legs lying across yours, and I had my heart in your hands. You were tracing circles on my knees and you told me that the bruises that always adorned them reminded you of the ones on your mother’s. You said that they were sort of pretty. Nothing about me had ever been pretty before. I had flowers on my shirt and flowers around my heart, I was a garden growing only for you. 
            Daisies grew from the palms of my hands and planted seeds in yours. You kissed each one and reminded me that I was a sunflower who was somehow comparable to a rose. In my own, unique way, I was sort of beautiful; although sometimes the thorns protruding from my arms and neck made me feel more like a freak than a goddess, I believed you. 
            Then, she ripped my happiness away and took you with it. 
            The lilacs that used to bud from my fingertips lost their color, the roses covering my thighs were wilting, and the amaryllises hiding my hips sunk back into their roots. The water I was giving them was not working like your love had. The rain was not a fertilizer for emptiness. They had been living off of your touch as much as I had been; my blossoms needed you like they needed the sun. 
            Now, when I think about how happy we were months ago, I think less of what you made me feel and more of how you made me grow. I think of how you made me radiate. I think about how you were my sun. 
            I cut a smile into my mouth with a razor today. 
            You look happy; I want to be happy, too.