i. love has twelve-hundred different meanings to twelve-hundred humans and heartbreak means six-thousand different things to six-thousand different people, and i want to learn them all. i am full of wanderlust, you see. i\'ve got hands made for holding ticket stubs and tracing patterns into fogged-up bus windows, for packing suitcases and tying shoes. i build myself an empire across my skin and learned to love again. school did not teach me how to build these glass skyscrapers,it did not teach me how to map the rivers across my skin. school tried to teach me to be small. that these cracks were flaws, that light couldn\'t shine through the fractures and scars. school tried to teach me to accept what i was given and did not want, to close my mouth and strive only for perfection.
ii. but i have learned that these cracks are gold, that light can pierce through all. i have learned that i do not have to be satisfied with what i am given. i can fight for myself, for i am worthy. my body may be a temple, but i am the god to whom it is dedicated. do not presume to tell me how to decorate it. i have learned that my mouth is a weapon people seek to disarm, but i am the one in control. and so i open up my mouth and ravens with tigress claws fly out, doves with bloodied wings and falcons with fire-eyes. the world is in my palm.
iii. school teaches us far too much of the myths that speak of men. i have grown up believing that all the heroes are men. but that is wrong, isn\'t it? instead of teaching me of zeus and poseidon, teach me of artemis. teach me of the virgin goddess of the hunt, teach me of her huntresses- the women she granted immortality. teach me of her strength and power, of her grace and wild willpower. yes, teach me of athena, asexual goddess of wisdom and war. teach me of the woman an entire empire revered as the smartest deity. teach me of helen, of sparta, of troy. teach me of the woman who sparked a war- who was the daughter of two kings, not one. teach me of helen the she-wolf who wanted to watch the world burn and got her wish, not of perseus and his adventures. i am tired of these \"heroes.\" i am tired of hearing about female victims and of female innocence and love. no, teach me of how the greek women viewed medusa\'s myth. teach me of how they saw it as athena protecting medusa by giving her the power to turn any man who dared stare at her completely harmless. teach me how the greeks used her head as a symbol or women\'s shelters. teach me of the original myths of persephone, how she was not a little girl, but a woman, how she was not stolen, but chose to go to the underworld. teach me of how her name first meant, \'destroyer of light.\' tell me of how the greeks revered her as the goddess of death far before thantos and hades ever entered the picture. teach me not of the petty and jealous, irrational hera, but of the scorned goddess whose husband refused to stay faithful. teach me of the hera who never flinched before the words of a mortal and was divinity incarnate. teach me of the immortal queen, hera. teach me not of achilles and his invulnerable skin- teach me of atalanta, wild huntress left to die by her father, yet she survived. teach me of cassandra, prophet doomed to find only the ears of non-believers, punished for her rejection of apollo- your golden boy. teach me of the amazons, female warriors of unparalleled strength. and if no one will teach me, i will teach myself.
iv. when i opened up my first book, i was like a newborn babe, naked and wide-eyed to the mesmerizing magic of words. so i took up a paintbrush and learned to cast these spells with the cherry oak wood. my hands are made for shaping the wet, dark clay of my mind into sculptures and my mouth for breathing life into them. because the greatest gift of all is being able to bring life to what is nonliving. so you see, i am made for this magic and it is made for me. let me tell you a story. before bones, before dirt, before even light, i was the untamable expanse of ocean. the blue mirror-of-god, it is churning, heaving proof that i have always been a restless soul. i lick saltwater stains from my hands and yes, they taste like all the shipwrecked songs of my forefathers, but also like every sorrow i used to be afraid of devouring until i understood that this is a place of rebirth too.
v. i am not made for superficial life, i am made for explorations, for learning, for traveling. my heart is an undone spool of threat with knots in a thousand different places. my parents warn me of my limits, but i do not listen. there is a reason icarus flew so high despite daedalus\'s warnings. limits do not keep us from exploring. they never have. without people like us, the world would not have come nearly so far. people who look at the impossible and say, \"perish the thought, why, i often believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast.\" people who saw this magic and instead of being scared, stepped knee deep into the river styx and said, \"fire live inside me.\" people who dare to dream. people who dare to go forth, dare to harness this magic and use it for our own good. yes, it is people like us who have change the world. we are made for exploring.
vi. every night my shoulder blades burst from beneath my skin and twist and writhe as they grow hollow bones and silver feathers. i am made for flying. and like icarus, i will take to the sky and explore even if it means i die.