“i Gave The Clothes Off My Back, Just For You To Stab Me.”

“I miss the person I used to be when I had you.”

“A hero is a person or character who is admired for their courage, achievements, noble qualities, who looks fear in the eyes and doesn’t even blink.”

That is the quote I saw on the wall of my sixth grade students classroom today. I strongly disagree.

All humans have hesitated. It’s instinct. It’s vital. It’s as strong as your heart beating. It is the culmination of thousands of years of survival. Hesitation is a universal experience.

Therefore, a hero always “blinks.” That ‘blink’ is the moment that human beings realize what they are doing. That singular defining moment that changes the gravity of the situation. The exact second that the given circumstances could produce a hero if the right choices are made.

Humans program robots. Robots don’t blink. If a robot were to walk through a path of throwing knives without blinking, would it be a hero? No, of course not. But by the first definition, they technically would be. The reasoning as to why they aren’t? Because the robot faces no repercussions. The robot has no risk. The robot has no real understanding of the danger, nor have they been forced to confront the facts of what they are up against.

That's where we come to our hero blinking. In order to be a hero, you must blink. You must have a moment to see the horrors that all logic would tell to run. Because it’s in that blink that the hero confronts the danger they put themselves in, and pushes forth anyways. That is what makes a hero. To have that shackling sensation of hesitation, and where most others would turn back, they trailblaze on. They trailblaze on anyway.

So here I propose a new definition:

“A hero is a person or character who is admired for their courage, achievements, and noble qualities, who looks fear in the eyes, blinks, and despite facing the world’s darkness, chooses to continue being the world’s light.”

“i don’t know what’s worse: to have lost them, or to have never had them at all…”

“i do. it’s to know which way it was…”

- abby

…

second

twelfth

twenty-ninth 🦊

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

“In a place as dark as this, you’re bound to be a light for someone.”

- abby

For so long I only cried tears of sadness, that it feels magical to shed tears of joy.

FRIEND.

I count the days that have gone by,

To remind myself to be proud,

But the longer the voices have been quiet,

Only makes them all the more loud,

It’s not only when I’m awake I’m fighting,

It happens even when asleep,

I wake up, shaking and shouting,

My veins start to burn as I weep.

That burning hot pain in my back,

Damn, my arms and my wrists and my throat,

can’t smother them with hands or scratches,

It takes over and drapes like a coat.

I can’t help but wonder what’s wrong,

‘Is there anyone out there like me?’

But then I remember my friend, my love,

Good old PTSD.

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

…

fifth

thirteenth

twenty-second 🍁

twenty-third

twenty-fourth

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

…

seventh

eighth

seventeenth

nineteenth

twenty-first 🧺

- part two

twenty-second 🧺

twenty-fourth 🧺

KEYCHAIN.

Walking two miles in the night rain, crying, shaking, nervous,

Feeling like Red Riding Hood,

standing on my grandmothers porch, How do I tell her,

her son’s the Big Bad Wolf?

She tells me in public that effort goes both ways,

That I need to try harder,

She knows that he’s made his choice,

That he doesn’t care and that he’s no father,

The fact that in public, she’ll tell me one thing

and in private, something different

It’s all an illusion and smoke screen.

I know that I was never important.

Holding that stupid keychain is proof that I never stopped trying,

So often I try to make plans and he’d put me off every time,

She’d look at me as I cried to her, with her own crocodile tears,

I don’t know how her son being a deadbeat isnt one of her biggest fears.

And so I left with that same keychain, not knowing what to do with it

Maybe I’d throw it in the woods or a lake, but I couldn’t go through with it.

I held onto that thing for a goddamn year and it taunted me every day

Until I eventually found the person it belonged to, the person with whom it was meant to stay,

I had a whole speech ready to recite upon giving him that keychain,

But of course, when it came time to actually do it, I had nothing in my brain.

I stuttered and rushed and mumbled hoping that whatever I said,

Would still carry its meaning and at the very least make sense.

To my surprise he actually cared, and used his words to convey,

How much he loved and was honored that I’d given him the keychain.

Immediately, he hung it up somewhere safe, making me feel like a daughter,

It was then that I realized I had missed out on what it felt like to have a father.

LOVE, DEAR ABBY