"Don’t cry over spilled creamer," my mother said one night when I had told her what’d happened on the bus earlier that morning. She thought it was funny; she didn’t believe me when I spoke of the lies in my head. When I told her that the pressure to be perfect became too much, it became too much of me. My body was full of the worries about tomorrow, my body, full of the mistakes I KNEW I’d make in the morning. My body, full, of, of what? Staring at myself in the cracked mirror—I began to wonder what was real? The false realities of photoshopped faces, by the brushed on masks and crowded places. Tools of the doctor hidden beneath the busy days and smiling pictures of kaleidoscope colors and brushed on faces. What would happen if I just remembered that I did not need to break, in order to be made new again? I was never broken, to begin with. It was my sadness, my anxiety—all of it fallen like shards of glass on my therapist's new rug. Effervescent fireflies eat away at me, eating until I could eat nothing else. It became too much, too much to pick up. That was when I began to understand that my hollow mouth was wide enough to scream out every story. My voice, loud enough to stop the sound of my mother crying over spilled creamer. My mother cries after he was gone, my mother. Crying. I didn’t even need the pain, to begin with!!! I could speak without it. I could speak because my worth was what made me new. My worth held my body tight; it held my mouth open like a burning fire in the night. My worth. My worth. My worth.