This is a poem/short story about the stages a teenager goes through at this time in their lives. We are all changing and have several obstacles we have to overcome as we leave home and venture out into a seas of “what ifs.” This is the person inside all of us that is purely human. The person that is filled with fear, but courage; anger, but joy; and darkness, but light. Read this as if you were thinking about the times and moments in your life where you hit rock bottom and then came out on top as you accepted change.

“If you can’t accept change, you will never make it out alive.”

Reference to the “Hero’s Journey”:

He walks out of the parlor, his hat whips the floor,

The long road ahead, he screams for more.

He curses at the sky, the bloody thunder

Ruthless in his dark, mud-filled lies.

The left or the right, he scrapes at the stream.

It shouts out the promises of escaping his demons.

The shoes peddle the well of water,

The laces tied in knots hit his valley of treasure.

A letter from his daughter,

A lock on the mind of his nightmares.

The ghost of his lover stabs the sun.

A shadow hums tunes of weeping and smiles.

He weeps to the wild,

Smiles to the piles of dust he created.

He whispers to the bat that swoops down and disappears,

Into the horizon, the light blinks, blinding his eyes.

The darkness erases him.

It erases us.

It erased you.

He can change, yet he can't change.

"Why me?!" he echoes.

He travels the broken path across the unknown.

He falls, he moans.

The creature within him breaks the chains.

He bites the heart of black,

Lying on his back at home...

"What is home?" he wonders.

It's unfamiliar, it's unknown.

He's a cowardice of tears,

He's a smile of fears.

The fears that drift,

That spark his mist of the idea of brightness.

He comes alive,

He doesn't hide.

He is the moment of beauty.

He changes.

He walks on the pathways of decisions,

A fall, another obstacle to overcome.

He's the drawing of every situation

The act, the creation, the creator.

He's you

Nor

me.

He's the lesson of our lively demons... and inner dreams.