• I am the intrinsically sorrowful and the unfailingly joyous.
• I am the one who is terrified of praise, because it reminds me of all the ways I might disappoint or frustrate you.
• I am the one who sometimes feels so shy, a whisper is all I can bear to speak in.
• I am the one who drinks your stories like a siphon, but may never find the words to tell my own.
• I am the one who is endlessly thrilled by the company of children, animals, and elderly people, but mildly horrified by everyone in between.
• I am the one who would never invite anybody to her island, but will always resent the oceans that separate us.
• I am the one who'd watch you for an eternity without wanting to be looked at.
• I am the one who forgives long before you think to wound me, but may unwittingly carry the pain forever.
• I am the one who is eternally baffled by norms and expectations.
• I am the one who roams because I can't yet fly.
• I am the one who has never known a being who didn't deserve heaven, but could never imagine it for myself.
• I am the one whose feelings may someday wash up on a distant shore, enclosed tightly in an impenetrable bottle.
• I am the one who feels decade-old sadnesses as though they transpired yesterday.
• I am the one who second-guesses her second guesses, because failure too closely resembles death.
• I am the one who is perpetually in search of someone I've never met, the possibility of whom I constantly doubt, so that we may experience a magic whose existence I scarcely believe in.
• I am the one who builds mighty fortresses around my heart, only to watch them crumble beneath the weight of my own inner demons.
• I am the one with grief-filled eyes but a smile replete with happiness.
• I am the one who was born wearing rose-colored glasses, and never learned to take them off.

x r