I disagree. I know I may not seem like an adult right now, but there was a time before you where I managed to survive. I burned myself and I made messes and I accidentally started a small fire in my living room once. I almost cut my thumb off slicing tomatoes and to this day I question whether it's one part rice, two parts water, or maybe the opposite.

Auburn sunsets
O’er silver mountains
Bring home to me
A rare completion—
It’s like I’m not done,
But I don’t need
To worry much
About the future,
About my grades,
Or how my friends
Are acting strange.
The clouds, so peaceful,
Are painting streaks
Of feathers, white—
Cotton fluff
Stretched o’er the sky.
And when the rainbow shines
All is well.

Twice were my love and my honor both spurned
And again, thrice my heart and soul did yearn
But my thoughts and God’s are not at all one
But twain. I reach my hands up for the sun
While solemn moon is offered in its place
And stars glorify the tears on my face
And while I wait for daylight to reach down
I radiate from within. I drown
The thought that I may never know of love
And I look again; I look up above
At the stars and the moon; I see their space
And in between moments I find the grace

Chapter 1 Two Years Later
There! That was him! Tom smiled triumphantly as his target, a greasy man with shifty eyes and twitchy hands, glanced over his shoulder nervously. It had been a long chase, but the game ended here. He was the final piece to the puzzle, the last thread to pull before the case unraveled.
The conniving criminal was no match for the great, Detective Thomas Wayword.

That first day seemed to take forever. I washed dishes, chopped vegetables, baked bread, and stood for hours. By the time Martha and I were allowed to go to bed, I was exhausted. My legs ached, and I was glad to slip on the nightgown Martha gave me and drop into bed. Martha didn’t seem as tired, though, and wanted to talk.

“How old are you?” Martha asked as she lay down in the bed beside me.

“Seven.”

“That’s the same age I was when I was kidnapped,” she said softly.

“How old are you now?”

“Nine.”

“Where were you taken from?”

April 25th, 1422
On the edge of Milan, Italy, in a stone dungeon, a large, silent shape made its way down a stairway by moonlight. The eleventh hour had just struck. The shape shivered in a sudden wind, an almost imperceptible shudder, then continued on its way.

Two stories below him, an old, withered man slept, curled up against the cold walls of his cell. A wrinkled hand clutched a small, dry piece of bread. A ridge of tooth-marks dug into his frostbitten fingers. His figure was slight, his strength sapped from long captivity. He slept undisturbed among the rubble.

Sugarcoated words
Plus chocolate cheeks
In a whipping bowl of
Acceptance in a bakery of
Cheats

Cracking thin shells of debate
Into a glass bowl of hate
Whisking in the screams
Of meaningless berate
To make diversity cream.

Tastes like a dream?

I’m getting sick on
These brownie points
I’m raking in.

wait
up, we are
shifting,
changing,
we no longer say good night.

our
byes, roll from
lips,
from tongues,
and the bitter taste subsides.

truth: I
was fine on my own
without you:
fine
alone.

What does that mean?

that half of what
comes out
is never even
half
of what I think.

"[T]hen considering that a poet, if he is really to be a poet or maker, should not only put words together but make stories, and as I have no invention, I took some fables of Aesop, which I had ready at hand and knew, and turned them into verse."
~Socrates, in Plato's Phaedo

It seems that while in prison, Socrates took up poetry, and after working on a hymn to Apollo he turned to Aesop's fables.

The house we pulled up in front of was beautiful. The magnificent gardens placed before the large house were full of brightly colored flowers and healthy, green trees. Everything was perfectly trimmed. The house was perfect, too. With large brick walls painted white, the building portrayed orderliness, structure, and wealth.

I gaped at the house as the wagon drove around it. I had never even imagined a building so fine or large! It would cost more money than my daddy would make in his entire life to buy and furnish such a luxurious home.