Why stars? 

Why must I suffer?  

You said there are plenty of possible places for me among you if I endured my fair share of

pain. 

That wonderfully wishful thinking left me working into the night and through the rain.  

Robbing myself of the right to play, staying in a chamber of tasks never-ending making

confidants a rarity.  

I thought the sky was the place for me, the place where fun and strain meet, 

where the payoff for whittling my body and mind to worthlessness would lie. 

I now stand before you questioning the validity of the values that you told me. 

Those values that violently pushed themselves into my head, consumed my being.  

I stand here conflicted, torn between carefully looking for cracks in the concrete of the beliefs I

once held, and being cautious to touch it. 

One knock would be all it takes to prove them, and myself, hollow. 

But these thoughts of being with the stars have persisted in me beyond my youth. 

Without them, there’s nothing between me and the cold realization that the stars don’t shine brightly of their own volition like I thought,  

and that outside forces sculpted them, cutting away the parts that didn’t glow like they wanted

them to. 

There needs to be a change of pace from within me. 

A change of style, 

a change of look, 

a change of what I want. 

There may be stars in the sky, but I can’t spend the rest of my life looking upward. 

I must search for the stars on the ground.