Back then I thought I knew it all. I thought I could sit on the cliff edge, jump and call it flying. I thought I could kiss sea air, and call it love.

There was a beautiful pain that I associated with life, an aching burn that I was foolish enough to embrace.

My bones would light on fire and I would DanceDanceDance, until my feet were dissolving in the surf and I was throwing the remnants of my words, like breadcrumbs, into the sea.

It was fast and dangerous and loud. It was like cracking your bones, to know the sound of heartache, along with the splintering marrow. It was like touching your tongue to acid, just to feel the sizzle of nerves, and know what it felt like to have your voice stolen from the edge of your teeth.

It was a danger that I took into the caverns of my chest and breathed deep-like sinking a boat to watch the way ocean swallows land, or setting dynamite on the edge of your pillow just to know what dreams felt like when they exploded.

You see, back then I lived without fears, ropes, or inhibitions. I lived in the epicenter of earthquakes and the eye of each hurricane, and called the disaster home. I gnashed my teeth and pulled my hair and screamed until my lungs imploded.

I was alive; I was bruised and lacerated and broken and chapped and hurt and whole and vain and lovely and hungry and wild and bleeding and scared. But most of all, oh, most of all-I was alive.