A poem dedicated to the strongest people I know.

With shaking hands, I held your bleeding heart.

Under street lights, tangled in cigarette smoke, I see your broken wings.

I want so desperately to help you. To heal where it hurts, to take some of your burdens.

With stones tied to your feet, I watch you drown in it.

I'm helpless, falling in love with your honesty and vulnerability.

I see your true colors and they shine through despair.

Through agony.

Your bleeding, broken heart of gold is still beating. I swear in this moment that's all I hear.

This isn't the love they talk about in books, this isn't a romance you grow up dreaming about. It's hot, it hurts and your heart is breaking – all you can do is reach out and hope that they will reach back.

It's walking around in the cold so they can spill their secrets to you in a wide sweeping wave of admittance. Shivering as you drink in silence.

It does not whisper, it is loud. Shouting, pleading, begging-to-be-heard love.

Love-me-for-my- demons, not-when-it-is-convenient love.

If we could trade souls for a night I would – if only so you could see yourself through the heart of someone else. To see yourself through clear eyes, and a calm mind.

I'm laying in bed, the sun slowly rises. The sky explodes into a symphony of colors; blue, pink, yellow, orange.

Your words rattle inside me like loose change.

How can I show you what living feels like?

Thirteen Reasons Why is popular on Netflix right now. If you haven't heard of it yet, long story short – It's about a high school girl who commits suicide and leaves behind tapes explaining why she did it and who had a hand in her ultimate demise.

On one hand, it's important that we as a society can openly talk about how important this is and how it is becoming more and more prevalent in society. On the other hand, this show isn't about the warning signs – it focus's more on the he-said-she-said aspects of it, and sometimes there isn't a he-said- she-said reasoning.

Sometimes people are just sad. Sometimes they are simply lonely; craving human interaction that they lack.

Sometimes the happiest people carry the heaviest burdens.

This is a generation of people who listen to respond. We've stopped listening to understand, and by doing that, we've lost how to care about people. Our words don't have consequences. We can draft them and delete them, and we hide behind social constructs – because it's cool.

So many people walk around alone.

What can we do to help? People are going to feel lonely – that's a fact. We can't stop someone else's pain. That is something they have to work out for themselves.

We can, however, show them they aren't alone. On nights when it all seems too much, there is always someone there for them. Instead of worrying about yourself, or how you're feeling/can relate to someone, – just listen.

You don't have to speak. People just need to be heard.