Chasimology (a slam poem)

We have begun a study in loss and the way nothing will ever stay the same.
We all have lost many things:
Favorite toys, fear of boys, innocence and ignorance. We lose all our teeth, growing them back only to lose them again in our nightmares. We learned life's unfair, we learned not to care when "friends" called us names, called us lame, put us to shame, left us out... in the rain.
We lost wonder, and hope life could hold meaning, not just demeaning. And do you remember the last time your mother set you down? She never picked you up again. Do you remember the first time you woke up on the couch instead of in your bed? We lost magic and the knowledge that the sky was endless.
We lost family, grandparents stone cold in coffins of shadows and doubts. We lost the absolute sure knowledge that nothing bad would ever happen to us, because we were special.

I was 7.
It was my birthday, and I was sick as the sea, my insides churning while I slept, emerging through my mouth, a stranger in my bed, and my companion, a magenta plush bunny disappeared and never came back again because "some things don't wash."
They are struck by the force of the tide.

I was 12.
I lost the knowledge that death was something that happened only at the end of a life. The boy next door was a candle, burning tall and bright, unspluttering... snuffed out. He was hit by a car and suddenly he was lost to the void,
and I, lost, reeling in my own mind when his parents to this day put up pictures of him in the window that faces mine.

I was 17.
In a day, all the friends I had ever known were gone. The home where I had grown was someone else's. And if I ever go back, it will be like looking at my own skull: incomprehensible and wrong.
And all my friends will have moved on.

I forgot that believing in permanence is a sin,
that I should open up to loss and let it in,
because everything is lost in the end,
and you can't take it with you.
It crumbles to ash, flies into the blue,
and leaves and empty space: nothingness.
We hardened our souls to the world so nothing could hurt us
'cause we were already dead.
We lost our hearts with a shrug of the head.
We live with empty, mechanical ones now instead.

but without loss, what would we be?
Layers upon layers of flesh and songs stuck on repeat.
A mouth full of tiny teeth we never lost,
a life full of "friends" we never double-crossed.
When we hold all this garbage, we become a floating trash heap
composed of all the dirty secrets that we pinky-promised to keep,
but were they ever worth it?

My mom complains when I lose my shoes every. single. day.
but I will lose them proudly,
shout it to the world loudly
because how will I ever get anything new if I clutch to the old?
I will not marry myself to mold.
I am ever-changing, ever-growing, ever-glowing,
and I don't mind throwing away the things
that no longer have meaning or purpose.
My life is not a circus of shouldhave,wouldhave,couldhave done's,
It is a kingdom of "yes I did's" and "look what I've become's."

Because if we never lose anything,
it means we never change,
and who wants to be the fish afraid of legs?
Afraid of land? Afraid to stand?
So I lost my fear
of looking in a mirror
and finding something new within myself.
So don't mind those "friends" who put us to shame,
calling us names, calling us lame.
We have begun a study of loss,
and the way nothing will ever stay the same.
For we have begun to learn
to dance... in the rain.

--
A/N: I have a spoken version of this. It's pretty rough, but hopefully it'll give you an impression of how it's meant to be read. There's a lot of actions and stuff that help it a lot too but whatever. 
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1k9icxYzKo9