To Whomever It May Concern

_{"Good morning, Jupiter."}

   Your eyes were glazed over, like an amber painted clay mug recently fired. I watched as you teetered forward with your sack filled with sugar and poured  a heaping serving into the stark black coffee. You turned around and smiled with teeth slightly yellowed from the coffee you adored so much. I never minded the smell of a fresh brew that lingered within each follicle of your hair. Lowering yourself to me (you are so much larger) you succumbed my frail body within your arms, whispering good morning in my ear. Sentimentality never meant much to me until I met you.

_{The koala was a bastard.}

   I was four, and nearly always sickly. As much as you may not want to know, I always had some sort of tract infection, and my T-cells were just not strong enough to keep my body healthy. One particular night, after being tucked into bed, my fever rapidly spiked and I was visited by wafting hallucinations. On and off disasters that still plague my memory sixteen years post. The koala on my pink, four-post canopy bed (I was a tomboy, and despised the look of that fairy-dust bed) that trotted up and down like a deranged Whack-a-Mole, was a fraud. It stole your money.

_{Orion, protector.}

   When I was nine years old, my parents began arguing. I spent nearly every night waiting outside our rented winter home; a small two floor lake house on Cranberry Meadow. I'd sit there until Orion came out, sniffing the air for any faint whiff of snow (I've always been capable of smelling snow before it came) while listening to the rip-roar hurricane of hatred that eventually tore my family apart. Years later I told my best friend about my childhood; that was the first time someone wrote a song about me. It was the last time I spoke about those nights until now.

_{Salamanders in my bedroom.}

   I did not keep salamanders as caged pets. As far as I was concerned, they had every right to roam my bedroom as I did. So instead, I allowed them to sneak in and out through the storm gate and make their way to my room during the summer. It was nearly always cold in my room, even in the muggy heat that New England summers bring. I was four years old and caught beetles (I always loved feeling their legs wriggling furiously under my fingertips, and the faceted roughness of their exoskeleton) to shove in my mother's face. When she screamed in fear, I'd laugh with glee and malice, relishing in every high-pitched note her throat could possibly emit. I think my father enjoyed it nearly as much as myself.

     I'm not sure how else I'm supposed to tell you who I am, or why I came to be. I'm not even sure I could tell you those things, mainly because I haven't the faintest idea as to the answers. I'm a product of teenage insecurity and blatant misuse of proper contraceptives. My father was a chronic smoker, as was my mother. My father a football jock, and my mother his cheerleader counterpart. I've become everything they despised as the omniscient teens they thought they were. I'm an embarrassment to my mother, and an inspiration and gate keeper to my father.

I'm nothing, and everything all at once.
I am the keeper of peace.
I am everything I wish I was not.
I hate.
I love.

So long,
Alexis Caitlin