a closet poet who maybe knows it

Making people feel understood does not come at the price of rehashing old wounds.

when we can barely help ourselves.

97% of us, to be exact.

And that's devastatingly beautiful,

if you ask me.

To be human is to be heartbroken

over

and

over.

Most days,

I am simply overwhelmed with being full of heart -

mostly broken -

"If I do not express myself, I will die"

Dramatic, drastic, and definite:

I have always tried to be a show stopper, I guess

But when it's 1 am and I am in the work parking lot,

Flirting with my life,

I wish I was dull

Normal, bland, painfully unremarkable

When I' ve clocked out and can't check into myself,

Despite the vacancy sign lit,

It's time to turn off the lights

Singular good ones

How do I convince you the love touched more than the pain?

Why did it have to take me so long to get over myself?

Why do I have to hurt you like this?

You gave me everything

The lights went out and I lost my way

My lantern run empty

My path no longer illuminated

Left to wander until day break

And never a bowl of cereal for breakfast

We don't wake up before noon because

The early hours are full of sickness

My throat burns because I reach for menthols far too often

And always before food

Nicotine over nutrition

I find great safety in great kindness

A positively distorted view of the world

And humanity as a whole

Nearly three decades deep,

And I didn't think to learn to swim

My veil of safety has been lifted and disturbed in ways I couldn't imagine

Couldn't have prepared for and cannot prepare for,

As if the future of my life depends upon it:

I have stayed away from just as many evils

As I have entertained

My positively distorted view of the world may very well put me in harms way

And gives me just as much hope as it does fear

Kindness is a virtue and a lesson in safety

Practiced and implemented before a threat can pose,

Slipping

Slipping back into old habits

Old patterns

Old routines

Deadly rituals for the sake of taking up less space

My body begging

Pleading

Asking to form an alliance with one another

Rather than continue fighting a deadly fight

All I did was silence that voice

And make it smaller

I see right through myself

If eyes are the windows to the soul,

Mine are made of glass

Just another duplicate of all the others, searching for sanctuary among the misfits

Glass windows and glass houses forged from broken homes

A ghost in my shell,

Hollow and horrified

At my own human will

I see it all

And through it all

Facades and masks smudged internationally

Smeared throughout humanity

Dressed up in lies

Dolled up with insincerity

Enchanted by the veil

Why do we all hide?

Why do we rotate trends as we do?

Decorate ourselves with shiny little things

Purchased with shiny little coins and crumpled green

Changing appearances and diets to accommodate what "looks good" to the world

Rather than what is good for you

Consume, consume, consume

Media, news, and food

Politics, neighborhood drama, news outlets, blogs and vlogs

Sugar, sex, and secrets

Consume until we've lost every semblance of ourselves,

Then we trudge back in line

Back to the hamster wheel

Back to expectations

Back to everything that screams,

This body doesn't feel like home

Too broken, too painful, too unsafe

It doesn't comfort like the first warm meal of the day

or my favorite silken blanket colored violet

It doesn't soothe like lavender tea

steeped in the clay teapot from my dad's lover

It doesn't protect like my green thrift store trench coat

enclosing me in stylish warmth and self-expression

It doesn't calm like the steady heartbeat of my mutually smitten fiancé

or the soft lull of their voice in the late hours of the night

A stranger in my own house;

I seem to have misplaced the keys