It says,

“For all have sinned

and fall short of the glory of God!”

So, I ask you,

just how much have

I sinned in comparison

to the pedestal you

set yourself upon?

How much have I plummeted

beneath our great Lord's

merciful feet,

when I dare to challenge

the oppression of earth's

white-man evangelist bigotry?

I ask you,

most wise and knowledgeable

devoter,

just how far do I fall

from the Lord our God's

reaches of heaven

when I have questioned

on the magnitude

of our fellow man's

prejudice and injustice,

and you have not?

Will there ever come a time

that I find myself unable to

write the tune to

the same ballad twice?

I've always prided

this part of me

as my sole therapy to heal.

My method to self-preservation.

To speak without speaking.

To crack without crumbling.

To have vulnerability without being

vulnerable.

But,

which time will it be

that the thread within

the needle of my own words

is to stitch these

old wounds finally shut?

A lot of times,

I only wish that I could

just believe in myself

to the same magnitude

that other people believe in me.

We are truly our own worst enemy.

Why is that?

Self-doubt is an infectious thing

that seems to spread alongside

the years you age.

And it tends to feed off

the things you like and love the most.

How do you break,

cure that cycle

with the thing others call

confidence?

Or even with

the thing called faith?

I know how a strong woman cries-

and I also know why.

A hidden lump deep in the heart that festers

into a cancerous demise.

People do not stand on thin foundations,

nor lean on paper walls.

They use up space and add more weight

then you're left alone to bear it all.

How too often,

as well as unfortunate, it is that

I find myself feeling at odds with-

ashamed of even-

for being the person I am.

My whole being seeming to be

something so very foreign-

as if all I am made of is

far too immense,

and much too intense

to exist in all its entirety-

that I instinctively work

to melt myself down enough

to be filled within the jagged cracks

of life's very own looking glass.

Where I am to be

hardened, bent

to fit and disappear into

it's illusive mold.

Where I am no longer too much

of something then-

I'll be nothing at all.

Sometimes, it's as if I've never awoken

from that dream where it's void of sound.

I open my mouth to scream my suffering,

yet, not a single word comes out.

A sleepless night for an artist

is like the cry of a siren's call-

a journey through the mind

and

a deep incision into the soul.