I wasn't always so easily discouraged.
I used to bristle with enthusiasm.
I glowed with it.
It didn't matter if the task was simple, or tedious, or daunting, or boring.
As though on rails, I slammed into each and every task with terrific force.

But I got older.
Things that used to come easily grew slippery.
What I used to do without thinking twice, I found myself over-thinking.
I threw the brake. I ground to a halt.
Finally, I became idle. A left-over husk of a kernel that's already been popped.
I drowned myself with doubts. Hypothetical situations that might never happen.
I lived in fear of what might go wrong.

So I began to watch everything go wrong, as though I was helpless.
I was no less able. I was no less compassionate.
But I had grown wary. Of what?
What was it that, out of nowhere, caused me to slow down?

I guess I looked down and realized that if I fell, I would not be getting back up.

When you're young, you have no worries, because nothing is relying on your success.
So you mess up a math problem. You'll get it eventually.
So you botch things with that cute girl who sits across from you. You're young, you'll get it.
Re-assurance, faithfully, unwaveringly. A safety line should I fall.
But I never really fell, did I? So why am I laying down like I have?

Get up.

Get up.

I worry about everything. I worry that I will fail.

I dread what comes, what I can't avoid. But time, and time, again, it comes, and I miraculously don't die when it hits, because I've been bracing for a train-wreck impact, a force that will really, truly, finally, definitely lay me flat for good.

I close my eyes, and brace. But the crash never comes. The silence that was continued to be.

I turn behind me, but there's no train there.

I'm starting to realize, with relief, (with horror), that maybe all I needed to do was step off the track.

I look down, and realize, with a first-creeping then-howling laughter that I was never on the track to begin with.

I look off where the track is. There's no train there, either. Maybe there never was.

Maybe there never will be.

I fear one day I should have daughters,
Yet I already know their names:
Ruby, Jane, Dotty, Maggie, Charlotte.
Would it be a blessing or a curse
If they turned out like me?
My mom told me when I was young
“it ain’t easy being a woman, I’m sorry.”
Sure as **** that was true.
I swear I never took that woman for a fool.
I can’t help the way it plays in my head
The pain in a woman’s eyes
Her smile so alive
It tells every lie
Deep down she’s half dead.
As I walk this path myself
Just as generations before
I wonder if that’s why
Little girls have such pretty names
To have something to keep it together for.
I’m older now and I still dream of their faces
How they’ll do right by
Our family of strong women
Whose names they were given.
Don’t be sorry, Mamma dear,
You pass your burdens to me
So our family can survive another year.

We’re gathered here today to put to rest the words I didn’t mean to say.
The thoughts I tried my best to suppress, but slipped out anyway.
Delivering meanings that I didn’t have planned,
And messages she just can’t understand.

My acid tongue throws out its poisonous whispers into her ear, containing words she was never meant to hear.
But she cancels them out with her alkaline replies that don’t align with mine.
She’s the one who starts this game every time.
Throwing in the truths that bring me shame,
But when I claw out her flaws from beneath the dirt out onto the surface,
They impregnate her hazel eyes with rain.
And I’m always the one to get the blame.

I check the weather where she is to know if she can see the dark clouds leaving,
Unveiling the blue skies that lie beneath.
Hoping that one day she will open her hazel eyes and realise we’ve been through wet and dry seasons that continue to replay like groundhog day.
But all we can do is keep believing that there is a reason why we can’t let the storms blow it all away,
Just because of the words I didn’t mean to say.