I burn with the need to fill your spaces
with metaphors of darkness
and adjectives for freedom.
I carry your spiral-bound glimpses of madness
in a whirling echo
inside my chest.
I scour my lobes for pulses of feelings
in little black lines
that cover my wrist,

but whenever I try,
my bones grow weary,
and I never
complete my

I can feel every voice inside of me screaming,
sound waves bouncing against every cell,
clashing with every heartbeat,
and colliding with each aching muscle,
but all I hear is the swish of the ceiling fan’s blades
as they slice this stale air.
I have no voice externally.
You’d think I would be used to this by now,
but I don’t welcome a home
that tries the beat the life out of my joy,
that takes every loving moment I feel
and replaces it with a reminder that I’m unnoticed,
Forgettable.
I want my real home again,
where my walls don’t form massive brick barriers
ready to cave with any gust of wind,
where the fence that surrounds me
won’t shock me when I try to escape.
I want to feel life in my fingertips again
and wake every morning to a day worthy of sunlight.
I want to be seen.
I want to grip every worry,
every fear,
every smile,
every laugh,
every vulnerability
so tightly in my fists
that my fingernails cut holes in my palms
deep enough for me to bleed out all of my insecurities,
and then I want to hold each hand out
toward anyone who claims to care
and release the muscles that are trembling so softly from grip,
so I can release uncertainties that have shaken me so swiftly from flight,
and I want you all to watch as each part of me
presents itself before you as it falls from my grasp,
each part of me that you didn’t know,
each part of me that I thought died,
each part of me that I’ve worked intensely to build,
and each part of me that you look over,
because every move I make
and every piece of my soul
is like a light breeze
in the midst of autumn:
invisible,
lacking importance,
nice to have,
but unnecessary.

It’s so cliché:
the view from the plane during lift-off.
We’ve all heard about the neatly lain world beneath us,
more shapes than we knew possible to make
with our roads and landscapes,
the twists and turns that make us dizzy
when we live in them
but from above seem small,
almost easy,
almost remarkable.

I like it up here,
considering the world so neat and tidy.
Here I don’t need to dive into
any confusion.
Feelings of doubt float away
and cave in,
the way my chest caves
from the air pressure.
Up here
my heart is a rock.
Down there
my heart is a boulder.

I could watch the world forever
if it meant I’d never break.
I could watch the world forever
if it meant I’d never drown.

I couldn’t watch the world forever
if it meant I’d never feel.
I couldn’t watch the world forever
if it meant I’d never live.

So, dive in with me,
laugh with me,
love with me,
hurt with me,
let this pain consume me
so I can feel the way it seeps out of my wounds
so slowly
when they are ready to heal.
Then heal with me.
Give in with me.
Feel with me.

I miss that.
And I didn’t know it until now.

Are you ready?
Because I’m not.
But that doesn’t matter anymore.

We’re coming in for landing.

Dear Life,


For the longest time,
I’ve been complacent in this little nook I dug for myself,
a stagnant existence,
happy…
could be happier…
but happy,
and that’s what I wanted, right?
That’s what counts?
That’s what I worked towards for so long?

What’s that cliché?
If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it?
Yeah, don’t fix it.
Cover me in silence,
fill me up with good enough,
and settle if it’s so.
Who needs to strive for amazing?

You haven’t thrown me any curveballs in a while.
Maybe what I thought was healing
was just a piece of me that grew numb.
You’ve changed the plan mid-play.
Are you really trying to fail me?
Is it your goal to get into my every crevice
simply to pull out each emotion you can find
and witness what it does to me?
I’m not sure my bat is still strong enough;
it hasn’t been used in so long.
I could swing,
but I’d miss,
and I can’t handle missing any more.
I forgot what it felt like to have so much uncertainty
lodged under my fingertips,
to see one pitch after another too late
and not even realize it until a giant, blue welt
appears on my skin.
I’m terrified of your throws,
because something might shake up my world
and break me all over again.
I can’t,
I won’t
go back to that place.

Instincts scream to hide in the corner of the cage,
construct a shelter
in peace.

But,
dear Life,
my heart…
my heart tugs at my puppet strings
to grasp the bat in my hands,
walk up to the plate,
and find you face-to-face,
“because this time
maybe,
just maybe…
we’ll hear ourselves collide.”
In a barely-audible whisper,
it says,
“I think you’ve missed enough.”


Signed,
Scared & Confused

I could pick you up
in my callused hands
and let your grains
massage my skin,
sanding away the wall,

but I want to feel
your every move
slip
    right
        through
            my
                f   i   n   g   e   r   s   …