i haven’t said a word in fifty-three years
no, i told not a soul what i felt
i crumbled dreams like paper notes and
when i spoke i felt my own heart melt.

while you so declared your own ravaging fancies,
shouted like a song
a voice of purity, clear as glass
somehow, you were always wrong.

no, i am not bold, externally;
though my thoughts roared so loudly in my head
and when i put my words on paper
i could say what i wanted to be said.
my thoughts were so much louder than my words that
my head was almost deafened by their sound

perhaps i’d rather dwell in my imagined tales
than the sweet syllables i had almost found.
i dreamed, like you, to speak so clearly,
so greatly, and with such confidence;
but i mumbled, and so sillily
slurred vowels into consonants.
i dwelled in mere introversion so much that
when i opened my mouth to speak
i was held in great aversion, complete and utter disconcertion
and i could not tell you why.

indeed, i may be full of anxieties
but truly it did not matter to me, because
alone is not lonely
alone is not lonely
and i am not alone.

the best home to inhabit is one where there are no cares in this world, somewhere between dreams and reality, absurdity and rationality,
insanity, madness, asininity -
  somewhere, floating, engulfed in a pipe dream, the place you land when you’re about to go to sleep and you feel like you are falling.

the best home in the universe is the one where i did not care so much how people looked at me, my head was not sodden with insecurity, my voice not overwhelmed with timidity, and the world did not think of things this way.
perhaps you are the ruler of that kingdom.

truly, if heaven exists (and how i hoped it did)
it would be the place between dawn’s brightest day and dusk’s darkest night; a time when the sun had forgotten to set or the moon was shrouded with clouds and i had drunk too many coffees at three in the morning.

if heaven exists, it is somewhere deep below the depths of the sea where jupiter has lent its rings to protect us from the outer world, the one that exists beyond where we were floating.

where is our promised land? where is nirvana, elysium, paradise? it must be somewhere past these skies and far beyond this atmosphere.
a place not without sorrow but without prejudice, a place where this world did not despise and criticize and live in bigotry;
where we could stop ourselves from ruining ourselves, and where no poverty, war, or injustice exists any longer.
it is where my deepest thoughts reside, where my hopes dwelled and populated, and the lost dreams i had given up will live for as long as i do.

forever i had hoped to live in heaven, but in my heart i knew the only way i could get there was to die and i did not know if that was what i wanted.
i did not know whether that place existed at all.