Hovering over his desk
Fingers cramping as he jots words
with a shrinking pencil
As time goes by
papers rise into cluttered stacks
Spreading around him
Creating a castle of paper
Eyelids growing heavy
as the light from the lamp
glares down at him
Mumbling motivation towards himself
He keeps writing
He stays awake
Until everything is finished

You’ve got your secrets.
They hide in your eyes
And in the curl of your smile.
A freckle for each secret
Lies on your skin.

You only let them slip
From between your lips
In the faintest whisper;
So only you are able to hear them.

You scribble your secrets
Onto scraps of paper
And throw them into the fire,
Where they’ll remain smoke and ash
Until they’re rewritten on another page.

Tapping my left foot
at a constant beat of
1 million taps per second.
FlickINg my tonGue around
the insIDe of my Mouth.
A thousand SOngs are runNing
through MY mind
and I want to SING THEM ALL at once.
CAN’T STOP moving, CAn’t stop thinking
CAN’T STOP! CAN’T STOP! CANT STOP!
CANT STOP CANTSTOP CANTSTOP
CANTSTOP

I have secrets,
just like everyone else.
I don’t know what they are,
but I know they’re there.
I can feel them in my chest,
weighing down my lungs.
They swell up in my throat,
creating a lump I can’t swallow.
Maybe it’s better off that way;
for them to be so confidential
to the point where even I
don’t know what they are.

My body is a cage
to lock the monster
that is raging within.
But this cage grows weaker
It can only hold on for so long.

Once when I was brave,
I was able to keep the monster
invisible.
I had guts to fight it away.

But now it starts to peak out
in my voice, my fists, and
my menacing eyes.
The monster rocks back and forth
in the cage, making it bend
out of shape.

One day the cage will break
and the monster will come out
and I won’t be brave enough to stop it.

I don’t see myself in the mirror
I don’t see a headstrong,
independent, rebel child
that all my friends see.
I see someone’s who’s afraid;
someone hurt and lost.
A little girl who shuts herself
out from the world;
who hides her feelings and
keeps everything locked up inside her,
because she’s scared.
No, she’s not scared.
She’s too terrified to be scared.