In the womb you listened
and danced to the drum
your own heart took up the beat
and you soon enough
began to sing.

This is no place to settle down
you are on a journey
like it or not,
you will keep travelling.

I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

why do we born
to be weak
to be owned
to recover alone

why do we taught
not to say no
not to be heard
not to be complete

I act out plays I intend to publish
when dreaming at night
Intention being the one thing remaining
which is a way of saying forget about it.

the slow ache mixed with regular boredom
to fly away, be somewhere else
indeed to be utterly 'other'

on the road of suffering
on the road of the cross
and content to travel it.

i used to fall asleep to the same playlist every night and i would rest my head on the slow beat of some indie song that played from my phone one notch too loud and my eyelids would blink every so often when i started to drift to sleep but found myself singing along instead.

my mum always told me to turn it off and see how much quicker i would fall asleep, my mum never understood how the silence pierced my ear drums and burdened my hearing more than any song could. and i told her that it calmed me down. and i told her that the songs filled my mind with happier thoughts than those that my brain had produced during a long day. and i told myself that i needed to listen to these collaborations of sweet nothings and acoustic guitars.

i also told myself that i needed you.

and my mother never warned me about you or the damage you were capable of. she never told me to turn you down and see how much easier i would have it.

i revisited you like my ripened playlist and i told myself that you calmed me down, and i told myself that you made me happy, and i told myself that i needed you like i needed each and every one of those songs and i tell myself now that i was wrong.

i did not need you to make me happy and i did not need you to calm me down and i did not need you because you were just like those blurred melodies and messy lyrics.

you were just another song in a playlist i used to block out the silence.