I know you can’t hear me
but this has been easier for so many years
I’ve been shut up and down
so it’s kept locked now
not proud to say
I’m afraid of the outside

I keep the key pressed
inside of my breast
left the best empty
in case of a rest

You guessed it
the exit is next on my list
address with precision
set permission limits

slowly reopen to show you the door

I wish I could say something beautiful.
But all of the words I dance with keep stepping on my toes,
like the boy I danced with in 8th grade that told me
he was surprised by how graceful I was for my size.

I've always carried other people's grief and anger around in my extra pounds,
storing their feelings like I was preparing for winter
and I've never been graceful about it.

I fall and I stumble and I slip but at least I didn't step on Brandon's feet when I was so nervous about my first kiss following the Sadie Hawkins dance.

I wish I could say something beautiful,
but all of the metaphors I try to grow never bloom.
Because I overwater them the way I overwater all of the loved ones in my garden and all of the wildflowers in my lungs.

I've been told my thumb is black, and not green, because I never know when to stop piling fertilizer upon seeds that will never sprout,
and when to stop piling unreciprocated love upon the people that I care about.

I wish I could say something beautiful.
But my voice is always silent like lightning or booming like thunder
and I've never learned how to make it fill a room like the sound of rain,
without being a natural disaster.

I wish I could say something beautiful.
But I still have a hard time looking into a mirror without picking myself apart,
like diagramming myself for autopsy before I've ever even pulled the trigger.

How could I ever produce something beautiful, when I can't understand the work of art that I am?

How could I say something beautiful, when I stand in my hallowed exhibition hall and refuse to paint my walls because I'm so afraid of making mistakes?

How could I say something beautiful, when I'm afraid to frame my best qualities because what if other people think that they're overrated? Overrated like seeing the Mona Lisa in person and still not understanding what the **** she's smiling about.

How could I say something beautiful when I've never been able to appreciate the different hues and shadows and brush strokes that fill my skin and my mind and my mouth?
I've never been able to appraise and value myself because I'm afraid I'll never sell and never find a home.

How could I say or create or become something beautiful when I'm so preoccupied with imitating others' paintings instead of allowing myself to be my own masterpiece?

I wish I could say something beautiful, but maybe the most beautiful thing I could say in this moment is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder,

and kid you gotta be beholden to yourself instead of those critics in your art gallery.

Do you ever look back and think what could have been?  Look at that time when I was scared. And maybe if I was stronger, we would have had something?  Or if you would have know what words I needed to hear, or understood what I was going through.  Otherwise we were just destined to be where we are today.  Barely speaking.

Fighting that person in the mirror
Flashbacks of your future is what’s feared most
Why couldn’t you standup
Why are you so silent

SPEAK UP !!!!

No one can hear you
Are you really going to allow this to happen
I guess so cause like a coward you’ll crawl back into that bottle
Drink away the Shame caused by pain
Knowing this is temporary satisifation

Here’s your chance to seek help
Although it’s tough and heart felt
As you begin to think to speak
Your drowning in water with stones tied to your feet

OPEN YOUR **** MOUTH !!!
Because you truly need this help
Too embarrassed to say
I stood up walked out because I didn’t want you to find out this way

in the afterbreaths of ardor
there is something lingering
hanging in the air
creeping on my tongue
floating in my mouth
waiting at the edge of my vocal chords
MY HEART IS POUNDING.

I want to say it so badly
the taste is in my saliva
tingling from my tongue to my lips
swallowing the words before they escape
tensing my jaw along with the thought
clinging on to the phrase
MY HEART IS POUNDING.

it travels down my spine
never ceasing to leave me
crawling down each vertebrae
shivering my entire being
collapsing this sense of self
gripping on to me for good
MY HEART IS POUNDING.

in a harsh breath
the words exit quickly
breaking through the barrier
existing outside of my head
opening a new realm in the moment
echoing into the air: "I'm falling in love with you."

when i was told as a little girl.
"think before you speak"
i knew what mum was getting at
and what dad tried to get me to do.
but.
now i'm older, only a little older than yesteryear.
i was in a slumber.
now i have turned to my night-dreams.

if i thought before i spoke.
maybe i wouldn't have even said a single word.
maybe i would have been so lost in my thoughts
i would forget what i was saying. or thinking.
no one would no what i meant when i thought about tomorrow afternoon. they would stare into my starry eyes and wonder why they even bothered to talk to me. would they?
but i will never know. because.
even when i hurt someone through simple sounds flowing from my mouth. i would still make them cry. kick. scream. yell.
they would always know. that i never thought before i spoke.

or would they.

The noise between words

Is unbearably loud

She spoke to me in poetry
I was just too young and illiterate to understand

sometimes i sit and watch them ponder,
mindless thoughts I think but none to spill,
no words to spill out onto the blank page that i have carved into their minds,
it drives them insane, makes them furrow their eyebrows, scowl, ponder, wonder,
i do not speak,
for words twist and turn, knotting into lies,
i do not lie,
so i do not speak.
simple as it is,
however i think its funny how they try to understand me,
they struggle to understand,
i believe they are blind to the common sense that was so given to them,
maybe it was taken away,
then again,
if they wish to understand, understand me,
just look at the words I can write.