Girl No. 1 wears her jeans cuffed and hates everyone but the Jets. Her voice is honey-thick around biting words. Smiling does not come easy to her. She wears her face like a mask—big glasses, big eyes, big quiet. When I see her, she lifts her hand in a grim wave, delta creases in her brown palm. Her excuse for her silence is that she’s boring, but she’s not. She dots her eyes with tiny stars and listens to German orchestra whenever she can. She thinks she has buried herself well, but bits of her still protrude from the topsoil, aching to be known.

Girl No. 2 is grey flannel and deliberate sentences. Her hair covers her face, yet when she speaks about trees and animals and the hole torn in our atmosphere by ultraviolet, ultraviolent rays, she is thunder. I gave her lotion for her cracked hands one time. When we smiled at each other after, we knew at once we were part of the same club. Girl No. 2 never corrects people when they forget her name. They say Kaitlyn, Kaleigh, Katie…let the word drop as if it were no more important than a used napkin. I hate it. I pick her used napkin name from the floor and smooth it over my lap. I say it right and she replies, with perfect seriousness, thank you: Thank you for the correct pronunciation of my identity.

Girl No. 3 is a hard one. Look at her once and you’ll see Maybelline lashes and a glass-cutting face. Look twice and you’ll see more. The sag of her shoulders, the stinging weariness of posturing for people far beneath her. I startle her. I’m too inquisitive for her taste. She does not want the world knowing her mother drank three liters of ***** before driving off a bridge, that her favorite color is celery green, or that anorexia and anxiety stalked her through the halls of high school like a pair of vultures. She wants to stay in her castle of ice, but it has imprisoned her. You poet, she teases me. You right-brained heap of color and sensitivity. You’re too much. I don’t know what to do with you. I ask her who she is and she recites her answer. 130, 125, 2315. But this girl is more than her IQ, her weight, or her SAT score, and when I tell her so, her Maybelline lashes are ruined.

If I show you my
vulnerability.
Would you take over my
insecurity.
If I tell you my
history.
Would you stay
officially.
If I put my heart
in you.
Would you trust me
consistently.
If I open up
to you.
Would you understand
my fragility.

In a room full of people, you're reading our words,
Silent, to yourself, alone.
Because bearing the stress of talking aloud,
Is much harder than sitting on your own.

And when we let you in, it's all the way.
We keep ourselves safe, but we have to say,
The ideas from within, the shadow or light,
Can comfort a stranger or set things right.

Our words have reached you,
       they've made you see more,
And understand better than you could before,
In a form that can never completely remain,
       untouched by the heart of it's writer,
We share this very real part of ourselves,
While the audience glows, ever brighter.
And vulnerability opens a door,
pulling strength on the strings of a lyre.
Our melody and lyric, not wanting for more,
Can raise each of our readers up higher.

Hardened exterior ever so slightly
More of a facade, a mask.
Sheltered tenderness
Seldomly shines through.
But ask me?
It most certainly is not true.
This feeling, so unnatural
And surprisingly poignant too.
It seeds a knot in my throat.
Powerless.
Weakness.
I will not let them collaborate with me
For I cringe, as this cannot be.
I know,
I should not be this way,
But for now,
I am going to stay.
I do not have the courage
You see,
To face and claim this thing
Called vulnerability.
But one day
Just maybe...
My arms will be open free.

I feel I am a true educator
Standing in front of my class,
And the time slips away.

A teacher when I fake a smile
For the sake of my students;
Unwilling to cry in front of them.

An instructor at heart
When I am willing to
Show that I am human as well.

A teacher in vulnerability.
Personable in profession.
Tenderhearted in being.

Today at a library I spoke to Jim. Such a pleasant 82year old gentleman born on the Isle of Man. As I got to know him a bit more, I found out that he hasn't spoken to a single person in 3weeks! He did mention saying hi or hello to people you normally greet, but nobody wanted to take it from there and spend the time of their day just talking. We spent chatting roughly 20 minutes and every now and then he would almost feel uncomfortable having me around, asking if he wasn't "wasting" my time.
It saddens and angers me, that at an age where everyone feels so connected, we have grown so detached and so distant from each other, even from ourselves. Even our own friends, our own parents and relatives, let alone strangers. We avoid being vulnerable with each other. We project what we think would gather more likes or more acceptance from the society. But by doing so, we are undoing the very basic of the basics. Connection. We are ashamed and embarrassed to project vulnerability.
It all starts with a simple hello. Outside.

It took me 10 years to let you in. 10 years to allow you to look at me and truly see me. 10 years for me to let you look at the piece of me I've never gotten back. That piece is yours. Hell, all of me is yours if you want it. I don't know if I can bear to be anyone else's now, knowing what I know; how things could be. And this is why it took 10 years. I've always been afraid that once I tried you I wouldn't have a taste for anything else. I let you in completely. No walls. No pretenses. No pretending I didn't. Now what?

You walk around
Pushing people away
Its your insecurities
That makes you feel this way