refuse to talk about.
I need a better flashlight
a braver mouth
a new dictionary
to find fresh words
to form familiar sounds in new ways.
I write a lot of poems about growth
but have you ever loved something so much you didn’t notice it never loved you back?
sometimes, I’m so focused on where I’m going I forget where I am
This might be the first poem I’ve ever began with a first person pronoun.
I hardly even think like that
survived my life in story so far.
As a kid,
I would walk around my house and speak out loud about myself in third person.
Thirty some years later I fight to not spoken word just like that.
joke just like that.
think just like that
spent a lifetime writing the poems in a way that lets me talk around my bullshit.
when i do not name my trauma
it calls me out of mine,
feeds on my everywhere silence
bends me to its always will,
puts shame where the forgiveness goes and calls it a day
leaves me pretending I’m healing
leaves me crying
like the city water fountain
like everyone wishes in me
and I’m not sure I’ve made any of them come true.
What I do not speak of speaks for me.
What I do not tame shames me
shrinks me
in solitude
says,
‘no one,
not anyone
has ever felt like this
not like this
this dread steady coating this stomach in its likeness
this guilt butterfly knifing this gut
this apathy delaying my feet to touch floorboard.
or this shame in a whole person
now just slightly
less whole.’
But the things i have done do not care about me
Are not actually able to care
if they were they would only care about themselves
not where I am going.
My past thinks itself funny, thinks itself lesson, thinks itself the kind of story I should tell until I do so laughing.
My past knows it is over.
My past sweet-talks my shame
down from the ledge.
Finds my grief up there too writing its own poem
My shame will not read the poem
will not speak its’ own poem
so it grows bigger and bitter.
& my grief keeps telling a story no one is reading
writes a poem that is long and knowing and probably better than this one but i wouldn’t know that.
I never read it either
(not because it doesn’t speak my language but because it speaks at all and that confuses me).
How can it know so much about itself and expect me to do the work to understand it?
But then again, how can we do that to each other?
I think the things we carry the longest and the heaviest are the moments we were misunderstood. I’d love to introduce myself but my arms are heavy with all this carry.
I am on the roof I am with the shame
I am at the ledge.
I cannot jump
I cannot let my past put me in its’ place cannot let my shame shape my speech
let my trauma twist me tortured
marionette me through this life.
I have to tell my story
even when the trauma says
My story isn’t really worth much.
I say my story is worth exactly as much as it keeps me here telling it.
‘Cause it got me here and on some days
I know that by the sound of my laughter.
My laughter is a holy sound.
It is a thing I do in rebellion to the many things that try to trim my joy and sometimes gouge and sometimes win
on other days I wear my smile like an obligation
but never too big
‘lest someone read it like a dinner party invite
and try to feast on all that goodness
try to chomp my joy
digest my essence
I tell em go ahead and try to snake my story- I dare you
say this is mine now,
even if sometimes I don’t know how to talk about it
even if sometimes I fake it until I feel it
even if sometimes I barely feel it at all.
I don’t have every word for everything that has happened to me
But what I have is here
but what I have is mine
but what I have is enough for now until more words until more joy until
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