Labeled

Location

11207
United States
40° 39' 55.836" N, 73° 53' 30.804" W

Listen.
Can you hear them?
I said listen.
They are every and anywhere that I am.
Can you hear them?
No. Can you hear them the way that I can?
Do they echo through your ears and your soul they way that they do through mine.
Listen.
There they are.
They are sneakily whispered under breaths and carried to my ears before the laughs that they elicit can wash them away into obscurity.
Listen.
They are judgments. They are the Judgments of my peers.
And these judgments they sink into my flesh and they carve themselves into my skin and they brand themselves onto my soul.
They label me like a can and they place me on a bottom shelf where I sit in the cold and the dark, all alone because no one cares what I'm good for anymore.
And so I sit there.
And I gather dust.
And the dust begins to cover me, and surround me and suffocate me...
Until everything I am and everything I could have been dies.
And at the end of all that I am, with my last bit of sanity, I look down at the labels placed upon me...
And I disagree.
I am not what they say. I am NOT!
Can't you see this is a mistake?
There has been a misprint.
This does not fit.
Who gave you the authority to tattoo my soul inaccurately?!?!
Hands shaking with righteous rage I pick up a blade so I can fix the mistakes that you made.
Because I am not stupid!
I am not weak!
I am not a lost cause!
I am not ignorant or helpless!
I am NOT what you say!
But that's alright. That's okay.
You can continue to misjudge and mislabel me and I will continue to have the strength you do not have.
I will continue to swallow your pride for you.
I will continue to admit you are wrong for you.
I will continue to fix your mistakes for you.
And I will continue to slash off and slice away all the misprints that you have left upon my skin until either you STOP or until there is simply nothing left to mislabel anymore.

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