For overburdened everyday heroes

 

I have never told you this before

but I think the way you hold yourself together

like gorilla glue on a broken vase is beautiful

I just wish I could convince you

you are strong enough to melt yourself into a new mold and cast yourself whole again

 

Cause you've never loved the hand at the end of the pen

the indents ink leaves massaged into palm creases

you've never respected yourself

think it leads to egotism and greed

what would you lose if you held your head a little higher

like spires on towers that puncture the limits of the sky

you don't have to be proud 

just don't be ashamed

 

You've done nothing to deserve the way you treat yourself

 

Maybe if someone told you it's not your fault in the first place

you'd believe me that

it's okay to run away on Christmas

to hide under the piano praying no one looks down

to duck behind trucks as cars drive by looking for you

they search not recognizing necessary escape

 

it's okay to be afraid

to not know where you've been 

and only recognize pain

it's okay to forget the air in your lungs 

and the feeling of breathing in

 

no one has told you that it's okay to be like this

to quiver like shells on ancient beaches

feel broken like bourbon bottles at 3am

it's okay to sleep in patches and cry the rest of the time

 

I think what you need to be told most

is that you deserve release

to run and free yourself with every horizon line your foot makes with the sidewalk

every tangle the wind makes in your hair

you deserve to lose yourself completely

cause otherwise you would never be found

 

But fear burns self confidence like incense

you watch it gracefully twist away and dissipate into nothingness

feel the indents and bruises infused with your pigment

the abuse is still a part of you

 

We breathe the same pain like smoke in a bombed-out building

the process of inhaling exhausts us

blisters on our feet bleed our stories nightly 

like the red can represent hot hotly our hands burn

at the thought of holding ourselves together

it's hard work, but someone's got to do it

I'll hold your memory like a canopy of butterflies

fragile and ready to break free

you know how tender my fingerprints are

my arms remember the way you twist like muscle memory

like elephants' instinctual pilgrimage to graveyards they've never seen

 

We walk with them

caution ourselves against feeling cause it only leads to grief

pour our hearts out in exact measurements

ration love for irrational reasons

it's time for us to love ourselves

 

for the bottle we sent to sea with our unspoken names

for the story our eyes have held captive for decades

 

you deserve to love yourself

the way your eyes change shade

and when you laugh your scars fade into forehead crinkles

you deserve to maintain a smile

taste life's sweetness like honeysuckle nectar

walk with self confidence filling the callouses of your feet

to feel your heart beat for the first time

and know how much you are loved

 

realize gorilla glue is pure strength, liquefied

it is valid to process yourself together with pieces of a broken mess

we are complete because we shatter by nature

and build ourselves anew

You are beautiful for your fractures

 

and you deserve a good love letter

even if it's from yourself