(This poem is meant to be listened to, the text is only accompanying.)

 

A Spoken Word Poem For Myself

Sometimes I wish that people were translucent, with skin too luminous to conceal doubt, and fear, and hated, and all of these things that we carry with us that hold us down until we drown,

 the things I wish that we could whisper to each other before “hello”

 disrobe our minds and disclose our most intimate parts, the royal flushes of our poker hands, before shaking hands,

slowly building enough confidence to discuss the cold-front coming in and nervously ask, “What city are you from? Do you have any pets? Tell me about the gym you go to.”

Then maybe I could sidestep the inevitable dread when asked how I’m feeling and when my smile falters for just a moment too long when I have to choke down the words it would be much easier to say like “Hey,

well I have this the feeling of tiredness that can’t be fixed with sleep and I want to tell you the story of my every breath all in one breath so you can feel the frost of my sadness on your skin

but instead I say “I’m fine, just having a bad day”…week…month…year.

Most things blur right past me like traffic on the highway of my brain, where a train of my thoughts can move more miles per hour than a Lamborghini, Bugatti, Ferrari,

but I still stumble after each one as if I’ll be able to catch up,

 yet somehow I can’t seem to forget how little, belittled I felt that day my parents fought over my diagnosis;

 the day I was officially labeled crazy because that is the word used for people who fight battles with themselves and lose.

And let me tell you, an anxiety disorder is not “an unnatural reaction to stress” like the doctors stressed,

it is sleepless night after sleepless night of asking endless questions you would rather not know the answer to,

it is the feeling of bricks being piled onto your chest, pressed against you until your lungs cave in and you scream for help but there is no oxygen just sweat on your skin,

 it is imaginary snakes slithering up your veins injecting venom into your brain that is satanic telling you to panic,

it is desperation when you reach out in the blackness for something to grab onto but your fingers close around air,

it is seeing through defective eyes that convince you that you are not good enough to be understood enough,

it is questioning everything that you think is true, through and through.

It is the eeriness of being trapped alone in your mind all night without a shining knight,

and falling onto your knees and shouting the only question that really matters “What if it never gets better?”

There are times when I want to reach out and slice my fingers through the density of this tensity, suffocate the intensity

out of the air that surrounds me because I can feel the room squeezing me,

 like a sweater that is a little too ugly and fits a little too snugly, and I want to punch the walls until my knuckles are permanently black and blue and stinging so I can remember the feeling of pain next time I am caught in the rain of numbness without an umbrella,

 and I want to smash everything dear to me into a thousand little pieces to match this feeling of being broken that makes me want to scream and kick and cry because I have no idea why nothing feels right and my chest is tight and I am not the same person that I remember being from yesterday and the person I was yesterday was not the same as the one from the day before and as hard as I may try, I can’t dismember my thoughts to remember anything beyond this feeling of falling and falling and falling.

 But even though this morning began just like every other with the same sinking, wishful thinking, the same struggle to keep my footing, today, today, I climbed and climbed until I could taste the sweetness of the first dew on my lips and I was tall enough to outstretch my arms until my fingertips felt the warmth of the sun, like a blessing beckoning and pulling me and singing out “Today will not be the day that you allow yourself to rot in bed because today, today is the first day of the rest of your life”

and I will not spend another moment sitting here in a tattered cardboard box wistfully watching the world dance with all of the people who gave up on me because today, today will be the day I convince myself that I am not a passive victim, not a worrier, but a warrior

and the massacre I have mastered

must at least make me a little bit like all of the people I would rather be.

And today, today will be the day I stop picking at all of the unhealed scabs that I have collected like flags

 and turn my back on being ashamed of who I am because today, today is when I will finally understand that sometimes even to live is an act of courage and I am courageous enough to quit worrying about what might happen if I trust myself to cry in public or fall in love or grow old

because those are all of the things I will finally be able to do, starting today, because today, today, I embrace the people waiting for me at the end of this race, and today, today I will be infallible and brilliant and alive.