I am an introvert

I do not fare well in these feuds

See, I am a stuffer of feelings…my arteries choked and clogged so deep and wide with what I wish and how I wish I could say it to you…

And I am kind of, sort of a wimp (but I don’t like to admit it and I don’t want you to know it)

But so what?

So what if I want to write to you instead of talking to you

Simply put, I just prefer not to have a confrontation

That ever so present struggle between the quiet and the loud

I am quiet on the out but loud on the in

You are loud on the out but quiet on the in

I take the time to understand you but you don’t with me

For instance if you would rather we stare at each other over a cup of coffee or tea with a pastry of some sort sitting in between us, then I say to you talk to the hand because I aint gonna.

But you expect me to try to step into no man’s land….

 

...but then again maybe its better for me to communicate with you in pen and ink

because if you ingest my voice, it wouldn’t be sugar, spice, and everything nice

'cause in my mind

I smell a flame falling down a firecracker fuse soon to explode

I hear a lot of screaming

I see a lot of finger on the trigger pointing

I taste a lot of bitter gun powder bullet phrases

I feel a lot of…satisfaction, with a hint of regret (but that comes later)

 

So maybe, maybe you are lucky if you get a letter from me

Because if you meditate on my words like a horse chewing cud, it would be love

Cos in my pause

I smell a calming air…one Mississippi, two mississippi, three

I hear the rational instead of the rage

I see proof reading red marks slicing my anger into pieces

I taste the sweetness from my spirit

I feel…courage, because I said what I needed to say without hurting you

Dawson Trotman once said that thoughts disentangle themselves from the lips to the fingertips

See contrary to what you might think, I am not hiding behind my handwriting. I am in the trenches, preparing, taking my time, studying my enemy, and my enemy is me.

 

So do not consider me a coward

Because I enlisted for this inside war

I battled my flesh for you

I crawled under barbed wire mazes and mind games

I fought long and hard with my ink filled sword and with my paper and envelope-ing shield

And I bled these words on the front lines for you

These words…are my peace treaty

…that I hope you will not shred up, scrunch up, and chuck into that garbage standing beside you

because if you do

you gag me with tear gas

and as it enters my pores my words cannot escape

it is hard to breath and I become hard to hear

and your war of spoken words will be won over my written ones