I have never been able

to trust my mouth

to repeat what I tell it to say,

so the words fell from my mouth

to my hands,

the scratch, 

the scribble, 

the scrawl,

they told

what my mouth never could grasp,

I began to see myself in the world,

the intimacy I began to feel in nature,

and the elctrical flow that came alive inside of me

in an unknown place,

I became a part of the stranger

I had taught myself to fear,

these same words that everyone uses

came together in a way that was uniquely me,t

they speak for me

when my courage falls