July First [however, i know today is NOT July 1st]

A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: "Sing for us soon again;" that is as much as to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul." ~Soren Kierkegaard

poems lodged like clotted veins & clogged arteries & i just want to bleed today...

words fill lungs like dirty lake water, i am drowning & i just want to breathe today...

phonemes & utterances bounce like echoes through the hallow halls of my bones filling them with burning kinetic energy when all i want...

is to be still...

God... I didn't ask for this...

didn't ask to be used

didn't ask to be chosen

didn't ask to be a vessel

but here i am broken and leaking for all to see...

i don't understand why you use my pain for their deliverance...

why won't you just let me be who they think i am?

who could ever love something so imperfect...

all i have endured flows ever so elegantly through these cracks & crevices, these punctured holes & flesh wounds, how transparent you have made me...

it's almost beautiful...

but mostly it's not, see i wear these frowns & scowls for a reason

no one needs to know why i lie awake at night

why i regret things that never were

why i wish things that can never be

no one needs to know that i'm only human

a mere mortal, always afraid to die because i have not yet come to terms with the way i live

always behaving myself when they come to see this glass house because i'm afraid that they'll throw stones & demolish this facade i've taken so long to fabricate...

what's the point of all this flesh if they can still see my heart beating frantically in my chest?

they've seen too much...

but in this transparency, there is perfection...

a perfect exchange of vulnerability for healing

insecurity for strength

conviction for confession

confession for redemption

redemption for salvation

and all in the name of atonement

i inflict these wounds upon myself

this supposed gift is my scarlet letter

but as much as it hurts me to do so, i wear this sin with pride

because without these moments of clarity, perfection is assumed

& i cannot live that lie.