Writer

God gave venom to scorpions, claws to bears, and words to me.

Kangaroos and Peacocks make themselves big to be more menacing. I write with spite.

The Octopus uses camouflage to hide. I write in riddles.

Birds sing love songs. I write poetry.

Others grieve with tears...

I do it with sentences.

Writing is my means of survival, of healing and of hope. The only thing that helps me more than writing, is prayer... but I even write those down too.

Maybe it's the fear of being forgotten. Of living a life without a mark. It's strange because sometimes

I

feel

too

seen.

Like when I write here speaking poetry, and some of y'all just get it.

You comment exactly what my intent is.

It's those times that I have to fight the urge to run away.

It's also those times I am filled with gratitude. Because in those moments you see me and you don't judge me.

We're strangers connected across space over words put out into the nether.

In those times I love you. In those times I wish I could tell you everything. Absolutely everything:

How my fight for survival started when I was a child but continues to this day. How I have to filter my words because I'm afraid they will expose my whole heart... a fickle thing I don't trust.

How I feel cursed with blessings I cannot enjoy because I'm too busy fighting my own mind and the person I was before.

The person I still might be.

A person I really don't like.

I want to tell you how I used to see beauty in everything. How that caused me to love what nobody else loved... to understand and embrace what nobody else did. How it angered me that I was the only one to see it. How I fell for what I had no business loving. How it haunts me nightly, wakes me up when everyone else is sleeping, because night time was the time to appreciate, to ponder, to listen.

The wee hours before daylight set my heart on fire. Those hours consumed me, the darkness enveloped me in a place of solitude, of reckoning, of vulnerability.

Now I'm up before the sun and I write. I write because if not, I might implode. I write because if not, I'll lose my mind. I write because I'm toxic and I'm kind. I write because I'm broken and I'm fine.

I write because words make it all make sense

I write because my thoughts all need a fence

I write because one day I'll breathe my last

And words still reach out, even from the past

And someday you'll know everything

And I think you won't love me then

And I think you won't be my friend

And I hope I'm not here for it

And I hope you will also see

That I embraced what ended me

That I sought courage, sought out grace

To stop the dance and win the race.

Oh I'm crying again, oh I want to scream

Oh God, oh God...

How can I be

Free?

Oh I'm stinging and I'm clawing and I'm singing and I'm hiding

I'm a fish inside a bowl and

My whole world is an illusion

I wrote that before

In a book

And they thought it was

Fiction.

It's not.

Is this what a drunken stupor feels like?

Wouldn't know, never drank that much.

Is this what a mental breakdown looks like?

Wouldn't know. Never had my mind.

I am memory and passion mixed in one

I am song and tragedy plus some

I am big but I feel smaller than an ant

I am... still here, baby.

I am breathing.

Not sure if this

Means

I

Made

It.

I'm surviving

I'm still writing.