Drake

I know you.

I know that crumbling corner of a smile.

The fleeting, empty nicety.

Your grief is too heavy for the smile to hold.

The shame,

The terror,

The anguish,

Sits in your heart like a boulder

Sisyphus could never budge.

You sit in the chair under the lights,

You tell the horrors done to you, again.

You don't expect they'll listen,

No one has.

The hot seat makes you sweat.

You feel the prickles cascade down your spine,

Over your flaming cheeks, as you pray.

Maybe this time they will listen.

But I know you.

I know you, like we all know you.

We are many.

All of us lost souls, sent out as vagabonds

By the hands of nasty men.

Wicked men.

Leering men.

I know the burning ember that sits in your soul,

How truth's fire spreads from your heart to your lips.

I know the abraisions caused by

You holding your shattered heart's pieces together.

I know the gasping lack of oxygen as you flee.

I hear you wondering who you can turn to.

Who will believe you?

Will they believe you,

Or the charming man?

Beguiling man.

Sneering man.

I too walked among the shipwrecked.

The tattered and torn,

The bloodied and bruised.

The salt in my wounds,

Matches yours,

and hers

and his.

Mine held me beneath the waves,

lungs stabbed in pain,

Because I said I would speak,

I would tell.

I would utter,

What happened in the darkness,

To me,

To her,

To you.

I know you.

Cut from the same soiled cloth,

The same hushed tones and daggar threats.

You're my brother.

I sit with you under the stage lights.

I'll hold your hand if you ask me to.

Together we'll exhale as you cry out,

As they cry out,

"Quiet on Set!"